The sky is falling in Carolina as this team continues to implode after losing to the L.A. Rams on Sunday. With Baker Mayfield out and Sam Darnold on injured reserve, QB duties fell to P.J. Walker and Jacob Eason. Both players saw time and passed for a combined 119 yards. That wasn’t even the worst part of the loss, as wide receiver Robbie Anderson got himself ejected by interim head coach Steve Wilks after getting into a shouting match with Carolina’s wide receiver’s coach.

On Monday, the Panthers wasted little time parting ways with Anderson trading him to the Arizona Cardinals for multiple late-round draft picks, per ESPN’s Adam Schefter. Anderson had been unhappy with the team, so this wasn’t unexpected, but the sideline incident with the coach probably sped up the process.

Carolina is the first team in the league to record five losses and its top two QBs are out of action. The Panthers front office appears to be throwing in the towel and will likely take a QB in next year’s draft. Nothing seems to be going right for the Panthers, who are even open to trading star running back Christian McCaffrey at this point.

In back-to-back weeks Carolina has fired its coach and traded away one of its best young talents on offense. Another rebuild looks to be on the way.

Cooper Rush’s fairy tale story ground to a halt Sunday Night, minus the Hollywood ending. In this rivalry game, the Philadelphia Eagles took care of the Dallas Cowboys, 26-17, and exposed Rush as the undrafted backup quarterback he’s always been.

Looks like Rush’s wife, Lauryn, chose the wrong game to attend.

Midnight struck, and Cooper’s ride turned back into a pumpkin right before our eyes, after everyone looked to push him ahead of Dak Prescott. For as good as Rush had been in his previous four games this season, he was even worse against the Eagles at Lincoln Financial Field Sunday night.

Before facing the Eagles, Rush had not thrown an interception this year, and had just one in five career starts. Philly picked Rush off three times in this game and forced the Central Michigan product into arrant throws and bad reads all night. The undrafted free agent recorded more incomplete passes than he completed hitting just 47 percent for the game. It wasn’t Rush’s night, and his lapse couldn’t have come at a better time for Cowboys fans with Prescott on the mend. The QB controversy Jerry Jones once spoke of is now completely thrown out the window.

Even former Cowboys wide receiver Dez Bryant can admit Prescott is still the rightful owner of the QB1 spot in Big D. Prescott and Bryant aren’t exactly what you’d call best friends by any means, as they never seemed to quite get on the same page early in Dak’s career. The former No. 88 even had a well-publicized Twitter feud with Dak’s brother Tad that’s likely still lingering in the background.

The key takeaway here is precisely what Dez points out in his Tweet. The Cowboys starting QB job was, is, and will be Prescott’s well into the future. We can’t discount the stability that Rush brought in Prescott’s absence, but there was never a real chance for Cooper to remain “the guy” once Dak was healthy enough to return.

Right now, it looks like Prescott’s return could happen next week (Week 7) in Dallas against the Detroit Lions. That’s a much better game to come back to than against the Eagles because No. 4 will be rusty. He’s coming back from a busted thumb on his throwing hand. Just because team doctors say he’s healthy enough to play (if they clear him) doesn’t mean he’s 100 percent healthy.

“That’s my plan,” Prescott said after the Cowboys’ 26-17 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday night. “Obviously, got to see the doc, but, yeah, that’s kind of my plan.”

Miami Dolphins doctors told Tua Tagovailoa he could stay in a game after suffering what looked like a head injury, then cleared him to play again less than a week later. Of course, the injuries of Prescott and Tagovailoa are much different, but the fact remains that team doctors aren’t always operating with the player’s best interests in mind.

Dallas’ schedule sets up nicely over the next few games and should give Dak enough time to work his way back into a good groove. After the Lions in Week 7, the Cowboys welcome the Bears to Big D, then go on the road to play the Packers and Vikings. If the start of the season for Green Bay is any indication, that should be a win for Dallas, but then again, we know how so-called “guaranteed” wins often turn out for this franchise.

