THIS & THAT XXV

 

          Dummheit is one of my new favorite German words.  It is usually translated simply as “stupidity,” and that is probably its most common meaning.  But it also can mean collective stupidity or stupidity that affects an entire society.  In this sense it is not a matter of intelligence.  I have seen it used this way to refer to the German people in the era of the Third Reich from 1933 to 1943, a time when a large number of people succumbed to fear and political pressure and propaganda, and abandoned any ability to think critically or make decisions for themselves.

          It can also be applied to the three years of COVID madness, from March 2020 to the present, when most sensible people were so terrified by their governments that they accepted the most absurd and lethal policies without objection.

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          I have never heard the word “abolishment” until a month or two ago.  Now, for some reason, wherever the word “abolition” would be used, “abolishment” is used instead.  I don’t get this one.  A lot of word changes these days are about wokeness or political correctness, but I don’t see that angle here.

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          When I see people wearing masks these days, I think of those Japanese soldiers they found on isolated Pacific islands in the 1960s, the ones who thought WWII was still on and who were waiting further instructions from the Emperor.

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          You’re not allowed to use the word “retard” anymore, because we are told it is offensive to those people with Down Syndrome.  It was a very useful word, though, and I miss it.  The ban doesn’t really make much sense because I never use “retard” to refer to people with Down Syndrome.  In fact, the people who used “retard” to refer to people with Down Syndrome all died about fifty years ago.  I use it exclusively to refer to people like Kamala (”Assigned Retard at Birth”) Harris.

          According to Stanford University, “retard” is a slur against those who have a cognitive disability.  The correct term, according to “The Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative,” is “neurodivergent,” but if you look up “neurodivergent,” it doesn’t mean the same thing.  Neurodivergent covers a wide range of brain variations, including OCD, autism, Asperger’s, Tourette’s, bi-polar disorder, dyslexia, ADHD, and Down Syndrome.  And that’s fine in the sense that we probably need a collective term for all the different types of brain weirdness out there, but neurodivergent is not what I mean when I say “retard.”

          There is, however, a possible loophole.  The document recognizes that some of the offensive words may actually be preferred by the people they refer to, and that’s OK.  Presumably, this is to exempt the phenomenon whereby black people routinely call each other nigger and it’s not offensive at all.  Stanford recognizes this exception as a general rule regarding offensive speech.

          In other words, if you are yourself a retard, you are allowed to call other people retards as well.  That will be my excuse from now on.

*

 

          Name tag on a young lady cashier at the supermarket: Asma.

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          For a while now, my attitude about the 2024 presidential election has been that while I would prefer Ron DiSantis, I would reluctantly vote for Trump if he were to become the nominee.  As we roll on towards the primaries and the election, however, it is becoming more and more difficult to see anything in Trump I can support.

          If there were some sense in America that the COVID fascism of the past three years was a madness that must now be faced and condemned, and its architects jailed or shamed or at least sent packing from the public sphere, I might feel more sanguine about the prospects for “moving on” from COVID.  If that were to happen, I could perhaps forgive other aspects of Trump and vote for him.

           But there is little attempt, by anyone, to address what happened.  Trump himself not only won’t admit what happened, but in fact has doubled down on what he did during COVID.  He recently said the vaccinations “saved millions of lives,” though any research supporting such a statement is riddled with flawed assumptions and outright propaganda.

          And he is largely responsible for the nightmare we endured, with its mask mandates and forced mRNA vaccinations and shuttered churches and economic destruction and empty schools.  He was, after all, the president.  I guess I should not be surprised that he still has to support Operation Warp Speed and the Emergency Use Authorizations and the lockdowns and the pointless mandates.  Admitting one’s mistakes is not something any politician does well, but I don’t see how America can ever regain its footing as a free country and a representative republic unless ALL OF US face the truth, or are forced to.

          As for the question of how many people there are like me, I have no idea, but the 2024 election may turn on the answer to that question.  How many are there who would never vote for one of the totalitarians the Democrats will put forward, but can’t quite bring themselves to vote for Trump either?

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          It’s a common problem.  Older men pee more often than they used to, and often don’t zip up afterwards.  You don’t leave the house as often as you once did, and you’re probably going to pee again in a half hour or so, so what difference does it make if you walk around with your fly down?  It’s not even a conscious decision.  It just happens.

          The problem arises when you remember you have to stop at the bank, so you do leave the house, and it’s only as you are walking into the lobby at Wells Fargo that you realize the barn door is open.  Then you have to surreptitiously reach down and zip up, or try to.  It’s embarrassing.  It’s undignified. 

          And the solution?  “The Fly-Catcher!”

          There’s a sensor at waist level on the door you typically use to leave the house, and there’s a tiny chip you attach to your zipper.  As you walk out the door, there is a discreet “beep-beep” if you need to return your tray table to its upright and locked position.  If all is well, nothing happens and you proceed on your way with all your dignity intact.

