Author: Dave Long

The Big Story – Sept. 1: It’s hard to pick the top story this week because there are two. It’s the opening week of the NFL season and baseball moves into its final month of the pennant chase.

For Patriot Nation, thanks to having a new coach in Mike Vrabel and Drake Maye’s entering his Year 2 season, there’s the excitement of a new season, though it’s tempered by many locals’ having convinced themselves they’re better than they’ll actually be. For Red Sox Nation no other sport matches the day-to-day thrills and chills of a season’s final month when their team is in a heated pennant race, which is where the Red Sox find themselves. So buckle up, because this is the most fun part of the year.

Sports 101: Who returned the most kickoffs (two did it three times) and punts (four) for TDs in Patriots history?

News Item – 5 Keys to Patriots’ Season

Drake Maye: He needs to take a solid next step in his development.

Rookie Linemen: Will Campbell and Jared Wilson need to deliver on Day 1, which is a lot to expect from rookies.

The CB Are Keys to the Defense: Media maven Greg Bedard thinks the defense is the biggest problem area. He sees them more than me, but I think it’s the opposite, provided that Christian Gonzalez and Carlton Davis are healthy and can add the shutdown element that gives the improved pass rush more time to get to the QB.

TreVeyon Henderson: If he’s as good as he looked in pre-season it gives them a play maker and real depth in the backfield.

Milton Williams is worth the money.

News Item – Interesting 2025 NFL Stories to Follow

Travis Hunter:Can he play on both sides of the ball on this level?

The Coaching Hot Seat – Who Gets Fired First: BrianDaboll (Giants), Kevin Stefanski (Browns), Zac Taylor (Bengals) and others are in play. Having three disappointing season endings on the resume, my first choice, Miami’s Mike McDaniel, recently got an extension until 2028.

Pete Carroll in Las Vegas: It’s interesting minority owner Tom Brady passed on picking 73-year-old Bill Belichick to coach LV in favor of picking the even older by 200 days Carroll.

The Numbers:

22 – Maye’s rank among starting QBs to start the season in a recent poll by The Athletic of 40 NFL coaches and executives.

33 – career NFL wins Andy Reid needs to pass Belichick for second most all-time, which at the current Reid-Mahomes pace would happen sometime in 2028.

245 – career TD passes after eight seasons for soon to be 30-year-old Patrick Mahomes. Career TD leader Brady had 197 at the same point in his career.

… Of the Week Awards

Thumbs Down – Eliot Wolf: The latest evidence that the Pats’ VP of Personnel is completely asleep at the switch came last week when he let the Packers trade for unhappy Cowboys edge rusher Micah Parsons. They could/should have beaten the price of two first-round picks and DT Kenny Clark GB gave up to get him. And with the most cap room in the NFL they could have matched the whopping salary Parsons got as well. This is a much worse miss than Craig Breslow’s not getting a starter at the trade deadline, because nobody he was after was what Parsons is — a gettable franchise-changing talent.

Random Thoughts:

Can’t figure out who Efton Chisholm III reminds me of — Wes Welker or one-time Jets pain in the butt Wayne Chrebet.

Sports101 Answer: With four, Julian Edelman has the most punt returns for Patriots TDs. Raymond Clayborn (all in 1977) and Ellis Hobbs (2006, ’07 and ’08) are the TD kickoff leaders with three each.

Final Thought – Predictions

Biggest Surprise – Jacksonville: Because Trevor Lawrence finally has a season that lives up to the billing.

Biggest Disappointment:Thanks to its owner trading his best player too late to reap immediate benefits and the annual Dak Prescott injury, Dallas has my Cowboys-loving friend George Copadis in despair as they plummet to the bottom of the NFC East. But at least we’ll get to see how good Joe Milton actually is.

The Geezer QB Follies: We’ll see the Giants’ latest QB disaster, where the over-under for Russell Wilson’s benching is Game 10. Ditto for what’s likely a one and done season for Aaron Rodgers in Pittsburgh.

MVP:Unless he gets hurt from running too recklessly, Jayden Daniels.

