Category: Sports

Do Pats Have A QB Controversy?
The results have been happily surprising for the Patriots after rookie Bailey Zappe stepped into what looked like a dire situation after their first- and second-string quarterbacks went down in consecutive quarters. Now that they are back to .500 from a 1-3 start, things are looking brighter.
Now the question is, have they played so well with Zappe because he’s played better than Mac Jones did in his three starts, or because the offense finally worked out the kinks that drew dire warnings from early in the pre-season?
By way of comparison: In Mac’s first three games as a rookie, the Pats were 1-2 as he threw two TD passes and three interceptions and averaged 243 passing yards as the Pats scored 57 points; Zappe has two wins and a loss in OT to Green Bay when he’s thrown four TD passes and one pick and averaged 199 yards per game as they scored 90 points, with the D chipping in 14 of them. Mac’s first 300-yard passing game came in Week 7; Zappe got his Sunday. All of which Coach B will have to mull in the immediate future. The one thing that is certain is that after what he’s seen of his rookie so far there is no need to rush Mac back until he’s fully healthy.

Roberts Leads Dodgers Off Early Post-Season Cliff, Again
Our day was made Saturday when foolish decisions made by the biggest robot manager of them all, Dave Roberts, brought down the Dodgers again in the postseason, this time by yanking starter Tyler Anderson with a 3-0 lead in their win-or-go-home Game 4 vs. San Diego, even though he’d only thrown 86 pitches and was cruising along with a two-hit shutout after five innings. In comes their bullpen and, as John Madden would say, BOOM, an immediate five-run explosion as Roberts once again let down his team with robot managing to turn an in-control 3-0 lead into a 5-3 loss, removing L.A. from the playoffs early for the ninth time in 10 years. Moral of the story: Managers need to act in the moment and not let stat geek law of averages dictate every move because they’re just averages.

How You’ll Know If Celtics Are In Trouble Without Ime
The Celtics opened their season on Tuesday as one of the favorites to go to the NBA Finals. But I’m not sure. First there is the obvious issue of Robert Williams being out until perhaps sometime in December. You may recall after he had surgery last March I said in no way should they rush him back before he’s fully healthy for short-term gain, because his game is his legs and they were risking that. Now after missing several playoff games due to knee soreness he’s had a second operation. So I’ll need to assess whether he’ll be the same destructive defensive force again before I’ll join the crowd.
Second is how the team adjusts to untested 34-year-old head coach Joe Mazzulla in the wake of the Ime Udoka mess. You may recall that before they became spring darlings last year they were an incredibly frustrating bunch until Udoka finally got through in early January. That led to getting Marcus Smart to play like a real point guard instead of chucking up every three in sight. Ditto for Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, who helped turn the season around by making them harder to defend by taking to the basket as the first option. The question is, was that a learned behavior or did it happen because a forceful coach stayed on their backs to make them change?
The first sign will be their shot selection. If it was learned, good things will happen. If not it likely means the stars aren’t listening to their coach and that will lead to frustration in the cheap seats again.

The Bogaerts Dilemma
Since he’s looked up to as the face of the franchise, re-signing Xander Bogaerts if he opts out of his contract seems like an easy choice. But for the Red Sox brass it’s actually more like playing chess than checkers.
First there is the fact that he knows Texas gave a lesser and far less durable Corey Seager $330 million guaranteed over 10 years last winter. So the market is set, making the Sox’ decision how many years do they want to give a 31-year-old shortstop? Complicating that decision is the fact that their minor-league shortstop Marcelo Mayer is among the top prospects in all of baseball, which puts him two years away at most. Do they want to give a long-term deal to a guy who will likely change positions in two years? And if so, where does he go? Third base or maybe a late-career move to center field like Robin Yount made to pave the way for a shortstop no one remembers today? Or if he goes to third, what happens to Raffy Devers, who’ll be up for an expensive long-term deal next year?
If Devers goes to first (where he should play), what about the highly thought of Triston Casas,

who’s been ticketed as the first baseman of the future for two years? Do they then trade him?
The decision is, are they a team that wants to compete now or one aiming for the future? So the options are (a) build around Mayer and Casas, then keep Bogey for veteran leadership and trade Devers now for help elsewhere; (b) let Bogey walk, sign the younger Devers and move Trevor Story short-term; (c) go big payroll, keep the stars, move Devers to first and trade Casas, or (d) keep all four — move Bogey to center in 2023 and trade Story to free up payroll.
I say D. Which would you do?

Email Dave Long at [email protected].

Round 2 of the MLB playoffs is now underway.

First, boo to the new best-of-three format for the Wild Card round. I liked starting it all off with winner-takes-all games to give it drama off the bat. Second, sorry, I just can’t call the Cleveland team the Guardians. I’m fine with the Buckeyes or Cleveland’s baseball team, but I don’t like “Guardians.” Third, I’m not sure giving up seven earned runs in his playoff start is why Mets owner Steve Cohen gave Max Scherzer an astonishing $49 million per to be their ace.

With that out of the way, let’s recap notable moments and Longshots Awards for the 2022 regular baseball season.