 

Copyright2023MichaelKubacki    

                      

WRONG WAY ZEYNEP---A PROUD TRADITION CONTINUES

           It has been 85 years, and a lot of us have forgotten Wrong Way Corrigan, the pilot who, in 1938, took off from Brooklyn for a flight to Long Beach, California and landed in Dublin 38 hours later.  When he got back from Ireland, he became famous as America’s favorite goofball, and he pretty much retained that title for the rest of his life. It was a silly story, and nobody really got hurt.  Not even Corrigan.

          But being a goofball is not as cute as it used to be.  Today, it seems, there are lots of people who have committed dreadful errors but, for political reasons, will never pay a price.  One of my favorites is a superstar D.C. lawyer named Jamie Gorelick.

          Important note.  There are lots of people in America who have committed horrible crimes but who, for political reasons, will never pay a price for them.  You know their names---Bill and Hillary, Fauci, Obama, the Bidens, etc. I’m not talking about them.  I don’t view Jamie Gorelick as a criminal though you may be able to find “crimes” in the U.S. Code that she has committed.  (We all commit two or three a day without even noticing.)  But I’m not charging Jamie with being a criminal.  She’s just an idiot who managed to remain an EXTREMELY important player in Washington no matter what she did.  For thirty years.

          Gorelick graduated from Harvard Law (of course!) in 1975, and then disappears from public view until 1994 when Bill Clinton appoints her Deputy US Attorney General.  She immediately flies into action by initiating procedures for the investigation of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.  These included drafting the famous memo setting up a “wall” between criminal investigators and counterintelligence authorities.  According to Attorney General John Ashcroft (and many others), Gorelick’s memo is the reason the feds were never able to put the pieces together to stop the 9-11 attacks.  The 9-11 Commission itself, to which Gorelick had somehow managed to get herself appointed, never mentioned the “wall” memo in its report.

          In 1997, after her stint at the DOJ, Gorelick was appointed Vice Chairman of Fannie Mae, where she served until 2003 and collected $26.5 million in salary and bonuses.  In a 2002 interview, Gorelick assured Business Week that Fannie Mae was managed safely and that it was “among a handful of top-quality institutions.”  Shortly thereafter, the Fannie Mae accounting scandal erupted as regulators caught the company hiding $9 billion in unrecorded losses.

          Back in private practice in 2008, Gorelick represented Duke University in the infamous Duke lacrosse case, where the university and a prosecutor were found to have railroaded dozens of innocent athletes in order to support local activists and race-hustlers in a hoax accusing the white lacrosse players of crude and obscene behavior.

          You would think these incidents might be enough to tarnish Gorelick’s reputation, but no.  In Washington, if you are a leftist in good standing, no act of idiocy is sufficient to get you kicked off the gravy train.  Hey, man, she went to Harvard!  Sure, “mistakes were made,” but how can you blame Jamie?

          In March of 2022, Gorelick was appointed by Joe Biden as Chair of the Homeland Security Advisory Council.  What could go wrong?

          But Jamie Gorelick is 72 years old.  There’s probably not much more damage she can do.  It seems unlikely she will ever have the pull she did in the 1990s when she single-handedly prevented us from seeing 9-11 was coming.

          That’s why we need Zeynep Tufekci.

          It’s a Turkish name, and she was born in Istanbul, but she is now a sociology professor at Columbia University whose work, and op-eds, often appear in the New York Times.  Let us note at the outset that she has no training in medicine or epidemiology or viruses.

          Until April 3, 2020, Anthony Fauci, the CDC, the WHO, and Surgeon General Jerome Adams all advised against wearing masks as protection against a respiratory virus like COVID.  On that day, Fauci, the CDC, and Jerome Adams all changed their stories and demanded that we all start wearing the damn things.  There was no new “science” and no new medical study suggesting such a thing.  One of the great mysteries of the masking madness was how it got started in the first place.

          The reason was Tufekci.  She had actually accepted the decades of research indicating no benefit to masking and had said so in an article on February 27, 2020.  Then, in a March 17, 2020 op-ed in the New York Times, she told the world that masks were essential to prevent infection.  Supposedly, this was the only conclusion to be drawn from recent events in the Czech Republic where masking had prevented a COVID outbreak.  This was never true, but the tall tale about the Czech Republic became the rallying cry for the #Masks4All movement.  Less than three weeks later, the public health establishment in the U.S. did its about-face and universal masking became the norm.

          And now she’s at it again.

          On January 30, 2023, The Cochrane Review published its summary of 78 random control trial studies involving mask-wearing and its effect on the transmission of respiratory viruses, concluding that masking was worthless and probably harmful.  (Random control trials are often called the “gold standard” of medical research.)  This was basically the end of any rational basis for masking or mask mandates, though most of the support for masking was never rooted in science anyway.