Rookie of the Year: Defense, Abdul Carter (NYG).Offense, Ashton Jeanty (LVR).

Drake Maye:With 25 TD passes and 14 interceptions he comes close to Brady’s 28 and career-high 14 picks in Year 2 as a starter.

The Patriots: It won’t satisfy the media yackers who are expecting a 4-13 team to become a playoff team out of thin air. But they improve four games to 8-9 in Vrabel’s first year.

Email Dave Long at dlong@hippopress.com.

The Big Story – Sox and Yanks Do Battle: Well, it wasn’t much of a battle, as the Sox won three of four over the weekend in NY. That made it six of the last seven vs. their rivals and 8-2 overall in 2025. We start the week with the Sox in the top wild card spot by a half game at 71 and 60. Next up is playing 16 straight games against bottom-feeding Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Arizona, Oakland and under .500 Cleveland. If they take care of business, they’ll give themselves a cushion by the time they see the Yanks next on Sept. 12. The only caution is nine of the games are on the road, where they’re 30-35 in 2025.

Sports 101: What MLB team has had the most no-hitters broken up in the ninth inning?

News Item – Pats’ Pre-season Game 3: They lost. No one of interest played. Being forced to pay full price for a ticket to that game was a joke because it told us absolutely nothing.

News Item – Juan Soto: I know few in these parts care about the NL. But after the Mets outbid the Yankees and (supposedly) Red Sox let’s take a look at the impact his 32 homers, 76 RBI and .249 average has had on the team. In the Bronx, even though they’re just a half game behind Boston, the team that went to the 2024 World Series is considered a mess by the media and fans alike. In Flushing it’s had less impact than you’d think. At the moment the Mets’ record is 69-60 for a .539 winning percentage. That’s lower than last year’s .549 WP in an 89-73 season. However, it’s a different story at the box office as with a month still left to go in the season their attendance stands about 200,000 ahead of 2024 at 2,522,264 compared to 2,329,299, while the Yanks are down 522,000 with 15 home dates left.

The Numbers:

49 – after hitting two Sunday homers, Seattle’s Cal Raleigh has moved past Salvador Perez for most by anyone who caught 50 percent of his games, and with 40 he’s two behind Javy Lopez’s record 42 while just catching.

14 – career high and AL leading wins for Garrett Crochet against five losses with a MLB-leading 207 k’s and a second best in the AL 2.38 ERA.

… Of the Week Awards

Alumni News: Mookie Betts: Starting with his lingering illness this spring that has him still looking to find his stroke in late August, it’s been a rough year for the Mookster, as in a career-worst year where he’s hitting .244 with 13 homers and just 54 RBI.

History Made – Yankees: The Yanks matched their own record set earlier this year with nine homers in a 13-3 drubbing of Tampa Bay. Most notable was Aaron Judge hitting his 40th, Cody Bellinger and Giancarlo Stanton each hitting two and that trio starting off the game with back-to-back-to-back homers to give them a 3-0 lead after just four batters.

Random Thoughts: Alex Cora is going to have to explain to me why taking one of the fastest and most dangerous men on the bases in baseball out of the leadoff spot to bat Jarren Duran in the power third spot and put the more powerful Roman Anthony at leadoff makes sense. However, from the RBI perspective, moving Ceddanne Rafaela back to ninth to hit in front of both guys makes a lot of sense, as does moving Rafaela and Duran to 8 and 9 respectively if you want Anthony’s .400+ OBP since July 1 at the top of the order.

What makes the Brewers having the best record in baseball even more impressive is that they have the 11th-lowest payroll in the NL.

Sports 101 Answer – The all-time leader for ninth-inning no-no’s broken up against their pitchers is Cleveland with 11 after Soto homered to break up Gavin Williams’ bid with one out in Cleveland’s 4-1 over the Mets two weeks ago.

