Full disclosure: The new kids in the Grading The Week offices are a superstitious, cowardly lot.
We also tend to not take former Broncos coach Nathaniel Hackett (stop laughing!) very seriously, and especially not too seriously when Big Nate (I mean it!) steps in front of the Big Apple cameras and starts carping (stop!) about “codes” and “glass houses” (I will turn this column around, I mean it!) while simultaneously wearing a goatee that makes him look less like his hero Han Solo … and more like an amateur magician.
That said, we’re starting to wonder if Hackett was onto something. And also into something.
And if some kind of weird, mystical NFL forces — perhaps the kind Nate uses in his new magic act — would explain, at least in part, the bizarrely awful karma that hit Dove Valley this past week.
Sean Payton’s football karma — D
For the record, GTW does not disagree with pretty much anything Payton told USA Today’s Jarrett Bell. Well, except for maybe the “playoff team” part. But we’ll happily admit to being wrong on that front if the piper comes calling in January.
Many hands were, in fact, quite dirty. Many, many, many, many, many, many.
That being said, we’re also starting to wonder if Magic Nate or some malignant football god from Roger Goodell’s fifth circle of gridiron Hades took it the wrong way and slapped a jinx on Payton and the Broncos, right then and there.
How else do you explain nice guy Tim Patrick being tackled by a turf monster that reached up and tore his left Achilles almost a year to the day after No. 81 had ripped up his right ACL?
How do you rationalize linebacker Jonas Griffith tearing his ACL just 24 hours later because of reportedly stepping on somebody’s foot? Or Riley Moss’ “core” issue? Or Baron Browning’s sore knee? Or KJ Hamler’s heart?
Witchcraft, that’s how. Curses. Hexes. Either Hackett and his goofy goatee are messing with the forces of darkness as payback on Payton or he’s got his BFF Aaron Rodgers, who’s probably rolled with a shaman or two, doing it on the down low for him. I mean, come on. Payton did apologize, didn’t he, evil spirits? Didn’t he?
Bill Schmidt doing … something — C
Half the battle with conquering a problem is admitting that you’ve got one in the first place.
So good on Schmidt, the Rockies’ general manager, for admitting that he had a roster of nobodies and needed to flip it into a roster of young bodies.
Now MLB talent evaluators don’t universally love the Rox’s haul for Mike Moustakas, Pierce Johnson, CJ Cron, Randal Grichuk and Brad Hand. But seven new arms are seven new arms. And for the first time in a long time, when the trade deadline came knocking on the door, the Rockies picked a lane. Hey, if they’d done the same at any point in the previous two Julys, 2023’s fire sale might not have been so dang necessary.
Pac-12 (1915-2023, RIP) — F
GTW wants to know: Does it make it harder, Larry Scott, to count all that money with so much blood on your hands?