          Tufekci, however, is not ready to let us take our masks off.  Armed with an ambiguous statement she had secured from Karla Soares-Weiser, Editor of the Cochrane Report, she wrote an op-ed for the NYT (3-10-23), entitled “Here’s Why the Science is Clear That Masks Work.”  And, at least in terms of how all the really, really smart people think, that was the end of the Cochrane Review and its 78 random control trial studies proving that mask-wearing is useless.  Tufekci forgot to mention in her op-ed that she was the person who put us on the path to universal masking in the first place, but I suppose that’s a minor point.

          It is mystifying, to me at least, how people like Jamie Gorelick and Zeynep Tufekci can be so catastrophically wrong and yet continue to be promoted, listened to, and even lauded by otherwise sensible people.  If there was one American official responsible for 9-11, it was Gorelick, and yet she is now at the pinnacle of D.C. power-brokers and influencers---nobody even checks her driver’s license anymore before putting her in charge of some critical government agency.  As for Tufekci, she wasn’t always a full professor at Columbia.  A few years ago, she was an assistant prof at North Carolina in the School of Library Science.  Then she wrote an article in Wired in support of censorship on social media (you know---all that “misinformation”), and now look at her.  She is the reason you had to tie that diaper to your face for two years, and there is no sign she is ever going away.

 

Copyright2023MichaelKubacki

 

(Note: Much of the factual information herein about Zeynep Tufekci comes from a 3-26-23 article entitled “How Zeynep Tufekci and Jeremy Hoard Masked America,” by investigative reporter Michael Senger.  I am grateful for his work.)  

                     

HOBO---A Review

           If you’re like me, you tend to view Canada and Canadians as an embarrassment to the entire continent.  It’s fundamentally a degenerate place, the end product of centuries of incest and frostbite, and I think most Americans feel the most humane thing we could do would be to invade, take all their fresh water and baby seals, and shut the place down.  Anything worthwhile in Canada, like Gretsky or Monte Hall or Celine Dion, winds up in America anyway, so what’s really the point of allowing the country to lurch onward towards its ultimate oblivion?  I mean, do we really need to see who they choose as Prime Minister after Justin Trudeau?

          And then you stumble across an artifact of Canadian culture like “The Littlest Hobo.”  And you think: “Well, OK.  Maybe there’s some hope for these poor bastards after all.”

          Created by, and mostly written by Dorrell McGowan, 114 half-hour episodes of “Hobo” were produced between 1979 and 1985.  The star is a German shepherd (actually five different ones), named London in real life and referred to by various nicknames on the show.  He is the only continuing character.  All the humans are different in every episode.

          London’s character bears some resemblance to Kwai Chang Caine, David Carradine’s shaolin monk in “Kung Fu.”  Like Caine, the Hobo has no home.  He wanders around Canada helping the oppressed and having adventures, and then he wanders off down the road at the end, when he has solved everybody’s problems.  Caine prevailed because he was possessed of ancient spiritual wisdom and martial arts skills.  Hobo’s advantage is that he is considerably smarter than any of the human beings in the show (because of course, they are all Canadians).

          He foils terrorist plots, he transports life-saving medicine through forest fires, he helps a disabled child acquire self-esteem, he brings down drug-smugglers, and he saves dopey three-year-old kids lost in the woods.  (And I’ve only seen the first sixteen shows.)

          I am on a one-episode-per-day regimen, which will take me to the end of June, though I sometimes cheat and watch two, telling myself as I do that sometime in the next three months I may be knocked unconscious or get arrested and be unable to watch my daily dose so I should probably catch up in advance.  My session with the littlest Hobo is often one of the (many) highlights of my day.

Copyright2023MichaelKubacki         

St. Patty Reminiscence

 

          On March 16, 2020, the day before St. Patrick’s Day, Pennsylvania went into lockdown for COVID.   Most businesses, including bars and restaurants, were closed indefinitely by order of Governor Wolf.

 

          I remember it vividly.  The lockdown was to go into effect at 5 PM, so at 2 PM, I raced over to Billy Murphy’s Irish Saloon, at Conrad St. and Indian Queen Lane in Philly.  My plan was simple: get a drink before the world, or something, ended.  Nobody knew what was coming, but I didn’t like the look of it.

 

          The door was locked.

 

          I stood at the door and heard muffled voices inside.  I later learned they had closed early and were having a staff party, both to celebrate the Saint and to mourn the lockdown.  In a way, it was a perfect Irish moment, composed of equal parts laughter, melancholy, and alcohol.  Standing there, I thought about pounding on the door and trying to talk my way in, but I didn’t.  It was their bar.  It was their party.  I’m not even a little bit Irish, I don’t celebrate St. Patty’s Day, and it wasn’t even St. Patty’s Day yet.  Still, knowing they were there and wanting to join them but not being able to, I don’t think I ever felt more Irish.  And I don’t think I have ever wanted a drink more than I did at that moment.

