He has to be in on the joke at this point. Russell Wilson is playing with our feeble little minds. That’s the only explanation for the Denver Broncos quarterback to keep leaning into this personality that feels straight out of a “How to Act Like a Quarterback for Dummies” book.

At every turn, Wilson is catching heat from the media, teammates, and the public for a perceived inauthenticity. The only correction that he has made in response to that is to stop punctuating his interviews with “Let’s ride,” the same way he would do it with “Go Hawks,” when he played for the Seattle Seahawks.

While talking to the media on Wednesday, Wilson gave an hour-by-hour account of how he spent the Denver Broncos’ trans-Atlantic flight to London, and yes it was insufferable. He was asked how he spent the trip and the first sentence out of his mouth was, “I don’t really get jet lagged too often.”

Wilson then went on about how he divided his time between watching film and working out. He wasn’t watching “Gladiator” or catching up on “Abbott Elementary.” While the team was asleep, he was putting in the work.

“The first two hours I was watching the film, watching all of the cut-ups and everything else,” Wilson told the media. “And then for the next four hours, I was doing treatment on the plane. I was walking up and down the aisles. Everyone else was knocked out. I was doing high knees and working out my legs and everything else, making sure I’m ready to rock.”

Sure Wilson is dealing with a hamstring injury, but the Broncos have professional trainers and equipment. None of it he said he used. No Theragun, no stim — just high knees up and down the aisles while the rest of the organization is trying to get some shuteye. Surely that’s what will keep K.J. Hamler from spiking his helmet in frustration after a future blown opportunity.

How did social media respond to Wilson’s “how I spent my flight to London” report? It roasted him like a s’more. Endless hyperbolic tweets about what he looked like working out and making noise on the plane. Disturbing all of the Broncos staff who don’t want to win as badly as Wilson because, for them, an eight-hour flight to a different country does require some R&R to properly do their jobs.

Wilson is like The Rock’s first character in the then-WWF, Rocky Maivia. He came in all smiling and cheerful, just happy to be in the ring as a third-generation wrestling star. However, the cotton candy got too sweet and he began to get booed. When that character stopped working, The Rock was invented. The snorting, trash-talking, full of Miami football swagger wrestler became a fan favorite turned movie star.

I’m not saying that Wilson should start calling the crowd 60,000 pieces of trash, or threaten to shine up his cleat and shove it straight up the Jacksonville Jaguars’ roody-poo candy asses, but he should stop leaning into whatever this manicured babyface image he has been creating for 10 years is.

Trying to be liked is never the best way to make friends — and it hasn’t worked for the signal-caller. Especially, when there appears to be another side to him. The side that might require Marshawn Lynch to speak to a representative in order to contact his former teammate, or Kyle Brandt going viral for saying that Wilson is “the least authentic person in the NFL” and a “poser.” That’s two NFL personalities with very high Q scores not saying that they dislike Wilson, but certainly painting him in a negative light.

If Wilson is going for being the first heel in sports by pressing the gas on the “say your prayers, eat your vitamins,” personality that went out of style back when he was a child, then he is in the middle of a scientific study that needs to be presented to a panel. I’m choosing to believe that’s the case, because it makes more sense than him acting the way that he does because it somehow benefits him.

The NFL’s investigation into Mike Evans’ autograph imbroglio came to a screeching halt with a press release that gave off “forget it, it’s Chinatown” vibes. One day into the league’s inquiry, into Evans’ infamous scribble for game officials Tripp Sutter and Jeff Lamberth following the Buccaneers’ 21-3 loss Sunday to the Carolina Panthers, it was buried just as quickly. The NFL announced that no misconduct occurred in a release, but refused to elaborate. It was telling that rather than fully exonerate their officials and Evans, the league initially opted to allow the story to linger out there while they obfuscated. It wasn’t until the NFL Network’s Tom Pelissaro filled in the missing details that the general public learned the official story.

