by John Walters

Three Cheers For The Arsenal

Two of the more incredible and under-covered sports stories of the past few months: 1) the utter dominance of the Boston Bruins (in yesterday’s MH) and 2) the fabulous first half of the Premier League season turned in by Arsenal. Nick Hornby’s favorite squad (it is this London-based club, after all, that was the inspiration for Fever Pitch) are 13-1-1 through 15 matches.

The top four clubs in Premier League qualify for the following season’s Champions League, and Arsenal has not even finished in the top four since the 2015-16 season. The last time they won the Premier League was in 2003-04, when they did so without losing a single match… that squad was rightly nicknamed “The Invincibles.”

The Gunners are doing it, as most successful sides do, via teamwork. They don’t have a single player in the top 10 in scoring but have two in the top three in assists. Also, they’ve allowed just 12 goals in 15 matches. Only Newcastle United (11 goals against) has allowed fewer and the Magpies may be an even better story: they’re currently in 2nd place. Newcastle F.C. has been relegated twice in the past 15 seasons and last finished as high as 2nd in 1997.

Arsenal hosts Newcastle, their first meeting of the season, a week from today.

From the Gunners’ Wikipedia page: “Arsenal was the first club from the South of England to join the Football League in 1893, and they reached the First Division in 1904. Relegated only once, in 1913, they continue the longest streak in the top division,^[6] and have won the second-most top-flight matches in English football history.“

Diggs’ Town

Great story here with Buffalo Bills’ wideout Stefon Diggs.

This is awesome @stefondiggs 🙏pic.twitter.com/1XzQ2DGjpS

— Joe Pompliano (@JoePompliano) December 26, 2022

After that post, Diggs tweeted the following:

Not many know what it’s like to lose they daddy for real. I remember it felt like i lost everything. I had to make myself a man. But it takes a village so be sure to always pay it forward !!! Love that is 💪🏾💪🏾 Merry Christmas lil aydin ❤️ pic.twitter.com/9qc2UmENWK

— DIGGS (@stefondiggs) December 20, 2022

Should Will Tom Brady Retire?

J.J. Watt announced his retirement today. Watt, a defensive end every bit as revered as a person as a player, is a sure-fire Hall of Famer and can have a long and successful career in front of the camera in the years ahead. J.J. Watt who, like Tom Brady, played part of his college career in Michigan and also in the Big Ten (Central Michigan, then Wisconsin), is 33.

Tom Brady is 45 and I don’t need to introduce you to him. But the question is, do you believe he will retire? On the one hand, it’s no longer as if he feels the pressure from his wife to step aside. Let’s look at the stats for ’22, which are every bit as contradictory as the Bucs being in first place this late in the season with a losing record.

Brady is 4th in the NFL in passing yardage with 4,178. Only Pat Mahomes, Joe Burrow and Justin Herbert, all in their 20s and all Pro Bowl-level QBs, are having more prolific seasons through the air. Brady is No. 1 in completions, but that’s actually a damning stat because if you look below the surface it means that he has a low yards-per-completion figure. In fact, his 6.2 yards per completion rate ranks 30th in the league: only Kenny Pickett and Kyler Murray, both of whose teams are having miserable seasons, are worse.

Brady is 23rd in QBR and his 21/9 TD/INT ratio is nothing special. The Bucs are 15th in yards per game and 15th in points per game. A middling offense that has turned it on in the fourth quarter just enough this season—against bad teams, it should be noted—to remain in the playoff chase. Tampa Bay’s best win all year was in Week 1, when they shut down the Cowboys, 19-3.

Still, there’s a very short list of QBs currently playing whom you’d rather have taking snaps if you’re trailing by a touchdown or less in the fourth quarter. TB12 is certainly still among the top-third in that category.

Our prediction: Tom Brady will sign up for another year. Why not? He feels good and he still plays above the league median. And if he retires after this season? His farewell game could very well be a playoff game in the Bay Area, not far at all from the home in which he was raised.

The $5 Quiz

During my instructor days at a college in the American southwest, I’d begin each class with a “Five Dollar Quiz.” The concept is simple: I’d give the students a handout with questions, some pertaining to sports, some not. The first person to hand in the quiz with all the questions answered correctly won $5. There would be a time limit. More often than not, no one would win the $5.

Why did I do it? A few reasons: 1) Routine. Students like a certain amount of routine, 2) To calm everyone down and garner their attention at the start of class, 3) Because smart students like intellectual competition just as much as jocks like athletic competition, 4) Because we all might learn something, 5) Because I always stressed that being a journalist was one of the few occupations where there was literally nothing you could learn that could not potentially be of some use to you, so soak up all the knowledge you can.

(One student, mid-semester, decided to change his major out of journalism and thus dropped my course. He wrote me a nice note saying that his family was going to miss doing the $5 Quiz around the dinner table.)

Most of my $5 Quizzes now exist behind that school’s log in (I have been blocked) but I did save a few to my personal documents file. So I thought I’d make it a game for you. First person to answer the questions correctly (in the comments) will win $1 and we’ll keep a running tab of who’s in the lead. You game? Here goes:

1-5: Name five countries whose names are four-letter words.

6-7: Name two former New York Yankees whose names are associated with medicine.

8. What is an eagle in golf?

9. Which of these college football conferences is numerically accurate: Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12? 

10. What country claims Winston Churchill as its own?

11-14 (Connect)

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