Copyright2023MichaelKubacki

(First published 3-20-22)

THIS & THAT XXIV

                     It is now possible to piss some people off by referring to “Chinese New Year” as “Lunar New Year,” and vice versa.

          Be careful.  If you are insufficiently woke, just keep your mouth shut.

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           I don’t think “latinx” is ever going to catch on, do you?

          There’s a name for this kind of word.  It’s an exonym, meaning a name for a race or an ethnic group that does not come from the people themselves.  And since it does not come from the people themselves, there’s always the possibility that the people it refers to won’t like it.

          That is not always true, of course.  We call people from Germany “Germans.”  It’s an exonym because Germans call themselves Deutsche, but the term “German” has no pejorative subtext.  However, Germans are also called krauts, heinies, and huns.  These are all exonyms, and they are insulting.

          “Eskimo” is an exonym that was never complimentary (it comes from Algonquian languages, and it means “eaters of raw meat”), but nobody was much offended by it until recent decades when group identity became so politicized.  Now it is considered a racist term.

          That seems to be the direction latinx (pron. “la-tin-x”), is going.  The purpose of it appears to be to eliminate the gendered terms “latino” and “latina,” since in the woke universe, sex and gender are just social constructs with no immutable meaning.  Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be how most latinos feel about the matter.  Spanish is, after all, a gendered language.  There are male nouns and female nouns, and that is characteristic of romance languages.  Imposing the woke ideology of non-gendered language on Spanish speakers is not only an affront to their culture and traditions, it will be much more difficult than it would be for English speakers.

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          Trump had some classified documents at his compound at Mar-a-Lago, Biden had some in his Corvette and in a closet at the U of Penn, Sandy Berger (remember him?) had some stuffed in his pants.  And don’t forget Hillary.

          What’s the problem here?

          Nobody knows how many classified documents there are, but one estimate is that there are 50 million new documents classified every year.  Maybe the problem is that the people who deal with classified documents, and are responsible for classifying new ones, don’t take the process seriously.  How could they?  The bureaucrats who mostly deal with these things know that 1) there is no cost or downside to having documents classified, 2) it makes people look important if they work with classified documents or cause them to be classified in the first place, and 3) having documents stamped Confidential, Secret, or Top Secret (the three “classifications”), is a good way to prevent them from embarrassing you later on.  In addition, the people in charge of the process know full well there is no justification for classifying the vast majority of documents.

          There’s an easy way to fix this.

          First, each agency that classifies documents must review the documents it has classified, and de-classify 99% of them.  Give them a year to do this and if they fail to do so, they lose the power to classify any further documents until the culling has been completed.

          Following the completion of this Phase One, mandatory criminal penalties will kick in for mishandling of classified documents.  The person responsible for allowing a classified document to wind up in a place where it shouldn’t be goes to a federal prison for six months (minimum).  This will solve the other problem---nobody takes them seriously because nobody ever has to pay a price for breaking the rules.  Sandy Berger never went to jail, and the feds had to fish some embarrassing Clinton-era papers out of his boxers.  Even Hillary paid no price, and her use of an insecure homemade email server to house classified documents almost certainly led to security breaches and the deaths of Americans.

 

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“It is easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled."                                                                                                                                                                                                                 ---Mark Twain

          As one of those who resisted the COVID madness from the beginning, I grow increasingly optimistic that we are approaching a tipping point on the dangers of the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna.  Stories that were uniformly suppressed by governments, the press, NGOs, academia, social media, medical organizations, pharmaceutical companies, health insurers, and financial institutions are now seeping into the public consciousness on the internet and even in media outlets that spent the last three years reporting ONLY the accepted narrative.

          The stories bobbing to the surface come from everywhere.

          The COVID experience in India constitutes an accidental study in the effects of mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna), versus the Viral Vector products (like Johnson & Johnson) or the Protein Subunit types (like Novavax).

          India is a heavily vaccinated place, but unlike Europe and the U.S., none of the shots were mRNA shots.  India health minister Mansukh Mandaviya was the person responsible for negotiating with Pfizer and Moderna over the use of their products in India, and he reported the negotiations fell through because the companies demanded legal immunity for any injuries resulting from their vaccines.  While the U.S. and many other countries routinely grant this immunity to vaccine-makers, India never has, and Mandaviya refused to in this case.

          The significance of this arises from the near-absence of vaccine deaths in India.  These tend to be difficult to count anywhere, largely because in Europe and the US, the authorities have not wanted to count them, so the enormous numbers of vaccine-related deaths have been suppressed.  That does not mean the numbers cannot be teased out of the data, however.  In the United States (from the CDC’s VAERS database, for example), it appears the vaccines have killed about 350,000 people.  In the EU, there is a vaguely-similar website called EudraVigilance, run by the European Medicines Agency, with comparable numbers of reported vaccine deaths.