However you choose to view it, Prescott is the man in Dallas and will be for years to come. Like many, I’ve never been the biggest believer in Prescott when it comes to leading the Cowboys back to the Super Bowl, but he’s undoubtedly the best option at QB on Jones’ roster.

Last season, as Real Madrid went on their bloodless procession to both La Liga and Champions League title, those of us who aren’t decked out in white could console ourselves in the fact that sometimes, there are things you just can’t help. Their league triumph was due to the fact that Barcelona had become the biggest basketcase in the soccer world, and there are no other contenders in Spain. Their march to yet another Champions League trophy was due to the dark arts and spells only they can cast, because they are Real Madrid.

Madrid exist to win. While Barcelona in the past or Man City now run over anything with an identifiable style, changing how the game is played the world over and how we view it, Madrid are the Lannisters. They show you how the world as it really is. None of the style or character or tenets really matter if you still win in the end. None of Madrid’s Champions League triumphs in the past decade or La Liga titles can be attached to a particular ethos or method. They win because they’re Madrid, and because they’re Madrid they win. It’s not much more complicated than that. You can have your statements on the sport or your game-altering tactics or your name that echoes in history, they’ll just take the trophies, thanks. They have great players who are buoyed to perform in the biggest moments basically because they put on that jersey. Detailed tactics, nuanced instructions? Fuck that, they’ll just score more goals or give up less or whatever means yet another win. Ends, not means.

Except this time around, Madrid are pretty exciting and dynamic, instead of just the monolith that keeps moving forward due to its own momentum. Which sucks.

Madrid hosted Barcelona yesterday, and though the stats and analytics will tell you that Barca actually had the better of this one, with the better chances, more shots, and far more of the ball (2.16-1.14 in xG to Barca), it never actually felt like Barcelona would win or even come close to doing so. It’s very Madrid to say the other team can rack up the figment numbers, and they’ll just take the only one that matters.

Madrid’s opening goal was pretty much the story of their two seasons, even though Barca remains only three points behind Madrid after yesterday’s loss. Whenever Barca come up against a quality team, their defense can be completely firebombed. And there are few if any teams more electrifying teams in space than Madrid. In the 12th minute, the Barca midfield was too far upfield, the defensive line was about as organized as kindergarten recess, which left Toni Kroos all the time in the world to send Vinicius Jr. through. And once Vinicius Jr. is through on goal, no one’s catching him.

Vinicius surprisingly missed this chance, but in Barca’s scramble to recover, it left Karim Benzema – who is mere minutes away from winning the Ballon D’or at the time of writing – a neighborhood of space to slot home the rebound.

23 minutes later, here’s Barca getting passed into oblivion before Fede Valverde had a farm of territory to launch a groin-grabbingly thunderous shot into the corner.

From there, Barca would huff and puff, but it always felt like Madrid had them at arm’s length, and were basically playing with their food. Barcelona pulled one back late in the game, which meant as soon as Madrid tried again they earned a penalty to ice it.

This is Madrid now. Instead of old heads doing it from memory like last year, when Luka Modrić and Toni Kroos and Casemiro and Benzema went full reunion tour, this is now Vincius Jr.’s, Valverde’s, and Auréllien Tchouaméni’s team. It’s Rodrygo’s team. It’d Éder Militão’s team. All under 25, all looking to make the next generation of Madrid arrive today.

Vinicius Junior we’ve know about for a while now, an absolute terror on the left side of their attack who is playing like he might keep the Ballon D’or in Madrid next year. Which makes Kylian Mbappé’s reported desire to flee to Madrid all the more hilarious, because it’s very debatable whether Madrid would be better off slotting him ahead of Vinicius Jr.