Most notably, it was a year of historic achievements at Albert Pujols became just the fourth person to reach 700 homers, Miguel Cabrera became the newest member of the 500 homers and 3,000 hits club and Aaron Judge broke Roger Maris’s hallowed Yankees record (and, oh yeah, for the AL as well) for most homers hit in a season with 62.

Baseball 101: There are seven members of the 500/3,000 club. Name the six who did it before Cabrera.

Want to know how much the game has changed from the olden days? Once upon a time the 155 homers hit by the Red Sox was a respectable team total. The supposedly power-laden Big Red Machine that beat the Sox in the 1975 World Series hit just 124, and 141 when they beat the Yanks the next year. But today 155 ranked 20th overall as seven teams hit 200 or more.

In case you’re interested: No one reached 200 hits for the season. The Dodgers’ Freddy Freeman led the majors with 199. He was also the leader in doubles with 47. J.D. Martinez was fourth with 43.

But what ever happened to the triple, as the most astonishing stat is not one player hit double figures in triples? The leader was Cleveland shortstop Amed Rosario with 9. Not too long ago Curtis Granderson had a 20-20-20 year in doubles, triples and homers when he hit 38-23-23 with Detroit back in 2007.

Talk the Balk Award: Miami Marlins hurler Richard Bleier for balking three times in the same at-bat to become the first to do that since 1900. He did it while pitching to the Mets’ Pete Alonso to let NL batting champ Jeff McNeil come all the way around from first base to score without the benefit of a ball even being pitched! Weirdly, Bleier had never committed even one balk in his 303 MLB appearances prior to that. He avoided getting a fourth by being tossed for arguing after the third one, but only after retiring Alonso. The Marlins won 6-4 despite Bleier’s historic night.

Baseball 101 Answer: Cabrera joined Pujois, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, A-Rod, Rafael Palmeiro and Eddie Murray in the 500/3,000 club.

If the Mets outbid the Yanks to sign Judge it will give them a batting with three of the Top RBI guys from 2022. Judge and Alonso led with 131 and Fancisco Lindor was fifth with 107.

It had to be more than just losing their 2021 ace. But the dominos began falling when Kevin Gausman signed with Toronto as they tumbled from 107 wins a year ago to 81. Actually it probably started with the retirement of Giants great Buster Posey. And it helped that everyone had a big stats slide (except young’n Logan Webb) from 2021 and there were injuries. It basically made them to the NL what the Sox were to the AL: the major disappointment.

There was an actual 20-game winner in Atlanta’s Kyle Wright, who went 21-5 with a 3.17 ERA. He’s got my vote for the NL Cy Young award. But since wins don’t matter to the stat geeks, they’ll probably pick the WHIP leader.

Comeback Player: Guess Justin Verlander still has it. After coming back from almost two missed seasons due to Tommy John surgery, at 39 he amazingly went 18-4 in 28 starts with a 1.75 ERA. He should get the Cy Young (his third) in the AL.

In case you’re wondering: It was 35 homers, 82 RBI and .269 for Mookie Betts in L.A. while trademate Alex Verdugo went for 11-74-.280.

Yankees announcer Michael Kay’s call of Judge’s 62nd homer goes into the Top 5 Worst Calls of a Giant Sports Moment of all-time. Zero drama in the voice like an astonished Howard Cosell bellowing DOWN GOES FRAZIER, DOWN GOES FRAZIER after George Foreman shockingly dropped Joe Frazier with a thunderous right 2 minutes into Round 1 of their 1973 title fight. And worse, he talked all through Judge’s trip around the bases. The cardinal rule is make the call, then shut up to let the crowd and team reactions carry the moment. Like Joe Buck’s dad Jack saying after a barely able to walk Kirk Gibson’s pinch hit walkoff homer off Dennis Eckersley in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series, “I DON’T BELIEVE WHAT I JUST SAW!” Then just crowd noise. Which is what Joe did when the Sox ended the curse in Game 4 of the 2004 series.

Speaking of which, the enduring argument for 2022 will be, given the suspicion from the era, is the real homer record the 62 hit by Judge or the 73 of Barry Bonds hit in 2001?

Oddly it’s similar to 1961’s “Does the record belong to Roger Maris or the Babe?” as Nos. 60 and 61 came during the new 161-game schedule and after the old 154-game season Babe Ruth hit his 60 in. At that time Commissioner and Ruth binky Ford Frick gave it an asterisk to diminish what Maris did before it eventually disappeared to make Maris the King.

Finally, congrats to the retiring Eck after 50 years of excellence in baseball. He will be missed.

Email Dave Long at [email protected].

The dramatically disappointing 2022 local baseball season mercifully ended with John Henry’s team in last place for the fifth time in the last 10 seasons.

Let that seep in for a second. Yes, there were two World Series wins in that time and four overall since Henry and Tom Werner bought the team. Which, given the sense of futility since selling the Babe to the Yankees, is noteworthy.