          India tracked vaccine injuries too, and their best data indicates there were about 1000 vaccine deaths among 100,000,000+ people vaccinated, or about one out of every 100,000.  Another measure published by the Indian government at the end of 2021 was vaccine injuries (“adverse events”).  Official counts of vaccine injuries were 0.2% of shots in the US, 0.7% in the UK, and 0.006 in India.

          India’s experience is powerful evidence that the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna are the villains in the COVID vaccine death-toll.

          Another chink in the COVID-orthodoxy armor comes from the FOIA lawsuit filed by the Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency against the FDA in September, 2021 over the FDA’s refusal to release documents submitted in support of vaccine authorizations.  Involved were 300,000+ documents, which Pfizer offered to release at a rate of 500 per month, stretching the process out to somewhere north of 2080.

          U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman (N.D. Texas), ruled against the FDA in January 2022, and all responsive documents have now been released.

          But what do you do with 300,000+ documents?  You need somebody to read them and analyze them and put the pieces together.  The on-line sites Daily Clout and The War Room took on that challenge and attracted 3500 volunteers, including medical professionals and lawyers, to the task.

          The result is “Pfizer Documents Analysis Reports,” an eBook featuring 50 essays on different aspects of Pfizer’s deception.  Pfizer knew (and suppressed), the dangers of its mRNA vaccine, and thus, there could be no informed consent among the hundreds of millions who took the shot and suffered the damage.  The collusion of the CDC, the FDA, and the media in the lies is also apparent from the Reports.

          At this point we have all heard of the heart injuries the vaccine has done to young men.  There has been less publicity, however, about the effect on young women in their reproductive years.  The results of vaxxing pregnant women were frightening.  Of the pregnant women in the Pfizer trial who took the shot, 270 reported injuries.  Of those 270, Pfizer followed only 32 of them, and of those, 28 lost their babies.  There is also ample evidence of vaccine-related changes to women’s menstrual cycles, though the seriousness of these alterations is not yet clear.

          Elsewhere, mandates are being quietly dropped (even in California!), and legislation is being introduced to ban mRNA vaccines.  Here and there, a few public health officials (minor ones), have publically apologized for pushing the COVID security state protocols upon us in spite of the absence of evidence supporting them.

          It all adds up, I hope.  Of course I would like to see Fauci and Klaus Schwab and Cuomo and Newsom and Bill Gates, and all the other architects of this attempted fascist takeover, in prison for their crimes against humanity.  But in this world where people are never held responsible for their crimes but only for the crimes of their ancestors, we cannot expect these monsters to pay any sort of price.  I would like to see them shamed from public life, however, and never again have the opportunity to pursue their totalitarian dreams at our expense.  I would like to see the three years from 2020 to 2022 viewed for what they were---a dystopian nightmare and fraud that killed millions and should never be repeated.     

 

                   

Copyright2023MichaelKubacki  

2023 NFL PLAYOFFS---Superbowl

 Philly (-1) vs. Kansas City

          This will be brief because there’s not much left to say.  The two #1 seeds, and what appear to be the two best teams in the NFL, are meeting for the Superbowl.  Aside from Tua Tagovailoa (and possibly Garoppolo), Hurts and Mahomes are the two best QBs in the NFL this season.  Both have been injured, but both are mostly recovered from their injuries.

          The Eagles have a slightly better AYP than KC (7.3 to 7.1), and Philly has the best defensive AYP in the league at 4.0, while KC’s pass defense is only slightly better than average at 5.2.

          Both of Philly’s playoff wins were blow-outs, while both of KC’s wins (by 7 points and 3 points), went down to the wire.  I think that means something.

          The better team does not always win the Superbowl, but Philly is the better team.  Take the birds and lay the point.

 

Copyright2023MichaelKubacki

2023 NFL PLAYOFFS---Conference Championships

           My record this week was 3 – 0, with wins by the Iggles, Cincy and the 49ers.  I passed on the Jacksonville – KC game.  I’m now 6 – 1.

          Both conference championship games are home games for the #1 seeds in each conference---Philly in the NFC and KC in the AFC.  Since the spreads on these games are very small, we are basically looking for the teams that will win and advance to the Superbowl.  I will be on the Eagles and the Chiefs.

 

          San Francisco @ Philadelphia (-2.5)

          The 49ers looked better and better as the season progressed, winning the last ten regular-season games and now two more in the playoffs.  Brock Purdy at QB is a sort-of seven-day wonder who posts one great passing performance after another, and never seems to make a mistake.

          The Eagles, on the other hand, dominated the NFL for the first fourteen weeks and then, when QB Jalen Hurts injured his shoulder, suddenly became vulnerable and lost two games (to Dallas and New Orleans).  Hurts returned for the last game of the regular season, beating the indifferent Giants to clinch the top seed in the NFC, but he did not look to be 100%.  Heading into the Division Week match-up against those same Giants, it was reasonable to wonder whether Hurts would be at his best, and whether the Iggles were still the best team in the NFL.

