They fell short of the weekly record as a couple of low-scoring late afternoon and evening games left the NFL with 838 points for the week, 21 short of the record. An average of 52.375 points per game.
Home teams were 7-9 this week.
The Over was 10-6.
Vegas favorites were 7-9 against the spread this week, even though only two favorites lost (14-2 straight up)
Team with more penalties was 8-6, but only 140 penalties were accepted this week, 8 2/3 a game.
2 Cliffhangers, including a triple cliffhanger for the AFC South!
7 games finished within eight points
4 non-competitive games
4 Last Chance Misses.
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And now for the big stories of at least the NFL at large for the regular season:
Unlike two years ago, the NFL largely sustained it's major push to up the scoring, and, as a result, broke all feasible season scoring records for the league at large.
The 12,692 points scored this year were a record (set two years ago) by a full 730 points.
The 49.578 average was an all-time record for the league by nearly 2.4 points, breaking the record set in 1940.
One of the major pushes the league will have once it is safe for fans to come back? Home teams were actually one game below .500 in largely empty (and the rest reduced) stadiums. 127-128-1.
The over, showing Vegas adapted well to the new NFL reality, was only 126-124-6.
Favorites shit the bed against the spread this year (112-137-1), though they won at a nice clip (172-79-1).
The big news aiding the scoring was fewer penalties this year. 2,882 accepted penalties this year, down 560, over 2 a game, from last year. 11.1 penalties per game.
The team with more penalties in a given game was 101-116-1.
46 games ended in a Cliffhanger, where at least one tying or lead-changing score occurred within the last two minutes of the game.
136 games ended within one score, a margin of victory of 8 points or less.
77 games ended non-competitively, in which the losing team never got within that one score at any point in the fourth quarter.
And 82 games ended with at least one final opportunity going by the boards for a team to tie or win the game, even if it was just an onside kick.
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I'll give some of this more of a deep dive later on.
Will you fucking stop, 2021?? We lost Gerry of Gerry and the Pacemakers today.
Adam Gase was fired as coach of the Jets, hours after 2-14. How that fucker made it the entire year...
The official inauguration parade for Joe Biden has been called off. I can think of at least 2-3 reasons why that's a good idea.
Today starts the annual Awesome Games Done Quick fundraiser for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. Annually, one of -- if not -- the biggest charity fundraisers on Twitch, the event will once again be held virtually for the next week at their Twitch channel.
The NFL has broken ALL season scoring records, and it's not close. A scoring bonanza in Week 17 has left that the Sunday nighter for whether Washington or the Giants get in the playoffs needs 56 to break the weekly scoring record on top of it. More details after.
Here are your kayfabe playoffs:
AFC:
Home field advantage and sole first round bye: Kansas City
Buffalo
Pittsburgh
Tennessee, division record after a season split with Indy
Baltimore, with HTH sweeps over both Cleveland (that one done first) and Indianapolis
Cleveland, HTH over Indianapolis
Indianapolis
OUT: Miami, lost to Buffalo -- Indy, Cleveland, and Baltimore all won.
Next week: Indianapolis at Buffalo, Cleveland at Pittsburgh (reversal of this week's game), Baltimore at Tennessee (probably the game of the weekend)
NFC:
Home field advantage and sole first round bye: Green Bay
New Orleans, conference record tiebreak over
Seattle
Washington if they win the game tonight, NY Giants if they do not
Tampa Bay
LA Rams
Chicago, common games record to eliminate
OUT: Arizona
Next week: Chicago at New Orleans, Rams at Seattle, Tampa at the NFC Least winner
Deadspin announced it's Idiots of the Year -- did 50 of them. Here's the Top Ten...
10) Zach Plesac, for violating coronavirus protocols as a member of the Cardinals to go out in Chicago. Got him sent home, and a teammate traded to San Diego -- one who would've been very important to the Padres in the playoffs were he healthy... Mike Clevinger.