Reportedly, Evans gave his number to Lamberth, a fellow Texas A&M alum, to pass along to a golf pro for the wide receiver to get lessons from. However, Lamberth was missing a sheet of paper to jot it down on and borrowed one from Sutter, Pelissero noted. Well, that settles it. Nothing to see here, folks.

The collective bargaining agreement between the NFL and the NFL Referees Association prohibits the NFL’s officials from asking “players, coaches or any other teams personnel for autographs or memorabilia.” Oddly, it doesn’t appear to have any qualms with the exchange of digits between an athlete and a ref. How does anyone in the league office not see a problem with this?

The league hand-waved aside the allegations away in under 48 hours. Typically taking the NFL by its word is a treacherous endeavor. Even my wave caps are even covered in tin foil, but if the NFL’s PR team cobbled together a response that was worse than the original accusations, then they’re even bigger galaxy brains than we ever knew.

If Evans shanked a drive in Florida he’d have a golf pro offering him lessons within 60 seconds. He can handle that on his own without the aid of officials. What next? Calling up the head of officiating for where to find a good accountant? Sharing thoughts about the new season of Ted Lasso via texts with whoever leads the NFL’s instant replay command center? If the NFL is fine with its officials operating as messenger pigeons between NFL players and golf pros, then there will be bigger scandals on the horizon.

The league already has stringent tampering rules in place that regulate communications between players and personnel from other teams. Dolphins owner Stephen Ross was fined $1.5 million for tampering with Tampa Bay Bucs quarterback Tom Brady and then-Saints coach Sean Payton. One of the allegations was that Miami’s vice chairman contacted Brady about joining the organization while the QB was under contract with the Bucs. How hard would it be to extend that to officials?

This chill ¯_(ツ)_/¯ attitude has rarely been the NFL’s stance on these sorts of interactions and it’s strange that they’re brushing this to the side. They have rules dictating almost every motion players make on game days. The NFL cares more about the appearance of improprieties being on video rather than the actual malfeasance. That has been their stance on domestic violence and the since-destroyed Spygate tapes as well. Player misconduct gets a slap on the wrist unless there are pictures or videos capturing these transgressions.

Evans and Sutter’s exchange could have been an honest one, but if players and officials fraternizing in this way don’t get slapped down, it will become more commonplace, proliferate, and create conditions for the abuse of those relationships.

The Manhattan Jaspers start the 2022 college basketball season in a dozen days. Sounds like a great time to fire your head coach. And that’s exactly what happened in The Bronx (yes, Manhattan College is in The Bronx, get over it), as Steve Masiello was dismissed from the program just short of starting his 12th season at the helm of the team in the final year of his contract. In the 24 hours since the firing was announced, no wrongdoing or personal reasons have been attached to removing Masiello. Sounds only like tone-deaf timing.

What scenario played out where this pink slip couldn’t have been given after the season? Or at the end of last year? Masiello must’ve known his own personal stakes in a contract season, developing his roster to best make a run at an NCAA Tournament appearance. All those offseason workouts and preseason tinkering just to be told you’re not part of the rebuild. The New York Post later reported Masiello wanted a contract extension, which was denied by the school, causing the overreaction of terminating him. Deadspin’s attempted to contact Masiello to no avail.

Masiello’s unexpected exit has put the Jaspers’ roster in flux less than two weeks before its season opener, a road game against VCU. Manhattan was picked to finish second in the MAAC preseason coaches poll. The team’s best player, Jose Perez, was picked as the preseason player of the year. He’ll never wear a Jaspers jersey again as he’s entered the transfer portal and has received interest from several big-time programs including Arkansas, Louisville, Missouri, Kansas State, Oregon and Texas. There’s no chance he changes course and stays in NYC. Perez told The Post he believes several, if not all, of his teammates will join him in exiting the school.

