Random Shots From Week 9

Joe Bryant's Random Shots From Week 9 Joe Bryant Published 11/08/2023

Hi Folks,

We do a ton of insightful, thoughtful, and serious features here at Footballguys with smart people thinking deeply for you.

This is not one of those features.

This is Random Shots, and it's a few pages of me downloading my brain that gets stuffed with way too many random items from too many hours watching, reading about, and listening to football every weekend and throughout the week. It's the only way I manage. Here's hoping it has some value for you.

We'll see. Now, let's get to it.

J

Sometimes, this thing just writes itself...

Has anyone ever seen Texans punter Cameron Johnston and Bill Burr in the same room?

Refs had a flashback and thought it was Tom Brady in the Patriots uniform.

"Country Roads" is universal.

My good friend and OG Footballguys Staffer and OSU Superfan Doug Drinen after the Oklahoma State game...

Ok, that's not really Doug. But that's how he felt.

Tyreek Hill Monday morning...

Cardinal Rule at Random Shots: Never pass on a Happy Gilmore meme.

Music plus Racing. I'm with Machine Gun Kelly. I don't think much about his career, either.

I bet that's the last time we see Kansas City in that 9:30 AM spot.

Love to see the Kirko Chains support.

The Belly Poke was perfect.

I love it that Random Shots Head Coach Mike McDaniel had no idea kids were dressing up like him for Halloween.

This week's edition of "Victor Wembanyama is a problem." 7'4" 19-year-olds should not be this smooth on the 3-pointer.

At least some things never change...

This BBQ Team should never lose a competition.

This was pretty wild.

This sheds some light on Nikola Jokic.

Yikes.

I'm going to ask our Maryland guy, Scott Van Pelt, to help these kids.

Walk-Off Scores are the best scores.

Ok then.

Y'all know I'm like an 8-year-old sometimes, but I love stuff like this.

Every parent with young kids Sunday.

I've said it for years, and I'll keep saying it until someone listens.

Hire a Madden video game expert to help these coaches manage the clock.

Deion Sanders gifting points here.

I don't have much opinion on players crying after games.

That's their business.

But makes this from Caleb Williams last year interesting. Even if he did delete and try to backpedal saying he didn't mean what he wrote.

Never doubt the Announcer Jinx.

Can you imagine how much fun Jamaal Williams would have been with Detroit this year?

Jonnu Smith was not fazed.

Thanks to Jake Bryant for that one.

As a guy with Travis Kelce on my team, I'm all in favor of getting Taylor Swift back to the games.

You can tell Matt Ryan's glad to be done with this part of the game.

Purdue Mascot against Michigan with the video camera and Ohio State robe.

Joshua Dobbs thrust into the game and delivering when he hadn't even unpacked his suitcase is one of the more amazing things I've seen.

From Kevin Seifert:

"Incredible stories from the Vikings' locker room today. Josh Dobbs didn't take a single rep with the offense in practice. No snaps from Garrett Bradbury. Had never thrown passes to anyone, and didn't know most of their full names. "That's for next week," he said.

"When it was time for Josh Dobbs to come into the game, the Vikings' offense huddled on the sideline and went through the team's 5 primary cadences, said RT Brian O'Neill. That was the first time he had gone through it with the rest of the offense.

"Dobbs said he was not afraid to tell people what he didn't know today. Per receiver Jordan Addison, that meant coming into the huddle and saying things like, "Ok, what do I have on this side?" Said Addison: "And we were telling him. Everyone was letting him know."

Here's Dobbs taking snaps on the sideline for the first time.

Music note this week.

House Of The Rising Sun is one of my favorite songs. It's haunting and beautiful and sad and boisterous. It's also sort of mysterious. It's sometimes called the "Rising Sun Blues". It talks about a person's life (sometimes a boy, sometimes a girl, depending on the version of the song) gone wrong in New Orleans. And some versions urge others to avoid the same fate. It has roots in Appalachian Folk songs and English Pub songs, and some say it goes all the way back to the 16th century. Tons more info here if you're into that kind of music history.

The Animals cover from 1964 is the one you probably know.

And here's a killer recent live version, appropriately at Jazz Fest in New Orleans.