Final Thought – Waiting For Jerry Jones’ Latest Contract Screw-up: It’ll probably wind up just costing the Cowboys owner a lot more money than it should have instead of what it would have if he’d gotten it done earlier. But if it doesn’t and Micah Parsons goes on the trade block the Patriots should be ready to open the wallet and give up two first-round picks and other later picks if needed, as I stand by what I said prior to the draft: that the Patriots should have done what was needed to move up to get Penn State edge rusher Abdul Carter. An elite pass rusher added to what they brought in during free agency would likely have made them a Top 5 defense. Parsons would do that on Day 1. So they should be ready to act if they get lucky and he becomes available.

Email Dave Long at dlong@hippopress.com.

The Big Story – Pennant Race Grips The Hub: It was an up-and-down week for the Sox that saw them drop two games to AL East-leading Toronto. They held onto second place, but only by a game ahead of the Yanks. They also dropped to second in the Wild Card race, a game up on the Yanks and four ahead of Cleveland for the final slot. So with five weeks left the race is intensifying and the first thing people are doing in the morning is check the scores to see if anything changed overnight. That could be this week as they’ve already faced Baltimore twice (Monday and Tuesday) at Fenway Park, where they’re 41-23 in 2025. Then it’s four vs. the Yankees on the road, where they’re a less than stellar 27-34. So they’ll need to be better at the stadium to maintain their place in the standings. Otherwise they’ll be on the outside looking up at the wild card standings by week’s end.

Sports 101: Just 10 Heisman trophies have also made it to the NFL Hall of Fame. How many can you name?

News Item – Roman Anthony Update: The kid continues to give indications he’s for real. And while he’s likely better batting later in the order for his RBI ability, it’s hard to argue that an on base percentage hovering around .400 (.398) isn’t a great fit at lead-off too. It’s led him to score 37 times in 56 games. The game illustrating that most was his two-at-bat, one-hit (a homer), four-walk game vs. Houston last week where he had one RBI and those four walks led to four runs scored for a rare 2-4-1-1-4 line. With the homer he joined Ted Williams, Tony C and the exiled Raffy Devers as just the fourth Sox player 21 or under to hit homers in back-to-back games.

News Item – Trade Deadline Update: The first Red Sox start for Dustin May had the fellowship of the miserable yacking about what a bad deal it was. But the six-inning, five-hit, 8-k, no-run second start in a 14-1 win over Houston was more like it.

News Item – Milwaukee Brewers: The Brew Crew is the hottest team in baseball. They’d won 14 straight until losing on Sunday, which propelled them to the best record in baseball at 78-45. At the heart of it all was their monstrous MLB-leading run differential vs. opponents. It’s a +161, which is 44 runs over the second-best Chicago Cubs at +117. The Red Sox are fourth best at +93.

The Numbers:

1.15 – ERA of Sox closer Aroldis Chapman after giving up one run in his last 19.3 innings when he has 28 struck out.

2 – times the Red Sox have won a game while only having three hits according to the Boston Globe’s Pete Abraham. The first was in June vs. Seattle and the second was Friday’s 2-1 win over Miami.

253 – career homers for Pete Alonso to finally push someone past Darryl Strawberry to become the Mets all-time homer king, which Strawberry has been since 1988.

… Of the Week Awards

Who’s Hot – Trevor Story: Knocked in the winning run in Friday’s 2-1 win over Miami and his three-run bomb was the decisive blow in the next day’s 7-5 win. Overall he was 4-8 with a homer and four RBI. That gave him 18 RBI in his previous 18 games

Random Thoughts:

If you’re counting, after doing it again Sunday vs. Miami, that was the seventh blown save for Greg Weissert.

Sports 101 Answer:The 10 Heisman/NFL Hall of Famers are Doak Walker (SMU), Paul Hornung (ND), Roger Staubach (Navy), OJ Simpson (USC), Tony Dorsett (Pitt), Earl Campbell (Texas), Marcus Allen (USC), Barry Sanders (Oak St), Tim Brown (ND) and Charles Woodson (UM).

Final Thought – Five Observations After Pats’ 20-12 win over Minnesota:

1 – Don’t want to kick Jerod Mayo when he’s down, but things seem much tighter under Coach Vrabel.

2 – Drake Maye: I know why they’re doing it. But given he won just one game last year, he needs more work against real defenses.