          Hurts was at his best and so were the Birds.  New York had just won their Wildcard game, on the road, easily defeating Minnesota, and they were confident in their chances coming into Philadelphia.  And they were COMPLETELY DOMINATED in every aspect of the game.

          The last three minutes of the first half looked like garbage time, and the score at intermission was 28 – 0.  The final was 38 – 7.

          In other words, the Eagles (and Hurts) are back, and they are once again the best team in the NFL.  In fact, they look better than before.

          Philly had the best AYP in the league this year at 7.3, slightly better than San Fran’s 7.0.  Also, Philly’s defensive AYP was also the best in the league (4.0), and was significantly better than San Francisco’s 4.7.

          Philly has superior numbers to San Francisco, they are healthy, and they are playing in South Philadelphia.  The line should be much larger than 2.5.

          Lay the points and take the Eagles.

 

Cincinnati @ Kansas City (Pick ‘em)

          This story is much the same as in the NFC.  The top seed is playing at home, has a better record, and boasts better AYP numbers than the challenger.  The disparity is even greater here, with KC’s AYP of 7.1 versus Cincy’s 6.4.  In the NFL stats, Mahones had the second-best QB rating at 105.2, while Burrow’s 100.8 was 6^th.  The Chief’s defensive AYP is also a hair better than that of the Bungles.

          Of course, the question hanging over this game has been: “Is Mahomes really Mahomes?”  We have known he will play, but will his recent high-ankle sprain limit his effectiveness?

          We can’t be sure about that, of course, but the reports are that the injury is less severe than feared and that he is practicing well.  It is still possible that his ability to scramble will be compromised or that he will limit his efforts in that dimension out of simple prudence.  But I don’t really care about that.  I’m relying on his ability to throw the ball down the field because that’s what wins in the playoffs, so if he stays in the pocket all day, that would be fine with me.

          Cincinnati has had a great run, and nobody would be surprised by a Bengals win.  (They already beat the Chiefs once, by a field goal, on December 4.)  They won their last eight regular season-games and two playoff games---an extremely lucky victory over the Ravens and a dominating win over the Bills.  But the Chiefs, over the course of the season, have been better.

          Take KC, and be grateful you don’t have to lay any points.

 

Copyright2023MichaelKubacki    

2023 NFL PLAYOFFS---Division Week

 

          My record for the wildcard games was 3 –1.  Won with Jacksonville, Miami and the Boyz; lost with Cincy.  I passed on the Seattle - SF game and the Giants – Minnesota game.

          Last year, all the Division Week games were decided with last-second field goals or in OT.  I don’t expect that will happen in 2023.  I see at least two mismatches.

 

Jacksonville @ KC (-10)

          As an Eagles fan, I will always love J’ville coach Doug Pederson.  I also find KC coach Andy Reid (and the widespread reverence for him), intensely annoying.  I loved Jacksonville’s preposterous comeback win over the Chargers last week and I would love to see Dougie go into KC and beat the Chiefs.

          But let’s get real.

          In the AFC, KC’s 7.1 AYP is the best by a wide margin, while the Jaguars’ 6.3 AYP is a distant 5^th among the playoff teams.  K.C’s defensive AYP is also better than that of the Jags.

          In addition, while Trevor Lawrence must get some credit for the Jaguars comeback, his wildcard game was objectively the worst of any QB in Wildcard Weekend, and that includes Tom Brady and Skylar Thompson.  The guy threw four picks.  He may indeed wind up with three or four Superbowl rings before he’s done, but he won’t get one this year, and this Saturday will be his last game of the season.

          However, when evaluating KC, one must always remember that Andy Reid’s history is not primarily one of success.  Rather, it is marked by those numerous occasions when his heavily-favored team comes into a critical contest appearing totally unprepared and clueless.  Andy’s story is a tale of losing the big one, and that is always a possibility.

          Considering Reid’s uneven record, and considering that Jacksonville has only been blown out once this year, I cannot feel confident about laying 10 points with the Chiefs.  I expect them to win, but I won’t bet this game.

 

NYG @ Philly (-7.5)

          Daniel Jones had a very nice game against the mediocre Vikings.  Two touchdowns, no picks, 301 yards on 24/35 passing, and an AYP (in the one game) of 8.6.  That’s not really who he is, of course, and against a Philly pass defense that is the best in the tournament, one must expect Danny’s performance will revert to the mean, or below the mean.

          Philadelphia has the best AYP in the tournament and the best defensive AYP in the tournament.  That is not to say they are a lock against San Fran or the Chiefs or the Bills, but they are a lock against the Giants, whom they have already beaten twice---48-22 on December 11, and 22-16 on January 8.  The second victory was not as close as it may appear.  The Giants scored 3 points in the first three quarters, then put up another 13 in garbage time.