It's almost 8 minutes long, but it's incredible. Marcus Mumford of Mumford and Sons talks about how House Of The Rising Sun was one of the first records he remembers playing as a kid. And he brings on New Orleans legend Trombone Shorty and Celise, and they take it to another level.

Turn it up loud and sit back and enjoy.

Doug Farrar with the perfect caption.

How big is the Michigan sign-stealing thing? It's becoming part of political ads.

I don't know how Antonio Pierce will fare as a head coach. But I love this kind of thing. This is how you lead people.

Of course, media being media, this gets framed as how terrible Josh McDaniels was. When, in reality, McDaniels followed the standard. Most NFL teams don't have practice squad players in uniform on game day. They typically don't travel with the team to away games. So this isn't something McDaniels did wrong. It's something Pierce did differently. And I think better.

Omaha.

Difficult to unsee this one.

I'm no political strategy advisor, but you gotta pick a different outfit to deliver the speech about easing the cost of living for families, right?

Bingo.

Boulder to Ann Arbor.

Perfection.

Vikings coach Kevin O'Connell talking to the team before Joshua Dobbs got to the locker room.

Dobbs is getting all the attention, and rightly so, but O'Connell deserves credit, too. He had to get the plays into Dobbs using the normal phrasing the players knew but then also translate to Dobbs what he was supposed to do. All before the headset communication cut off 15 seconds before the play clock expires. Amazing.

Dobbs said it was like studying for your AP Spanish test and realizing the day before the test would be in French.

In a time when folks are (often rightfully) upset with bad officiating, never forget the ultimate Ball Don't Lie moment when the officials blatantly gave Michigan an unearned first down, and Jadeveon Clowney took matters into his own hands.

Wrapping with this one.

Can we talk about "bias"?

Wikipedia (which everyone knows is pretty much the final word on everything... ;) defines bias as:

"Bias is a disproportionate weight in favor of or against an idea or thing, usually in a way that is closed-minded, prejudicial, or unfair. Biases can be innate or learned. People may develop biases for or against an individual, a group, or a belief."

That sounds pretty negative. And biases are often negative. But I often see them in a more neutral light. For instance, I'm biased in favor of all BBQ being cooked with real wood. Just like God intended. I'm biased in favor of American-made goods. And I'm ridiculously biased in favor of just about any underdog. Including my friend Jeremy Levine's company Underdog. But that's a different thing. I'm more of the mind that biases are just sort of how most of us see the world. They're like the steering in your car being out of alignment and always pulling a bit to one side.

And I think biases are mostly okay with one important caveat - That we understand we have them.

Understanding one's biases and being self-aware to acknowledge you have biases is a significant part of growing up.

But it's tricky, right?

The latest example for me was last week at the NFL trade deadline; a Twitter account posted something about the Giants having a trade agreed to, but it fell through because they weren't competent enough to report it to the league in time. It seemed fishy to me, and I wondered if it were true.

But lots of my normally smart Cowboys and Eagles fans went full-on LMAO with glee, mocking how stupid the Giants were.

Turns out, it was one of those parody accounts that posts things not funny enough to be clearly parody. (Those are the worst kinds of parody, but that's for a different rant.) The point, though, was objective observers, like me in this case, instantly saw the red flags. But for people with a bias toward believing anything negative about a hated rival, they swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. They desperately wanted it to be true. They fell into the trap of their biases.

Sadly, this happens in all sorts of areas. Not just sports. I'm convinced a good part of our toxic and rancorous political climate is due to so many folks wanting to believe their biases are true. They want to assume the worst of the "other."

So be careful. Be a critical thinker and ask yourself on just about everything - How unbiased am I on this topic? In other words, be self-aware. And factor your biases into decisions on how you operate.

Rock on.

Thank you for being part of this goofy journey with us.

And thanks to Footballguys Keith Overton, Jake Bryant, and Clayton Gray for the help. If you've got a Random Shot of your own, email me at bryant@footballguys.com.

Thanks for playing along, and I hope you make the most of whatever you're doing in your life. Love your neighbor and stick together.

Peace and Grace to you.

J

Photos provided by Imagn Images
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