3 – Have the Pats Finally Found a Slot Receiver? If you watched the first two games it was hard not to notice All-Name Teamer Efton Chism III and not just because he looks like he’s 12 years old. But with 12 catches for 121 yards and two TD’s he grabbed attention. Most impressive is his Wes Welker-like quickness in tight space, and fight for extra yards after the catch, like on the TD vs. Minnesota when he should have been tackled on the 8. Not a lock, but he’s getting close.

4 – The Defense: Hard to tell anything about the D because the full first team has not played one down together.

5 – Kyle Dugger: A good player coming off a bad year. Hope they don’t give up on him, but it appears Vrabel has.

Email Dave Long at dlong@hippopress.com.

The Big Story – Pats and Sox Generate Surprising Excitement: Both have Boston sports fans revved up, getting more so by the day. Six months ago, who’d have thunk it?

Sports 101: Name the NY Giants rookie who ran back the first-ever kickoff at spanking new Schaefer Stadium for a TD in August 1971.

News Item – Red Sox Update: (1) After starting the week 65-54, they need to go 25-18 in their last 43 games to get the 90 wins likely needed for a WC berth. (2) At 13-4 with a 2.24 ERA Garrett Crochet has lived up to the hype. He leads the majors with a career-high 148.1 innings pitched. (3) Without having somebody with even 20, the Sox are on pace to fall just short (194) of 200 homers. (4) Since starting 0-2 Kyle Harrison, the top player they got back in the Raffy Devers trade, has won four straight with a 3.75 ERA and 74 Ks in 62 AAA innings.

News Item – Observations from Pats Win Over Commanders: (1) In running for 153 yards they looked overpowering at times, with five guys rushing for over 5 yards a carry. (2) The D had zero sacks — didn’t expect that. (3) Pre-season stat, so it doesn’t count, but with second-round pick TreVeyon Henderson running back the opening kickoff 100 yards for a TD, he already had more total yards on his first play as a pro than the 85 last year’s second-round pick, Ja’Lynn Polk, accumulated in his entire rookie season. (4) This year’s top receiver pick, Kyle Williams, continued the tradition by having a Polk-like no catches on four targets. (5) The 48-18 final score was nice, but pump the brakes, folks, Washington didn’t play its Top 30 players.

The Numbers:

70 – yard field goal made by Jacksonville’s Cam Little, too early to be an NFL record because it came in Saturday’s pre-season game vs. Pittsburgh.

+84 – AL-leading run differential the Red Sox have vs. their 2025 opponents.

Of the Week Award

Thumbs Up – Bedford Little Leaguers: Their fantastic season ended one game short of the LL World Series, in extra innings of a 3-2 loss to Braintree, Mass., in the NE Championship game. Hurts now, but chins up, because it really is a great achievement and the thrill of a lifetime. Well done!

Sports 101 Answer: Giants’ first-round pick Rocky Thompson took the first kickoff ever at Schaefer Stadium back for a TD. Hopefully things go better for Henderson because that basically was the highlight of Rocky’s career.

Final Thought – Are Red Sox Still Cheap? While many commentators continue to yack on about the cheapness of the Red Sox to advance their own personal agendas, they’re ignoring the last five months. After locking up Roman Anthony last week until he’s 30 for $130 million they have spent roughly a half billion dollars since March on contracts for Anthony, Crochet, Alex Bregman and Kristian Campbell, so it’s hard to see how the Sox have been cheap this year. But, even though it will save them money in the long run by buying up the free agent years of Anthony, Campbell, Ceddanne Rafaela and Brayan Bello, it won’t do it in 2026, when Anthony will be paid $16 million instead of the minimum $700k he would have earned under the collective bargaining agreement. And for all three it’s $24 million and change in 2026. That doesn’t sound cheap to me.

Email Dave Long at dlong@hippopress.com.