Here’s a statement from Manhattan’s athletic director Marianne Reilly, showing no regard for a possible successful team that’s already at the school:

“We thank Coach Masiello for his service and wish him well. As we look to building successful teams for the future — and with the signing period approaching — we determined that it is time to begin rebuilding from the top down.”

It’s completely fair to think Masiello didn’t deserve a contract extension at this point in his tenure. He’s failed to lead the Jaspers to the NCAA Tournament since 2015, and in his 11 seasons in The Bronx, he’s only guided the team to three postseason appearances, two in The Big Dance. Manhattan College hasn’t had a winning record since its most recent trip to the Tourney seven years ago. In his 11 seasons leading the Jaspers, he has a 162-177 record. However, preseason hype was on the rise, with the promise of Perez. It appeared to be a great sink or swim scenario in a one-bid league.

Transferring at this point in the year and hoping for immediate playing time is foolish, as most Division-I schools locked in the 13 scholarship players suiting up months ago. A coaching change isn’t part of the NCAA’s exemptions for the transfer portal, meaning immediate eligibility would be hard to get even if Perez and other Jaspers were to find landing spots elsewhere in Division I. The players themselves could petition the NCAA to waive sitting out a season, but the organization actually granting immediate eligibility, and reversing its own policies, is extremely unlikely.

It’s especially difficult for Perez, who has one year of college eligibility remaining. Unless the NCAA offers him an olive branch, he either has to return to Manhattan under interim coach Stores — an assistant under Masiello — or one of the most promising mid-major players in America won’t play basketball this season. As of Wednesday afternoon, Masiello still hasn’t removed the mention of him being Manhattan’s head basketball coach out of his Twitter bio. Last week, he was promoting Perez’s selection as the conference preseason player of the year. Since last Thursday, his tweets have been vague affirmations such as “The more you love your decisions, the less you need others to love them.”

Firing a coach less than two weeks before the start of a season without cause is at best horrible timing. At worst, it’s throwing the school’s most, and only, profitable team under the bus across Arthur Avenue. What player would have faith in an athletic department that decides to change the direction of the program right before you start meaningful games? All the free swag and nice on-campus workout equipment don’t mean shit when the people who provide it prove their loyalties aren’t with you. The question isn’t if the Jaspers survive this, the institution will outlast this horrible move. The more logical thought is how many games Manhattan will have to forfeit this season for not having enough eligible players. Will we see open tryouts at MC in the next few weeks? Manhattan reaps what it sows.

Apparently, taking a good hard look at the fairness of your playoff format is contagious these days.

Last night, The Athletic’s Sam Stejskal and Pablo Maurer reported that MLS is looking at a massive change to its playoff system, coinciding with a switch to Apple TV next season in order to get more people on board with, y’know, paying to watch MLS games. The long and short of it is that the playoff field would expand, under one scenario, to 16 teams (eight in each conference) which would be then split into groups of four by conference (two groups in the East, two in the West). They would then play a World Cup-style group stage before heading onto a final four in each conference that would then play a single elimination bracket before the two conference champs meet in the final.

It is clear that the MLS Playoffs have a problem, though whether this system addresses those issues is up for debate. The single-elimination system the league has now doesn’t really do much to reward the regular season, which then makes a lot of the regular season dull and almost meaningless. Fans of most teams know that once they have their spot locked in or are locked out, there’s not much to play for. Only the handful of teams around the seventh and last playoff spot as the season winds down are playing for much. Having the bye as the top seed hasn’t always meant much (just last season both top seeds lost their first playoff game after a bye), and there isn’t a whole lot of weight put on the Supporters’ Shield (given to the best regular season team).

Would this new system reward the better teams more? Maybe? Certainly guaranteeing every team three games instead of one gives teams a better chance for their quality to shine through. A top seed could lose their first game and still have two more chances against teams worse than them in this group stage to clinch their way to the knockouts. Getting to host two games instead of one isn’t that big of an advantage as laid out here, but it’s something.