This year’s revelation, though it started last season, is the Uruguayan Valverde on the right side. He has four goals and an assist in just seven starts so far this season in the league, and though he nominally starts on the right side of the front three, his actual position most times feels like it’s “everywhere.” He pops up all over the field, and yesterday frequently was an additional right back to keep Ousmane Dembele quiet. Benzema has missed a chunk of this season through injury, which didn’t matter much as Rodrygo poured in four goals in five starts in his absence and formed an amoeba-on-speed front line with Valverde and Vinicius that took any form at high speed.

Tchouaméni was so good so quickly at the base of midfield that Madrid felt comfortable punting Casemiro to Manchester, even though he’d been the linchpin for five Champions League winning teams. When Kroos or Modrić need a rest, Eduardo Camavinga is around. Militão has become the pivot point for the defense for both Madrid and Brazil.

And the old heads are still around when needed. This is the rare case of a club being able to pair one iteration of a great team to the next with a seamless transition, every position being handed off when the time is right while conserving the declining tanks of the older players.

Madrid clearly will take more than small pleasure in capping off a horrific week for Barcelona, which basically crashed out of the Champions League, the money from which it desperately needed to justify its scoop and toss financial plan from this summer. There is probably a really good team within the Barcelona squad, but it was asking the world for neophyte manager Xavi to be able to unearth it in mere weeks with so much on the line. After he’d already kind of done so at the end of last season with a whole different group of players. Without the cash from the knockout rounds of the Champions League coming, Barca could really be anything come March or April.

No matter what Barca does, no matter what anyone else does, there will be Madrid. Because they’re Madrid. Whether they’re just there or are galvanizing as they are now, they’re there. It’s their thing. 

They’ve lost three consecutive games, all by double digits. A team that was supposed to have an outside shot at the playoffs in a weak NFC South, currently is the frontrunner for the No. 1 overall pick in the 2023 NFL Draft. The Bryce Young sweepstakes may not be the international story of in the NBA’s for Victor Wembanyama, but he appears to be as sure-fire a quarterback prospect as any in recent years.

A hard reset is necessary for the Panthers who haven’t been able to get their team on the right track since starting the 2018 season 6-2, before Cam Newton’s body finally broke down for good. They finished that year 7-9, and have won only five games for the last four consecutive seasons.

With a healthy Christian McCaffrey, the addition of Baker Mayfield, and a solid defense, this was the year for the turnaround. Instead, during Week 6 they hit a new low. Mayfield was out with an ankle injury, and legendary backup P.J. Walker went down with a neck injury so the Panthers had to turn to Jacob Eason, a 2020 fourth-round pick of the Colts. Also, there was a sideline dust up that was all over NFL Red Zone and social media. The most significant moment for the Panthers in 2022 for all of the wrong reasons.

Robbie Anderson got into a few confrontations with wide receivers coach Joe Dailey. They got into a heated screaming match once that got broken up, and that wasn’t the only time that the cameras caught Anderson getting in his face. Eventually, interim coach Steve Wilkes ejected Anderson prior to the start of the fourth quarter.

It hasn’t been 24 hours since Anderson was sent to the locker room and he’s already gone, traded. NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport reported that the Panthers are sending Anderson to the Arizona Cardinals. ESPN’s Adam Schefter is reporting that the Panthers will receive in return a 2024 sixth-round pick and a 2025 seventh rounder. Fox Sports’ Jay Glazer reported before the game that both sides were in agreement that two seasons and change had been enough, and it was time to part ways. Apparently it wasn’t happening soon enough for Anderson’s liking. On Monday, he appears to be relieved to be getting out of North Carolina.

Anderson told the media after the game that the argument began because he was taken out on a third-down situation, and it escalated to him feeling disrespected. The situation ended with him angrily yelling back at the sideline from 50 yards away in a packed football stadium.

Cutting him seemed like the logical next step after this incident. The team just fired its coach, and they look bad enough while playing football. It doesn’t need to be compounded by a situation made for a cable-reality TV show audience. But the Panthers were able to get enough change back from the dollar they gave up for this deal to afford a small pack of gum afterwards.