The Big Story – Sox Lead Wild Card Race: So, where are the “the sky is always falling” folks in Boston’s media now? The ones who said the only reason the Red Sox rolled into the All-Star break on a big winning streak was that they just played bad teams? Those people, like the Globe’s Prince of Darkness and radio’s always negative Felger and Mazz, immediately pointed to their 4-5 start to the second half against three NL Division leaders as proof. Except that’s what good teams are supposed to do — play .500 against the good teams and pound the mediocre to bad ones. Which is what the Sox have done by going 19-5 since that winning streak started, including a weekend sweep of AL West-leading Houston. That had them starting the week with the top Wild Card record and in second place just three back of Toronto in the AL East.

So what do they do now? Complain about the not so great haul at the trade deadline — what else?

Sports 101: Name the only team in major league history with a winning record against the Yankees.

News Item – Pags Bags The Sun: Not sure if it’s going to mean the Connecticut Sun are headed to Boston, but former Celtics owner Steve Pagliuca agreed to pay the highest price ever to buy a WNBA team for $325 million last week. But there may be opposition to his desire to move them to Boston, as the league had already ticketed Boston as an expansion site in the near future. Stay tuned.

News Item – Height of Hypocrisy Award: It certainly takes pretty large stones for anyone tied to the Houston Astros to call out another team for sign stealing. But the scuttle was that’s what angered Hector Neris leading to the benches being emptied at Fenway on Saturday.

The Numbers:

.272 – AAA batting average of Kristian Campbell after 32 games to show he’s finding himself after lingering around .200 for the first half of his stay in Worcester.

4 – number on the growing list of professional athletes being investigated for illegal gambling after Guardians closer Emmanuel Clase went on paid leave while baseball looks into his case.

… Of the Week Awards

Thumbs Down – Ryne Sandberg: The Cubs’ great second baseman, who hit 282 homers in his Hall of Fame career, succumbed to cancer at 65. RIP Ryno.

Inning of the Week: It came when Atlanta thought it had blown open a 3-3 game by scoring eight runs in the top of the eighth inning. But amazingly the Reds blew that to smithereens by scoring eight in the bottom of the inning to knot it at 11-11. It was just the third time in history teams have each scored eight runs in the same inning. Atlanta eventually won 12-11 in 10 innings.

Game of the Week: Then the next day the Pirates scored nine runs in the first inning but still managed to lose as Colorado got a 17-16 wild win on a two-run walk-off by a guy I never heard of, Brenton Doyle.

Sports 101 Answer: After sweeping them last weekend, the Miami Marlins are the only team with a winning record vs. NY at 25-24.

Final Thought – And Another About The Sox: Boston’s media crybabies also said the Sox flushed the season down the toilet when they traded Rafael Devers to the Giants. Except that hasn’t happened, or been the boon to the Giants they predicted as well. On the day they got the then insubordinate but now sainted Devers, SF was 44-31, and now they are 55-55. For the mathematically challenged, that’s a worst-in-baseball 13-24 with Devers. While it’s 25-14 for the Sox since the trade that’s taken them from out of the wild card race at 37-37 to owner of the top WC slot at 62-51.

The second thing that they said was the only reason Devers was traded was that the brass wanted to dump his contract. Not true, as I guarantee you if he had picked up a first baseman’s mitt when Triston Casas went down Raffy’d still be here.

But with Roman Anthony deemed ready for the majors they had a bottleneck at OF/DH and someone had to go. They picked Devers and it was the right move for the long term because they got rid of a bad contract that would have forced them to pay a DH $31 million per for seven seasons. Plus Anthony has delivered. In his 46 MLB games, he’s hit .283 with 14 doubles, 2 homers, 19 RBI and a whopping 27 runs scored. For Devers, it’s .233 with 9 doubles, 5 homers, 19 RBI and 14 runs scored. Seems even to me at worst. Plus if the Sox invest the $250 million saved (a major if, I know) in a free agent pitcher like Framber Valdez next winter or revisit trading for Minnesota’s Joe Ryan, who they missed out on last week, trading Devers will be a big win going forward.

Email Dave Long at dlong@hippopress.com.

The Big Story – Sox Second-Half Start: In going 4-5 in their tough opening nine-game stretch with the NL’s three division leaders it wasn’t great, but it could have been worse, as they lost the first two games of each series vs. Chicago and Philly as well as losing the opener vs. L.A. before rallying to win the four they did.