          Lay the points.  Da Iggles will cover.

 

Cincinnati @ Buffalo (-5.5)

          Gee, I wonder if Damar Hamlin will be there.

          Neither of these teams especially distinguished themselves last week, and both must consider themselves lucky to be here.  Both QBs put up a 6.5 AYP last week, and that is nothing special.  Over the course of the season, Burrows had a better QB rating than Josh Allen---100.8 to 96.6.  His AYP was also slightly better.  The Bills would appear to have a better pass defense, though that was not terribly apparent last week against Miami’s third-string quarterback.

          I’m just not seeing the essential wonderfulness of Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills this year.  What I do see is a Bengals team that may appear to get lucky sometimes, but they have now won nine in a row, four of which were blowouts.

          I don’t know who will win this, but I’m taking Cincy with the points.

 

Dallas @ San Francisco (-3.5)

          This is the other mismatch.  San Francisco will win this by as much as they want to.

          Dak Prescott had a good game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, which was the worst team in the playoffs this year.  He went 25/33 for 305 yards with no interceptions.  It may have been his best game in a mediocre year where he finished 16^th in QB rating.

          But Brock Purdy’s win against Seattle was supernatural.  He committed no mistakes en route to an 18/30 day with 342 yards and no INTs.  This amounts to an 11.6 AYP, the best game of any quarterback in the six games of Wildcard Week.

          The 49ers are superior to the Boyz in every other meaningful category as well.  Take San Francisco and lay the points.

 

Copyright2023MichaelKubacki      

2023 NFL PLAYOFFS---Wildcard Week

 

         I refer the reader to previous articles on my NFL playoff predictions for the philosophy that guides me.  In a nutshell, the teams that win the NFL playoffs are teams that can complete long passes.  The best defensive teams rarely win.  Teams with run-based offenses never win.  What you have to do to win a Superbowl is throw the ball down the field.

           For this reason, my primary tool is a number I call AYP, or “adjusted yards per pass.”  This is the number of yards gained passing during the season divided by the number of passes thrown, and adjusted downward for the number of interceptions thrown.  A very good team will have an AYP over 7 for the season.  An AYP of 6 is pretty good.  Teams with an AYP under 5 do not play games in the month of February.

          Since AYP can also be calculated for a team’s pass defense, I do so, mostly so I can look at the extremes: who has a really good pass defense, and who has a bad one.    I also glance at point differentials over the course of the season.

          Finally, I note how each playoff team did in blowouts (defined as a game decided by 11 or more points), during the season.  When one good team beats another good team with a last-second field-goal, I’m not always sure what it means.  But when a good team beats another NFL team by 28, it tells me something.

          Every year, I divide the contestants into three categories.

          PRETENDERS are those teams with very little chance of winning a game.  This year, there are eight of them: Jacksonville, the LA Chargers, Baltimore, Miami, Minnesota, Tampa, the Giants, and Seattle.  Miami is on this list only because Tua Tagovailoa, the best quarterback in the NFL this year, is barred from playing because of a recent concussion.  If he were playing against Buffalo in the opening weekend, Miami would be listed here as a contender.  Without him, Miami has little chance in the tournament. 

          COULD GET LUCKY is where I put the teams that (follow me here), could get lucky.  Some of them, perhaps most, will win a game or two.  They tend to have something wonderful going for them or they are peaking at the right time or they have a relatively easy path to the Superbowl.  This year, Cincinnati and Dallas qualify.

          CONTENDERS are the teams that are good enough to be in the Superbowl.  This year, there are no surprises: KC, Buffalo, Philly and SF. 

Seattle @ San Francisco (-10)

          Since October 30, San Fran has won ten games in a row, seven of them by blow-out margins.  The team AYP is a 7.0, which puts it among the elites.  They are among the best pass defenses in the NFL as well, and the team has outscored its opponents by over 10 points per game.  On September 18, the 49ers beat Seattle 27 – 7 in San Francisco, then beat them again in Seattle on December 15 by a score of 21 – 13.

          One interesting aspect of the Niners’ run is that it doesn’t seem to matter who is playing QB.  Jimmy Garoppolo had a passer rating of 103 this year, third best in the league (along with a 7.3 AYP), but he was injured in mid-December. Brock Purdy then stepped in, however, and posted a 6.9 AYP and a 107.3 QB rating while winning the last four games.

          Seattle’s season has been a success by any measure.  They have apparently found a replacement for Russell Wilson in Geno Smith, who earned a 100.9 QB rating (in something of a dink-and-dunk offense) but got them to the playoffs with a 9 – 8 record.

          It ends here, however.  Seattle has been improving throughout the season, so I would hesitate to lay the 10 points against them, but this should be a relatively easy win for SF.  I pass on the spread.

LA Chargers (-2) @ Jacksonville

          The wrong team is favored.  Take the Jaguars.  After all, they beat the Chargers 38-10 in Week 3.