What MLS is really eyeing here is that its playoffs would balloon from 15 games to 30, and with a group stage, the league could stagger the schedule to have games basically every night and build some real momentum and buzz. This is clearly a lot better than the current system that gets swallowed up by going against college football or the NFL, even on Thursday nights. That’s not nothing.

Still, this doesn’t really get at the league’s real problem, and that’s the “meh” nature of its regular season. It’s hard to see that fans who weren’t already going to purchase whatever Apple’s MLS package is going to be being lured in by the expanded playoffs and just putting up with the borderline-lifeless regular season (at times). Or they’ll just pay for the playoffs, if that’s available, and maybe that’s what MLS and Apple are after, and think that will be a good ROI for them. This system would expand the playoff field to 16 instead of 14, which yes, might give more teams a chance, but will also increase the number of teams that are safe by June. If the prizes at the top of the league still aren’t all that glitzy and worth a full-out blitz to get, you still have a lot of teams running out the clock for a good portion of the season. The top seed in a playoff group isn’t really Valhalla.

What this new system is pawing at is a “split,” a system used in Scotland and a few other leagues. The Scottish league, which has 12 teams, sees every club play each other three times for 33 games. At that point, the league is split — the bottom six and the top six. The points teams have collected over the first 33 games still count. Teams then play every team in their half of the split one more time, meaning every team plays a total of 38 games. It focuses teams on either the title chase, European places, or relegation, while rewarding season-long excellence.

MLS doesn’t have relegation, which complicates this (and that’s a whole other discussion, but should its seemingly Ponzi-like expansion scheme continue after St. Louis joins next year and they get up to 32, 34, or even 36 teams one day they may have to talk about it). But it does have CONCACAF Champions League places, which after Seattle’s win in the spring has become something more fans are aware of and would like their team to have. MLS could just go to a “split” system in each conference, let the bottom halves in the East and West go home for the winter, and the top half teams compete for conference titles and CCL places. MLS could still have its signature, showpiece final between the Eastern and Western champs, except we would know those were definitely the two best teams contesting it. MLS could just call this “the playoffs” while making performance over the entire regular season the most important, and only, thing.

And MLS has five CCL places. They could easily be awarded to the two conference champs, the two second-place finishers, and then have the two third-placed teams after the split playoff for the final spot. That would give almost every team that makes the cutoff something to play for, even if the conference champ is a runaway.

It’s not a traditional playoffs, which MLS has always thought it’s needed to attract the casual viewer. But what MLS has learned in various other areas is that fans want to see a similar game that they see in the rest of the world, which they still watch more than MLS. Soccer fans in this country know why other leagues keep their regular seasons and cup competitions separate. Or like Mexico does, it weighs its regular season in those playoffs so that higher-seeded teams only need to draw their playoff rounds to advance. It gives weight to the regular season.

You can see MLS’s logic here, as this system would still be on the heels of the World Cup, so casual fans would still be aware of the group method. But it’s not a long-term solution. Just look like the rest of the world, and slap a “playoffs” label on it. That’s just a measure of marketing, which Apple should be good at. 

Tuesday night was Klay Thompson’s 651st regular-season game as a Golden State Warrior. When you add the 145 playoff games, Thompson’s been a part of 796 games in his career, and he’d never been ejected from one — until Tuesday night in Phoenix.

The Suns beat the Warriors 134-105, but the critical point of this game came in the third quarter when Phoenix guard Devin Booker got into a heated verbal altercation with Thompson. They were separated and given technical fouls before Thompson eventually argued with an official and was sent to the locker room.

Thompson’s ejection was alarming as it was not only his first, but also not something you’d expect from one of the more even-keeled players in the NBA. Obviously, this is the behavior we’ve come to expect from Draymond Green, Golden State’s emotional leader. Aside from Green, most of this Warriors squad has been viewed as “choir boys” over the years. Thompson and splash brother Steph Curry can sometimes show a little edge, but not to the extent Klay did in Phoenix.