Getting anything in return for a player that was sent to the showers by an interim coach in his first game in the role is worthy of an ovation in the office for general manager Scott Fitterer. Not only did they get some draft picks, but the team got even worse and thus have bettered their odds of landing that No. 1 overall pick. Now if they could just unload McCaffrey who Glazer reported was available as well.

If the Panthers are going to be awful for a fifth consecutive season, at least they’re doing it right this time.

Having no love for the Dodgers (I was threatened with far too many stabbings in the Dodger Stadium upper deck at an impressionable age to get over it), I certainly am gleaning at least a modicum of joy over their fans’ wailing about seeing a 111-win team eat it at the first hurdle in the postseason. Yeah, the playoffs are unfair, baseball doesn’t make sense and never has, but that’s a good thing when it happens to teams you don’t want to see win. And now that I no longer have any horse in the race, that’s basically every team to me. It’s a sweet spot.

However, if there are baseball cranks out there (is there anyone who watches baseball regularly who isn’t a crank?) who just need to quench their jonesing for something to complain about, there’s an easy target. And it’s relievers. It’s bullpens.

On consecutive Saturdays in the postseason, we’ve seen an extended scoreless game. The Guardians and Rays went 15 innings. The Mariners and Astros then saw that and raised to 18 innings. And in neither game were either team all that close to scoring before a decisive home run. It’s not like any of the four bullpens had to dance through the raindrops and get out of jam after jam and have those big moments of a key strikeout or double play with the bases loaded that we remember. It was just a pile of strikeouts that turned it all into an unrecognizable blob.

On Saturday, after Astros starter Lance McCullers Jr. exited, six relievers from the Astros pen threw seven innings (usual starter Yimi Garcia tossed the last five) with nine strikeouts, one walk, and three hits. Once Mariners starter George Kirby exited after seven shutout innings, the Mariners pen threw 10 innings via eight relievers, striking out 14, walking one, and only giving up two hits before Penn Murfee — and his lack of a first name or correctly spelled last name — gave it all up.

Going back a week, the Rays pen had five relievers come in after Peter Fairbanks left due to injury, and they threw seven shutout innings with 13 strikeouts, one walk, and two hits. The Guardians pen struck out 15 over nine innings. And trust me when I tell you that any reliever out of four of these bullpens could have shown up at your door stark naked and holding a wolverine and you wouldn’t have had any idea who they were.

The Padres were able to oust the Dodgers mostly because their bullpen was lights out in a way it had only been sporadically during the season, and the Dodgers pen was bad. This is the game now, and we understand that, but it doesn’t make for the most galvanizing viewing to watch guys you’ve barely heard of strike out all the hitters you have while barely straining to do so thanks to their velocity and spin. The fact that a playoff game went 18 innings is a funny quirk or anomaly, but the actual viewing of it was pretty punishing. You were treated to a series of guys essentially playing catch.

This isn’t to squash what has always been playoff lore, and that is the unsung hero. MLB playoffs specialize in this, because everyone gets an at-bat and a crucial one might just land on your 7th or 8th hitters. Starters don’t go long anymore, which is fine and something of a natural evolution of the game, so the biggest moments are going to be pitched by relievers. Tyler Matzek, Will Smith, and Luke Jackson are some of the biggest reasons the Braves won last year. It’s the nature of the thing, even though you couldn’t pick any of them out of a police lineup if they were in there with four wookies.

But the fact remains that any jackass trotting out of the pen is more likely to strike out two or three of the three or four hitters they see, and it’s just not great viewing. We also like chaotic comebacks in playoff games, and the Padres got to have theirs in Game 4, but those are rarer and rarer. Even the Phillies, who had a middling pen all season, were able to smother the Braves just because baseball occasionally dictates a bunch of relievers turn into Dennis Eckersley for a week.