          Neither one of these teams are going much further, but somebody has to win this game.  Their AYP’s are about the same (5^th and 6^th in the AFC), and their pass defenses put up similar numbers as well.  Jacksonville has a better record in blowouts and has outscored its opponents by three points/game while the Chargers have not outscored their opponents at all.  And the game is in Florida where the Jags have beaten some decent teams like Vegas, Baltimore, Tennessee, and Dallas.

          Trivia: the Chargers rushing defense in 2022 gave up 5.2 yards per carry.  This is the biggest number since the 1959 Redskins.

Miami @ Buffalo (-13.5)

          I strongly suspect that the only reason Tua is not playing for Miami in this game is NFL politics and PR.  After his concussion two weeks ago, he has apparently become the league’s poster child for head injuries.  Especially after the Hamlin heart attack, the NFL feels it MUST demonstrate its caring and nurturing nature.  So Miami has to lose this game.

          Tua Tagovailoa was the best QB in the NFL this year, with a quarterback rating of 105.5 (Mahomes was second at 105.2).  His AYP was an almost unbelievable 7.9 (Mahomes was 7.2).  Josh Allen, who did not have his best year, posted a 96.6 quarterback rating and a 6.3 AYP.  With Tua playing, Miami would have had a real shot at winning this game.

          Buffalo’s strength is mostly on defense, and they were one of two teams (SF was the other) to give up less than 300 points this season.  Defense is not what wins playoff games however, so I remain suspicious of the Bills’ chances to go all the way.  I am also suspicious of their ability to cover a 13.5 spread against a team as good as the Dolphins have been.

          Take the points.

NYG @ Minnesota (-3)

          How do you achieve a 13-4 record while being outscored by your opponents?  Just asking. Of course, the Giants were also outscored this year.

          These are probably the two worst teams in the playoffs.  Their AYPs are about 6, and that is near the bottom of the list.  They also have the two worst pass defenses in the tournament.  Also, both had negative records in blowouts (i.e, both teams lost more lop-sided games than they won).

          Minnesota was 8-1 at home, including a 27-24 victory over the Giants on Christmas Eve.  That game seems as good a way as any to predict the outcome.  Look for a close game with the Vikings managing to eke out a victory.

          Pass.

Baltimore @ Cincinnati (-10)

          This line opened at 6.5.  It is now 10, which reflects the perception that the prospects for Baltimore are rapidly declining.

          Lamar Jackson suffered a knee injury in Baltimore’s December 4 win over the Broncos, and missed the last five games of the regular season.  His replacement, Tyler Huntley, did a serviceable job through four starts, but sustained a concussion on January 1 (“Yo Tyler---what year is it?”).  Anthony Brown then started in Week 18 and stunk out the joint with two interceptions in a 27-16 loss to Cincinnati.  Though Huntley has not been declared “out” for this game, it seems almost certain Anthony Brown will start, and the Ravens will lose.

          On the other side, Joe Burrow will probably never replicate the numbers he posted in 2021 (108.3 quarterback rating, 7.5 AYP), but his 2022 season put him 6^th on the list of NFL QBs.  Also, Cincy is coming into the tournament the way any Bungles fan would like them to.  The team was 4-4 on Halloween and won their last eight games.  They have outscored their opponents by 6 points per game and were 7-1 in blow-outs.

          Ten points is a lot in a playoff game but I’m going to lay them here.  Take the Cincinnati Bengals.

Dallas (-2.5) @ Tampa

          Besides Minnesota and the Giants, the other possible choice for “worst team in the tournament” is Tampa Bay, which won the dreadful NFC South with a losing record and was outscored by almost 3 points per game.  The high point of Tampa’s season was opening day, September 11, when they crushed the Cowboys, in Texas, 19-3.  Since then, the only playoff team they have beaten was Seattle, in November, while taking blowout beatings from Carolina, San Francisco, Cincinnati and Atlanta.  This must be Brady’s worst season.  He finished 18^th in quarterback ratings with a 5.8 AYP.

          And on the other side, you have perennial mutt Dak Prescott with his 1-3 career playoff record (Brady is 35-12).  This year, Prescott was 16^th in quarterback rating, not much better than Brady.

          AYP for Dallas and Tampa are about even---they are 6^th and 7^th among the NFC playoff teams.  By all other measures, however, Dallas has an edge.  Their pass defense is significantly better than Tampa’s.  The Dallas record in blowouts is 7-2 while Tampa’s is 1-4.  Dallas has also outscored its opponents by over a touchdown.

          There are analysts who will tell you Tom Brady is still Tom Brady and he will rise from the ashes of his 2022 season to sparkle in the playoffs.  But I don’t believe it.  The GOAT is dead.

          I will hold my nose and ask Dak Prescott to cover the spread for me.  I’m betting the Boyz.

Copyright2023MichaelKubacki