Looking past the ejection of Thompson, this episode highlights the hottest Pacific Division rivalry, and one of the more heated rivalries in The Association. Fans in the Bay Area and Phoenix take this rivalry even more seriously since the Suns have climbed back to some prominence over the past two seasons.

Two years ago, when the Suns made their improbable run to the NBA Finals, and the Warriors were sidelined after being eliminated in the Play-in Tournament, Phoenix area fans were exuberantly overjoyed at gaining the upper hand over Warriors fans for once. Then Golden State resurfaced last season, the teams had a few battles early in the 2021-22 campaign, and everyone (including myself) thought these teams were a lock to play in the Western Conference finals. Phoenix failed to hold up its end of that bargain, losing to Dallas in seven games, while The Dubs advanced all the way to the NBA Finals, beating Boston in six games.

It doesn’t matter what round. We need this series in the postseason.

The WCF, preferably, but the semifinal round also works. AND, if it’s a first-round showdown, we’ll take that, too. These teams need to play seven games with the season on the line. The Suns match up well with the Warriors, and the Chris Paul factor is still in effect. Even if he’s not quite the same player, his leadership — having the young players ready mentally — makes him a pivotal piece to the Suns’ equation for success.

One of the more overlooked matchups to keep an eye on in this rivalry is James Wiseman against Deandre Ayton. Most notably, whenever Phoenix is on offense and Ayton gets the ball, Wiseman is guarding him. When Kevon Looney was out of this game, and Wiseman checked Ayton, he didn’t fare too well.

Of course, the Curry-Paul matchup is always a factor when these teams get together, and of course Thompson-Booker. But much of this potential playoff series would come down to the younger guys on both rosters. We’re talking about Jordan Poole, Moses Moody, and Jonathan Kuminga for the Warriors. And for the Suns, players like Mikal Bridges and Cameron Johnson, who is now a full-time starter for Phoenix. We know what many of the more seasoned players bring to the table, but a playoff series between these teams will be significantly affected by the play of these younger players who are beginning to receive big-time minutes.

If we can get this same level of chippiness (or greater) for seven games, this could be one of the best non-NBA Finals series ever. Phoenix and the Bay Area would be lit if this comes to fruition, and we’d get some pretty damn good basketball on top of all the extra shenanigans surrounding this rivalry. 

A few days ago, Major League Baseball announced its finalists for the Rawlings Gold Glove Awards.

Here we see a few of the names we’d expect — Nolan Arenado, Matt Chapman, Sean Murphy, Mookie Betts, Matt Olson, Carlos Correa. They’re all great defenders worthy of recognition. Then, there’s Juan Soto.

The Padres outfielder is not a good defender. He’s not subpar. He’s well, well, well below average. In fact, in terms of Outs Above Average (OAA), Soto totaled -15 OAA in 2022, the worst mark of his career. Of the 38 qualified right fielders (some are listed as center fielders, but played considerable time in right as well) in MLB, Soto finished with the worst OAA by five runs. Philadelphia’s Nicholas Castellanos recorded a -10 OAA this year. After him, it’s Ronald Acuña Jr., who posted -6. Childish Bambino was almost 10 outs above average worse than the third-worst right fielder in baseball, yet somehow, he earned Gold Glove finalist recognition. HOW?!

According to the Rawlings website, certain qualifications must be met in order for a player to qualify for a Gold Glove. For infielders and outfielders, the requirements involve playing about 7.5 innings per game through your team’s first 138 games. While there is a way to look that information up and determine which players were eligible in right field after each team’s 138th game, I don’t get paid enough to spend the next six hours of my life doing that for every individual player. Thankfully, there’s another qualification that states: “All infielders and outfielders with at least 698 total innings played qualify at the specific position where he played the most innings (i.e. where his manager utilized him the most).”