Quite simply, too many guys throw too hard and with too much spin for the best hitters in the world to do much. Perhaps a pitch clock will help next year, but that remains to be seen. The only answer to truly counter velocity is to move the mound back, but a bitch-fest filled and underwhelming results of the faulty experiment with it in the Atlantic League last year has probably pushed that back for years, if not completely off the table.

So instead, baseball’s postseason will continue to be determined by the most faceless members of the team. That used to be a bug, now it’s a feature. Maybe that’s your thing, maybe it’s not. But as we get more games that death march into the deep extra innings without any runners getting a sniff of third base as yet another whosit trots in from the outfield to start another inning, my guess is it’ll be more not people’s thing.

Even before another wildly impressive Patrick Mahomes vs. Josh Allen showcase, it was clear that Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers are no longer the featured performers at quarterback in the NFL.

Then after watching those two young stars of the league dazzle in the Tony Romo, Jim Nantz late-afternoon window, while the very, very veteran QBs struggled early in the day, for those loyal cheeseheads and TB12 method subscribers who still think one of these two are the best, it’s time to stop posting your dinners on Facebook, and learn something about TikTok. Times change. You once bought CDs and unplugged your phone to use the internet.

Both Brady and Rodgers are dealing with teams that have lacked personnel at times this season because of injury, and/or a loss of talent during the offseason. However, those are problems that the younger versions of Brady and Rodgers would likely have overcome.

Through six weeks of play, both quarterbacks still have a chance at postseason success — especially because neither one will play against Mahomes or Allen in the playoffs — but a .500 record through the first third of the season leaves Brady and Rodgers lumped in the giant cluster of teams that can also be described as “still having a chance.”

While the quarterbacks need to be better, for this season to have any type of pleasant ending for the Buccaneers or Packers, the teams as a whole need to elevate their level of play. If not, these Week 6 performances will start to look more like regular days than bad days.

Brady screams, the Bucs lose to the sputtering Steelers

For someone who enjoys playing football so much that he felt it necessary to return for his 23rd NFL season, Brady sure doesn’t appear to be enjoying his time on the field. The shots of him yelling at Josh McDaniels or smashing a tablet used to be caught on camera occasionally. These days it seems every week Brady is losing that cool demeanor that he gives off in press conferences and those new Hertz commercials.

This week he was caught on camera berating his offensive line as a group. This unit has struggled with injuries — center Ryan Jensen will not play this year due to injury — but as healthy as they have been all year, they got picked apart by the Pittsburgh Steelers, who Vegas was giving 9.5 points, all day.

The Steelers have struggled to rush the passer ever since T.J. Watt got injured, but not against the Buccaneers. While blitzing only once, they sacked Brady twice and pressured him eight times. The Buccaneers did not score a touchdown until the fourth quarter. When they punctuated that drive with a 2-point conversion, the third-best defense in the league — per weighted DVOA — couldn’t get Mitchell Trubisky off the field as he and the Steelers’ struggling offensive line ended the game with a 4-minute drill.

Rodgers’ 2022 season is turning into a bad trip

Let’s start with some credit first for the New York Jets. They’re 4-2 for the first time since Fitzmagic lasted for an entire season in 2015. When they needed big plays, Corey Davis, Sauce Gardner, Quinnen Williams, and Breece Williams came through.

Were the Jets aided by some Packers’ special teams miscuses, most definitely. A blocked field goal, and blocked punt that gets returned for a touchdown, in the same game can put any team behind the eight ball. But it wasn’t until the punt mishap — late in the third quarter — that the Packers finally put the ball in the end zone.

It took the Packers eight drives to score any points, and for as good as the Jets played, that field goal near the end of the first half tied the score at three-all — the Jets got their first points of the game on the previous possession.