Garrett Crochet did what aces are supposed to do by winning twice after Boston losses as he moved to 12-4 with a 2.23 ERA on the year. Which left them 57-50, 6.5 back of AL East-leading Toronto and the second best among Wild Card contenders.

Sports 101: Name the only pitcher to hit a home run in his first major-league at-bat.

News Item – 4 Thoughts from First 4 Days of Patriot Training Camp: (1) Returning OC Josh McDaniels’ early emphasisis for having Drake Maye getting rid of the ball quicker than a year ago. (2) With him already on thin ice, disappointing 2024 second-round pick Ja’Lynn Polk made the hole deeper by missing all four days. (3) The pass rush led by Keion White and Milton Williams got off to a good start in the early drills. (4) Seeing Caedan Wallace now playing guard after being drafted to play left tackle is another reminder of what a bust the 2024 draft has been.

News Item – Clayton Kershaw vs. Whitey Ford: Kershaw is locked in a tight battle with the great Yankee lefty for having the highest win-loss percentage in baseball history among those with 200 or more wins. After going 236-106 in 16 seasons, Ford is the retired career leader. So the Sox’ 4-2 win over Kershaw Saturday had historic consequences as it cut KC’s lead over Ford down from .692 to .690.

News Item – Player of the Week: The A’s Nick Kurtz had arguably the greatest single hitting game in MLB history on Friday. When he went six for six with eight RBI in a 15-3 win over Houston. It included a single, a double and becoming the first rookie in history to hit four homers in a game.

Alumni News – Matthew Judon: The former Patriots linebacker is still out on the street looking for work. This after acting like a 10-year-old in camp last year to get a big bump in pay. The Pats said no and traded him to Atlanta for the third-round pick who became guard Jared Wilson.

But after a 5.5-sack, 41-tackle season he’s found out the Patriots aren’t the only team that doesn’t think he was worth his asking price.

The Numbers:

41 – homers for Seattle’s Cal Raleigh to bring him within one of Javy Lopez’s mark for most homers hit as a catcher in one season.

44 – strikeouts by Red Sox hitters when they lost two of three to Dave Dombrowski’s Phillies.

163 – homers by Kyle Schwarber in three-plus years since the Sox let him walk over the same $20 million per they gave the next winter to Masataka Yoshida — who has 25 Boston homers since.

… Of the Week Awards

Thumbs Up – Alex Cora: For again bucking trends in managing his pitching staff. This time by bringing Aroldis Chapman in to face Schwarber in the seventh inning with the tying run on second. Chapman induced a pop to second to end the threat.

Anti-Rafael Devers Award –– “I’ll do anything to help the team”: That’s what the Sox’ best outfielder, Ceddanne Rafaela, said when asked about playing second base lately to help fill the black hole there and relieve their DH/OF bottleneck as well.

Future Lost Court Case of the Week: Donald Trump was back to telling sports how it can operate again last week. This time by signing an executive order to limit how much college athletes can make by putting a cap on NIL money. The problem is the NCAA settled the O’Bannon lawsuit (that opened the door for NIL) because they knew they’d lose in court on anti-trust issues. Which will happen again because the E.O. also illegally restricts individual earning rights.

A Little History – DiMaggio’s 56-Game History: The most amazing thing about Joe D’s famed 56-game hitting streak lies in illustrating how different the 1941 game was compared to 2025, when 100k seasons by players are commonplace. While DiMaggio hit .408 (91-223) with 56 runs scored, 55 RBI and 15 homers, he struck out only five times over those 56 games and not once during the final 32.

Sports 101 Answer: While more famous for throwing his knuckle ball, Hoyt Wilhelm is also the only pitcher to hit a home run in his first MLB at bat as a NY Giant in 1952.

Final Word – A Little Extra History: If you don’t know, in the game after the streak ended, he immediately went on a 15-game streak. And in 1933 he hit in 61 straight playing with the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League.

Email Dave Long at dlong@hippopress.com.