Here at the sports desk located somewhere below decks of the Good Pirate Ship RedState, we can’t help but notice that while baseball continues to self-destruct, football manages to steal all the headlines despite being firmly in the off-season. With that in mind, we take a look at the wild wild week thus far in sports.
Starting with football as mentioned above, things became interesting on Tuesday, March 8th, when the longest-running soap opera not starring Susan Lucci finally came to a close. Aaron Rodgers signed a four-year reworking of his Green Bay Packers contract, which previously was set to expire after the 2022-2023 season.
With this in place, and presumably Rodgers’ desire to have some say in personnel matters assuaged, the Packers can now move on to other concerns. Not the least of these is determining whether to let Rodgers’ heir apparent Jordan Love’s primary team activity for the next four years be holding a clipboard on the sidelines, or move him elsewhere and pick up a new heir apparent down the line. If I were Love, I wouldn’t buy a house in Green Bay right now. If I were Love’s agent, I’d be swiftly assembling a highlight film and sending it to the two-thirds of NFL general managers looking to upgrade their quarterbacking situation.
Later that same day, everyone took a momentary break from being an online international security and military expert to muse aloud about what exactly is in the air in Seattle that caused the Seahawks to trade Russell Wilson to the Denver Broncos for … um, a bunch of draft picks, which given the Seahawks’ draft ineptitude in recent years is hardly comforting, and a few scrubs already in the league.
The trade immediately makes Denver way better, although whether that level of better is sufficient when you’re in a division that already has Patrick Mahomes and Justin Herbert and Derek Carr calling it home is debatable in the extreme. It means Seattle is waving the white flag for a while, as they are demonstrably lesser than the Rams, the 49ers, and the Cardinals — all of whom are quite set at quarterback, thank you. The Seahawks, not so much. This trade makes so little sense, Joe Biden has been heard muttering, “And they say I need a senility cognitive test? Better check Pete Carroll first.”
Wednesday March 9th continued the action, as the Indianapolis Colts traded Carson Wentz to the Washington Redskins Commanders. The trade leaves both teams without a starting quarterback. While Washington’s motivations remain, shall we say, mysterious, Indianapolis cutting ties with Wentz after one season indicates his reputation for being something less than a quality locker room leader is well earned.
One suspects that Colts general manager Chris Ballard, who is if anything invariably, has a plan in place, has Wentz’s replacement well in mind, albeit not presently firmly in hand. It’d be a surprise if it were someone coming out of college this year, as the QB crop in the upcoming draft is thin. Jimmy Garoppolo, perhaps?
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While he has durability issues and just underwent shoulder surgery, he is arguably as accomplished on the field as Wentz, and is a far better team leader. The San Francisco 49ers will trade Garoppolo this off-season and hand the keys to Trey Lance, so the deal makes sense for both teams. We shall see.
Moving on to baseball, yet another batch of regular-season games have been canceled, after yet another round of negotiations between owners and players went nowhere on Wednesday. The sticking point this time around is reportedly the owners’ proposed international draft.
The players who hail from outside the United States, constituting slightly more than a quarter of major league rosters, are understandably less than enthused over the prospect of being told which team to go play for, as opposed to the current system where a player can sign with whichever team he chooses — the only repercussion being said team losing a pick in the existing draft. And so, major league baseball’s self-destruction continues. Wonder if I can catch a Lansing Lugnuts game on streaming video somewhere.
Finally, in news about The Greatest Sport on Earth™️, namely Australian rules football, after more than enough demonstrations of fan support and threats by teams elsewhere in Australia to move there as a response to same, AFL officials are finally getting serious about putting a team in Tasmania. If they’re not named the Devils and don’t have a licensing agreement in place from day one with Warner Bros, don’t even bother. If they do, the merchandise sales alone will pay for the team and the entire league.
Speak of the (Tasmanian) Devil:
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