In 2022, there were 39 National League outfielders who played enough innings to qualify for a Gold Glove. Of those 39, 12 of them worked primarily as right fielders (Soto, Mookie Betts, Randal Grichuk, Hunter Renfroe, Nick Castellanos, Starling Marte, Daulton Varsho, Seiya Suzuki, Acuña, Luis Gonzalez, Lars Nootbaar, and Avisail Garcia).

Here’s where Soto ranks among every qualified NL right fielder in certain stats, according to FanGraphs:

• Outs Above Average: 12th (-15)
• Defensive Runs Above Average: 12th (-13)
• Ultimate Zone Rating per 150 innings: ninth (-2.7)
• Defensive Runs Saved: eighth (-2)
• Range Runs: eighth (-1.3)
• ARM rating: ninth (-2.4)
• Fielding Percentage: fourth (.990)
• Outfield Assists: T-ninth (3)

So, sure, in terms of pure fielding percentage, Soto was alright, but that’s literally the only category where Soto was above average among qualified NL right fielders.

I feel I should explain the ARM rating by the way. It’s basically a measure of how strong a player’s arm is. I can’t really tell you how Soto got a -2.4 rating, but I can explain why the number is so low. According to BaseballSavant, among all right fielders in MLB, Soto’s average throw (not including casual throws that were just lazily tossed back in after a single) when trying to throw out a runner was 85.8 miles per hour. That ranks him 40th among 44 qualified right fielders. The hardest Soto threw a ball from the outfield this season was 93.2 miles per hour. That ties him with Houston’s Kyle Tucker for 35th-best. The low velocity on Soto’s throws probably explains why he played the most innings of any qualified NL right fielder, yet still had the fewest outfield assists.

Soto isn’t fast. He doesn’t have range. He isn’t the most sure-handed, and he doesn’t have a great arm. He’d be the perfect designated hitter if he wasn’t so young, spry, and passionate about baseball.

I just want to be clear. This isn’t me ripping a new one on Soto. He’s legitimately my favorite player in baseball. That said, he doesn’t deserve to be named a Gold Glove finalist, and I’ll be damned if he outright wins the award. This would be a travesty on par with the Rafael Palmeiro disaster of 1999 or any of Derek Jeter’s Gold Glove Awards. The MLB managers and coaches can still do the right thing. I will forgive everything if Soto does not win the award. But, if by some unholy abomination, Soto walks away with the hardware, we should abolish the Gold Glove altogether. That’s how strongly I feel about this, and deep down, no matter how big a Soto fan you might be, you know it’s true.

If you were wondering how the Portland Trail Blazer star is doing in his return from surgery to repair a nagging ab injury that prematurely ended his campaign a season ago, Dame Time earned player of the week honors for the Western Conference, leading Portland to a 3-0 (now 4-0) record while tallying back-to-back 41-point games in the opening days of the year.

After going 1-for-8 from three on opening night in Sacramento, he’s 15-for-32 from distance over the past three games, including a signature, wrist-tapping, step-back triple over Lonnie Walker to put the Blazers ahead by 2 with a dozen or so ticks remaining in Sunday’s win against the Lakers.

SLIDE #5Player most likely to prompt an existential crisis from a teammate: James Harden

Like that friend who can get you to swallow, inhale, inject, or snort whatever drug they hand you, Daryl Morey has enabled James Harden once again. Among players with 75 or more touches, the Beard’s 5.7 seconds per touch is the fifth longest in the NBA behind Luka Doncic, Trae Young, Ja Morant, and Donovan Mitchell.

Nikola Jokic leads the league in touches, but his 2.64 seconds average is more than a full second less than anyone else in the top 10. Harden is No. 2 in touches, and he’s already had 97.8. That means out of the 192 minutes the 76ers have played, Harden has been dribbling between his legs for 9 minutes and 21 seconds of them. After 20 or so starts, he will have dribbled the ball for a full 48 minutes of game time.