Conversions that used to seem automatic for the Packers seemed just out of reach all day. They also lost Randall Cobb — one of Rodgers’ most-trusted pass catchers — to an ankle injury. Rodgers only averaged six yards per pass attempt. Even the Packers’ strong running attack never got on track as they fell to two games behind the Minnesota Vikings in the standings.

Surely many of you believe that Kansas City Chiefs vs. Buffalo Bills should’ve been the Sunday Night Football matchup. It’s arguably the two best players and best teams in the league, played in front of a crowd that would be worked up into a lather no matter the weather.

Surely many of you believe that Kansas City Chiefs vs. Buffalo Bills should’ve been the Sunday Night Football matchup. It’s arguably the two best players and best teams in the league, played in front of a crowd that would be worked up into a lather no matter the weather.

However, do remember that four of America’s top-10 television markets are located in the seven-hour stretch of I-95 between Boston and Washington. Combine that with the Dallas Cowboys being the reigning, defending world’s most valuable sports franchise, and both hated and beloved up and down that section of interstate, they get the primetime slot for the big matchup.

While Chiefs vs. Bills has none of the history of Cowboys vs. Philadelphia Eagles, they have the quarterback rivalry for Gen Z. Patrick Mahomes vs. Josh Allen.

The Tom Brady-Peyton Manning matchup was always the most-hyped regular-season matchup of the year when Manning was more famous for having the authority to call a timeout on the field instead of frantically making the motion in his basement. The matchup fed into some easily digestible sports narratives. The prodigy and No. 1-overall pick, with the NFL QB father, against the sixth-round pick, underdog story of underdog stories who can’t help but win Super Bowls.

There was plenty of fanfare, but rarely were the games that compelling — besides of course that time during the 2006 season when football’s ultimate winner surrendered an 18-point lead and ended the game with an interception.

Mahomes vs. Allen is so much different. Since Allen took possibly the biggest leap in quality of play in 2020, this is turning into more of a classic boxing rivalry than football matchup. What Triple G vs. Canelo (sans the most recent fight), Ward vs Gatti, and of course Ali vs Fraizer had was a natural energy. Of course there’s heavy promotion to sell it, but even the viewers at home, or the bar, could feel the magnitude. Then the fight starts and it’s one blow followed by another, the crowd hanging on every swing. It’s sports in its highest form.

Even though the only moment that Mahomes and Allen share on the field together is the postgame handshake, their games, especially the last two, play out like a boxing match. The action is a little slow as they feel each other out, and then boom, one rolls to one side of the field then throws the ball to the other and drops it effortlessly into the wide receiver’s arms.

Now it’s time for the counter. This particular one doesn’t require nearly seven seconds of scrambling, just a big strong guy rearing back and throwing a pass 44 yards in the air for a touchdown, while flat-footed.

Once the pace picks up, it’s big shot after big shot. Both quarterbacks can scramble, but that doesn’t mean they’re always going to take off and run. That being said, when Allen does, a defensive player better be on his toes, have his chin strap buckled, and mouthpiece in. Allen can run through him or around him, or in the case last night, over him, it all depends on what he thinks is most effective. Mahomes on the other hand, will make just enough players miss to reach that ball over the first-down line as he runs out of bounds, or slides.

Of course football is a team sport, and it was one of Allen’s teammates that helped him put the game away on Sunday. Of Mahomes’ last three drives, Von Miller ended the first two with a sack, and the final one was a pressure that resulted in an interception.

Score this fight a victory for Allen, just like their regular-season matchup last season, but Mahomes is still 2-0 in the postseason. There is a strong chance that they will see each other again in January, as they look like the two best teams in the NFL, and the Chiefs hope to not be missing two starting cornerbacks in a future meeting.

As big as Brady vs. Manning was, that just felt like football. Mahomes vs. Allen is something bigger. It’s got more horsepower, a higher wattage, and a piercing decibel level. It’s like Hagler-Hearns trying to knock each other’s heads into fourth row, except they’re doing it by throwing a football.

Energy. Pure, natural, sports, energy.