9) Rudy Giuliani, for being Trump's biggest legal shill man and probably an instrument to crimes against humanity everywhere. Was put on the list specifically for the apparent underage sex situation in the latest Borat movie.
8) Rob Manfred, for apparently trying to destroy Major League Baseball in several respects -- and the jury is out as to whether he's actually succeeded. About three months to the regular season, and there's no reason to believe, at this point, that 2021 Major League Baseball season may occur at all!
7) Roger Goodell, for apparently trying to do the same to the National Football League, and, if the 20-30% drop in ratings because of the White Right isn't an indication, he may finally have succeeded in pushing the NFL off it's perch as the indisputable social center of the National Religion it has been since the 9/11 attacks.
6) Dabo Swinney, for shilling for fans and families at all college football stadiums in a season where the games themselves never should've been held at all!!!
5) Justin Turner, for returning to the field to celebrate with the Dodgers after winning the World Series... after he was pulled from Game 6 for a positive coronavirus test which was also inconclusive the day before. Of course, my anonymous friend Dodgers fan makes two good points: He'd already been around the players all day and half the game to begin with. And if fans weren't allowed to break the bubble created for MLB for the playoffs, Turner probably never tests positive in the first place!!! So, see #8.
4) Curt Schilling, for continuing to be a right-wing fuck in 2020. Specifically for tweets supporting the border wall to trying to blame Democrats for being Nazis, etc... He's just a dumb fuck idiot.
3) Rudy Gobert, for the stunt which might define the pre-coronavirus idiocy running around this country. For which Gobert should've been banned from the sport, even through this season, in my personal opinion.
2) Donald Trump. Let's move on.
1) Yes, someone actually beat Donald Trump on this list.
The #1 Deadspin Idiot of the Year is Kelly Loeffler. She's the Republican incumbent candidate in one of the two Georgia runoff seats. She is also a co-owner of the Atlanta Dream, an act which should've gotten the 2020 WNBA bubble season cancelled with the players going on strike. And then the Commissioner of the WNBA showed no nerve in banning her like Donald Sterling.
Loeffler wins the award for being a complete right-wing fuck, a probable QAnon activist (not unlike one of the new Georgia representatives!), a white supremacist, and such a deep conspiracist that even many on the Right won't touch her -- a fact which has not only put her in this runoff in the first place, but has many Republicans prepared to boycott it, even though two Democratic victories (and the Congress eventually certifying Joe Biden and Kamala Harris next week) would hand the Senate to the Democrats!
DON'T YOU FUCKING START, 2021!!! Paul Westphal passed away today.
And Floyd Little, Hall of Fame linebacker, passed yesterday.
Alvin Kamara has tested positive for the coronavirus, so the Saints won't have any running backs for tomorrow's key game.
And some of the last of "Fuck 2020!" Larry King has been in the hospital since just before Christmas. Coronavirus.
And Mick Foley is quarantining in a hotel due to same -- one of his technical assistants at a virtual signing three weeks ago had it, and one mistake...
The Penn State-Wisconsin basketball game has been postponed from tomorrow -- "concern of the health and safety of the participants". Psst.. COVID.
I think there's a very powerful statement Keith Olbermann made. When this first started and it was clear the response was going to be INTENTIONALLY flawed, Olbermann told the world that the most powerful being on this planet was no longer the human race. It was the coronavirus.
Don't believe me?
We don't even have to talk about the year basically being split between "before March 11" and "after March 11"...
This is tonight -- Times Square... Usually, over 2,000,000 people flood the area for stage performances and the world-famous ball drop.
New Year's Eve is always the most expensive night of the year to get a room in the place. That's because, on a normal New Year's Eve, 300,000 jam the Strip end to end.
The roads are still closed to cars.
Only a smattering of pedestrian traffic. NO on-street crowds allowed.
The most powerful being on this planet is a virus.
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But, yes, the world can basically be separated, sports and otherwise, to the time before people became aware of the coronavirus and the time after.