Joel Embiid didn’t talk to the media after the second game of the season, and he’s been mopey even for him. Last year’s MVP runner-up is sandwiched above his former teammate, Ben Simmons, and below Anfernee Simons for total touches on the season, which is as alarming as it is depressing. Philly is 1-3, and we’re on pace for 1,573 “Embiid looks miserable” stories, and I can’t say I blame him.

It’s now generally accepted that playoff baseball is confusing. Given that every series is a week long at most, and it’s distilling down teams that have played for six months, everything is in bounds. Small moments like a pitching change here or a cutoff man missed there that would just be barely a bubble on the sea of a baseball season become big things in the playoffs because of the smaller sample size. Every baseball fan knows this and has accepted it, however they choose to judge the playoffs.

But it seems the L.A. Times can’t quite understand the difference.

First, on the cusp of eating it to the Padres, letters editor Paul Thornton called for the Dodgers to be simply awarded the World Series trophy, in so many words, and wailed about how unfair the playoff system is. The tweet and the headline grabbed most of the attention, but Thornton missed the point in saying that Dodgers fans are now more focused on winning than they were before. Which they’ve done plenty of, and in fact more than anyone else. If you revel in the Dodgers’ winning, this past decade has been Valhalla. You can’t say you need the Dodgers to win, deride the fairness of the playoff system, and then say it’s all left you flat. Either the playoffs mean nothing or everything, but not both.

Then today, Jack Harris, the paper’s Dodgers beat writer, did an incredibly deep dive into why the Dodgers lost in the NLDS that was something akin to the collapse of a local, if not state, government. While Harris certainly did his homework, the conclusion he basically comes to is that they didn’t hit for two and a half games.

WELL DUUUUHHHHH.

And the Dodgers had plenty of stretches during the season where they didn’t hit for two-to-three games. Here are two: In a four-game stretch in June against the Giants and Angels, they scored six runs. In a three-game stretch in August against the Padres and Mets, they scored five. It’s a thing that happens. The idea that the Padres surprised the Dodgers by throwing more breaking pitches than fastballs isn’t really much of a discovery, or that the Dodgers have faced better pitching in playoffs past isn’t either. That’s kind of the idea of the playoffs, and that’s how those teams got there.

G/O Media may get a commission

A gift for literally everybody.
Gifts under $20, $10, and even $5. It’s Wish, the catch-all shop for all of the above.

It does seem to defy logic how long the Dodgers have been so good and yet have only won one World Series to show for it, and it was the bastardized version of 2020. On some level, you can understand the urge to really CSI it to see if there’s some underlying mystery as to how this could be. But there isn’t. Sometimes you just roll snake eyes a lot. The next roll of the dice doesn’t really care, or is even aware, of the last one.

October doesn’t contain any tanking or woebegone teams for the Dodgers to beat up on, and if they played 162 games against only playoff teams being deployed in a playoff manner, they wouldn’t win 111 games either. There is no mythical explanation.

There is no secret sauce. There is no key to the universe. There is no equation. This is just how baseball works, even if it’s broken the brains of one of our institutional newspapers.

We see you, Aaron Rodgers

We’ve spent so much time on Tom Brady taking a flamethrower to his personal life so he could soak up some more public adulation while watching his team cough and wheeze to a sub .500 season that we haven’t given Aaron Rodgers’ “don’t look at me” act the usual attention. But in case you were wondering if Rodgers is under any impression that the Packers’ struggles have anything to do with him:

Rodgers has always wanted to be the GM, so it’s not too surprising that he wants to be the coach now, too. It must be great for young receivers trying to find their way in the league to have their QB telling the world they suck instead of working it through with them in private. That second tweet is the key there though, with Rodgers completely absolving himself of blame, even though he seemingly can’t throw the ball over five yards anymore.

But as long as he has his own personal bullhorn in Pat McAfee to bellow whatever comes into his mind as he huffs his own farts, Rodgers is free to tell everyone that it’s not his fault and his team isn’t worthy of him. Truly dignified stuff.