When it comes to football prognostications, I aspire to be remotely as successful as the pregame shows’ panel members, let alone the nameless pundits making bank on Novig being inspired by Sydney Sweeney’s flawless body. After this past weekend, I identify much more with Sergeant Hans Schultz.
For the less seasoned and far less TV geeky of those of you absorbing this, he was the gentlest Oberfeldwebel in the Third Reich, forever looking the other way while the madcap prisoners of Stalag 13 conned their way through WW II on the classic sitcom HOGAN’S HEROES. No relation to the Houston Texans’ tight end Dalton, but at least now you know where Chris Berman got one of his most recent inspirations for a Boomer nickname–and rarely have any been as Boomer-inspired than a punch line on a period piece ’60s sitcom.
My own obfuscation started Thursday night when I foolheartedly through the Tampa Bay-Dallas matchup would be, as my birthday buddy says, a dog with fleas. Indeed it was, but the ones scratching their heads were the Cowboys, who somehow allowed the Bucs to leave Big D with their first win of the year, a 24-16 conquest that had a random team employee barking loudly while Dak Prescott was being interviewed by Prime Video during the post-mortem what an embarassment it was. Prescott–and for that matter his superiors’–since was deafening.
The Saturday results were equally as humbling, especially if you thought you knew how the SEC was going to unfold. As THE ATHLETIC’s Manny Navarro lamented yesterday morning:
College football’s chaos department finally went into overdrive on Saturday.
Four unranked teams — Oklahoma, Kentucky, South Carolina and North Carolina — pulled off upsets of No. 1 Texas, No. 10 LSU, No. 16 Florida and No. 25 Pittsburgh…No. 2 Georgia responded to the news that No. 1 had fallen by picking up Kirby Smart’s first win in Tuscaloosa and third in 10 tries against No. 6 Alabama. A questionable pass interference non-call, followed a few plays later by a silly foul from his own player, left Crimson Tide coach Kalen DeBoer heated.
The mighty Oregon Ducks, who boast one of the most expensive rosters in the country, lost for the second time this season, this time at Autzen Stadium to Bob Chesney’s unbeaten and fast-rising UCLA team.
The outcome in Lexington deserves special mention, if for no other reason than it drops Lane Kiffin’s outsized ego down another few pegs:
New Kentucky coach Will Stein brought Oregon’s offense to Lexington and apparently left (Duck dynasty diva Dan) Lanning without an instruction manual. He also seems to have taken all the right lessons from Lanning’s propensity for rolling the dice.
For the second consecutive week, Stein went for two instead of the tie in the first overtime and was rewarded with a 35-34 win. Last week, Kentucky erased a 17-point deficit at South Carolina. This week, quarterback Kenny Minchey ran in the winning conversion against LSU after CJ Baxter’s touchdown run brought the Wildcats within a point.
Kentucky played clean football once again, committing no turnovers, holding LSU to 94 rushing yards while getting 123 yards and two touchdowns from Baxter. Stein has Kentucky off to its first 5-1 start since 2023, with three SEC wins already. And the Cats are the first team in FBS history to win consecutive games by a single point in overtime.
Sunday served up more slices of humble pie being rammed down the throats of coaches that are the yang to Stein’s ying, much like an apple would be in the mouth of a boar ready for spit-roasting in a luau. Thanks to the London Jaguars’ first of two consecutive home games across the pond we got an early start on these frustrating shenanigans which BLEACHER REPORT’s Scott Polachek reported on:
Sunday’s game between the Jacksonville Jaguars and Philadelphia Eagles in London was, in a word, chaos.
And that chaos ended with Cam Little hitting the game-winning 57-yard field goal for the Jaguars just seconds after Jake Elliott gave the Eagles the lead with a 48-yard field goal.
Ameer Abdullah’s 53-yard kick return before Little’s field goal was arguably the most important play of the game in Jacksonville’s 19-17 win, and defensive tackle DaVon Hamilton also deserves some credit for filling in at long-snapper and delivering the snap on the last kick.
Which led to the crocodile tears-inducing confessional to Birds Nation that OUTKICK’s Armando Salguero shared:
NFL head coaches often take responsibility for not helping their team, but usually when they seek the blame for losing, they are often covering for someone else’s mistake. Then we have Philadelphia Eagles coach Nick Sirianni.
He took the blame for the Eagles’ walk-off field goal loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars on Sunday because, well, it was indeed ultimately on him. “I lost us that game and that’s what I said to our guys,” Sirianni admitted in his post-game news conference.
Sirianni was not in the mood to accept other reasons the Eagles lost. “At the end of the day, I didn’t make the right decision, and it cost us the game,” he said. “You know, and so there’s no other way around it. There’s nothing really else to say about that. It’s just I didn’t do my job good enough in that situation.”
But even he was not the dumbest coach in the division which now has to be called the NFC Least. That title needs to go to the Commanders’ Dan Quinn, who somehow turned a gift fumble from the Giants’ Cam Skattebo within the last two minutes of overtime into an aborted drive where he and his allegedly warrior quarterback Jaylen Daniels frittered away fifty-five seconds en route to a theoretical game-winning field goal without even an opportunity happening. There are already reports that that may be a fireable offense and he could be the first head to roll this season–that is, if the brother of the guy who benefitted directly from that tie doesn’t beat him to the bushes. Navarro’s comrade in arms Noah Furtado explained why:
The bustle of packed bags and hurried footsteps filled a static silence in the 0-5 locker room. “Five minutes!” yelled someone with a schedule to keep. “You good?” one player said as he dapped another. You could hear yourself think in a room full of Los Angeles Chargers, helplessly set on “staying the course” as their head coach says. Whatever that means.
Jim Harbaugh has said the same thing every week. The exact order of his words after Sunday’s gutting 23-17 loss to the Denver Broncos included, “Just keep digging deep,” and, “Moving forward,” but the meaning stayed the same. “That’s the answer,” an answer-less Harbaugh insisted. When a team that expected to be a Super Bowl contender is confronted with a winless record after five weeks, what message gets through? Or is there one? “Yeah, I don’t know what that message is,” Harbaugh admitted.
Maybe Hans Schultz might know.
Courage…