Don't believe me? Here's ESPN, just before what was to be the tipoff of the game which upsot the whole apple cart in Oklahoma City, when health officials notified the officials, the teams, and the league that the coronavirus was here in the NBA -- and, within an hour or so (and seven minutes after the news broke of Rudy Gobert's positive), the NBA was off until about July...
The look on Mark Cuban's face that night during his game said it all. We were fucked.
No sports at all in this country til about May. Everything, as I've been telling you for over nine months, still up in the air on almost a daily basis.
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And then there's the other big story of the year.
Everybody we fucking lost.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of any kind, just a subset (of names I recognize, and I cannot do the overwhelming nature of all this justice) of the Wikipedia articles on who we lost in 2020...
The list is staggering, and it includes:
January 1: Former NBA Commissioner David Stern
January 1: The only man to throw a perfect game in the World Series: Don Larsen
January 2: Former NFL coach Sam Wyche
January 9: Golf course architect Pete Dye
January 15: "Soul Man" Rocky Johnson
January 16: British editor and academian Christopher Tolkien, son of J.R.R.
January 23: Jim Lehrer
January 26: Kobe and Gianna Bryant, along with several others
January 30: John Andretti
February 5: Kirk Douglas
February 20: Tennis player Jeanne Evert, sister of Chris
March 8: Max von Sydow
March 17: Roger Mayweather
March 17: Lyle Waggoner
March 21: Richard S Kline, of "Kline and Friends" game show productions
March 29: Joe Diffie
April 1: Adam Schlesinger
April 2: Patricia Bosworth
April 4: Tom Dempsey
April 6: Al Kaline
April 12: Danny Goldman
April 12: Joe Pedicino
April 15: Brian Dennedy
May 5: Sweet Pea Atkinson of Was (Not Was)
May 6: Brian Howe of Bad Company
May 8: Roy Horn of Seigfried and Roy
May 9: Little Richard
May 12: Carolyn Reidy, CEO of Simon and Schuster
May 22: Jerry Sloan
June 2: Wes Unseld
June 10: Mr. Wrestling II
June 20: Jim Kiick
June 29: Carl Reiner
July 1: Hugh Downs
July 5: Nick Cordero
August 28: Chadwick Boseman
August 31: Tom Seaver
September 6: Lou Brock
September 18: Ruth Bader Ginsburg
September 21: Jackie Stallone
September 23: Gale Sayers
September 29: Mac Davis
September 29: Helen Reddy
October 6: Eddie Van Halen
October 7: Tom Kennedy
October 7: Bob Gibson
October 8: Whitey Ford
October 11: Joe Morgan
October 28: Tracy Smothers
October 31: Sean Connery
November 7: Norm Crosby
November 8: Alex Trebek
November 9: Tommy Heinsohn
December 7: Chuck Yeager
December 12: Charley Pride
December 21: Kevin Greene
December 25: KC Jones
December 26: Brodie Lee/Jon Huber
December 26: Phil Niekro
December 30: Dawn Wells
And, as New York goes over just as I finish this, why did I put a few of them in bold?
The last one on this list (as of NYC going over, from Worldmeters):
The now 354,215 Americans and 1,825,780 worldwide lost to this damn virus this year.
Time to kick 2020 out of here. Good bye and FUCK YOU to it!!!
The Browns have two more positives to worry about for this week's game...
But the Dolphins have probably lost their quarterback, Ryan Fitzpatrick, to the virus at least for the week.
The FA has banned Edinson Cavani of Manchester United three games for a racial slur on his Instagram.
Last night's AEW Dynamite honored the life and career of Jon Huber, AKA Brodie Lee, FKA Luke Harper. His stable was involved in every match (and their wrestlers got the falls in every match), and even his son was able to do a comeuppance angle on the biggest heel in the company.
Michael Richardson of the 1985 Bears -- murder charge in Arizona. (Yahoo Sports)
Huge brawl to end one of the bowl games this New Year's Eve. Doesn't that ALWAYS seem to happen?