But five last-place finishes in 10 years when they annually have a Top 5 is mind-boggling to me. Fittingly it ended in a series with the forever payroll-strapped Tampa Bay Rays, who for the fourth consecutive season finished ahead of Boston despite spending roughly $120 million less on payroll in 2022. The disparity has reached as high as $160 million while being skunked by TB as the Sox drew 7.1 million to Fenway to Tampa’s over 3.1 million.

For that giant attendance edge Sox ownership gave their fans a collective 275 wins and 267 losses while the Rays went 322-220 at the time this column was filed.

That is dramatic evidence that it’s not how much you spend, but how you spend it.

Which should put Chaim Bloom on notice he better do a much better job picking the groceries or it’ll be curtains for him in Boston next October — something that would happen this weekend if I owned the team, because Chaimball ain’t working for me.

Here are a few more thoughts on the season.

The MVP — Xander Bogaerts: I’m not a big fan of giving this award during this kind of season. But it’s likely his last here and I want to recognize his professionalism through this and every other season since he arrived.

Best Move — Michael Wacha: This one got a ho-hum reaction from me as it just didn’t seem that after drifting for several years he could re-capture the promise of his early career. But while not exactly the reincarnation of Iron Man McGinnity in pitching just 123 innings he did so by going 11-1 with a 3.06 ERA. Now the two questions are (1) can he do it again? and (2) can Chaim re-sign him after a solid make-good year?

Worst Deal — Many To Choose From: Jackie Bradley Jr. getting DFA’d in July after being traded for a guy who hit 28 homers is hard to look past. But for me it’s passing on Kyle Schwarber in free agency, which was made even more galling by the fact that the guy who was smart enough to sign him, Dave Dombrowski, was the guy Henry fired to bring Bloomball to Fenway.

Because after finishing second in MLB in homers with 44 (as I write this) they’d now have him for three more years at DH while J.D. is done in Boston after hitting just 13 this year.

Throw in the 28 Hunter Renfroe hit in Milwaukee after the Bradley deal and it’s a net loss of 59 (44+ 28 – 13) homers Chaim let walk out the door for basically nothing. And there’s also the 35 hit by Mookie Betts. Yikes!

Advice For 2023: This came from a reader two years ago, and I agree 100 percent. Given his durability and injury issues, the Sox should go to spring training with Chris Sale penciled in as the closer. With his never-ending injury/fatigue issues that annually surface after the All Star break, his arm would likely tolerate the 70 innings a closer throws rather than the 200 expected of a starter. Put him at the back end of the two-innings abilities of Garrett Whitlock and Tanner Houck and they can lock up the seventh, eighth and ninth innings regularly.

Advice For 2023 — The Sequel: Nate Eovaldi should get drinks for free in Boston for life for his tremendous extra-innings performance in Game 3 of the 2018 World Series. But, while he pitches well when he does it, he’s only made 35 starts in four-plus years here. So given their need for durability in the pitching staff I let him walk unless he comes back for a lot less money as the fifth starter.

Coming Attraction —Free Agency 2022: If you think the natives are restless now, wait until after re-upping Aaron Judge the Yanks sign Bogaerts to be their shortstop. Seeing him in pinstripes will make Red Sox Nation absolutely irate and it should.

Get to work, Chaim. You’re now on the clock.

Email Dave Long at [email protected].

The Celtics opened training camp on Tuesday for what almost everyone expected to be a season full of promise. At least until Thursday morning, when news of the Ime Udoka sex scandal broke.

I’ve been around long enough to see the Fritz Peterson–Mike Kekich family swap story, hear Wilt Chamberlain claim he slept with 25,000 women (which somehow didn’t stop him from scoring 100 points in a game or playing an incredible 48.3 minutes a game for an entire season), the Wade Boggs–Margo Adams girlfriend-on-the-road saga, and the daddy of them all, Tiger Woods derailing an all-time career with an array of extramarital affairs. But none threw a team’s season into chaos at Day 1 quite the way the Udoka story has.

For those who have been on Mars: Celtics Coach Ime Udoka was suspended for an entire year five days before training camp opened for violating team policy by having a consensual relationship with a co-worker/subordinate.

It triggered a number of stories and distractions large enough to overshadow the worrisome news that Rob Williams will be out for the next three months after another knee surgery.

All of which has everyone wondering if the tongues wagging will send the season south before it even gets started.

The distractions and ridiculous behavior that followed include:

News Item: Is There More To It?

I know this is the post-Harvey Weinstein Me Too era, but getting suspended for an entire year for one intra-office affair with a subordinate seems like overkill. Especially when the brass said they just learned of it in early July, which likely means he wasn’t continuing something after being told to stop earlier in the season. Maybe that’s all it was, but it makes me wonder when the other shoe will drop. Especially when you see 14-year NBA veteran Matt Barnes defend Udoka on Thursday and then retract that on his podcast the next day because he said when he got more facts it was “100 times” worse.

News Item: More Media Blather

First he correctly castigated Udoka for his role in the debacle. But then, in the most ridiculous newspaper column I’ve read (outside of politics) since Joe Barnea retired from the UL, Boston Globe basketball writer Gary Washburn went on to somehow blame the Celtics for the mess. Particularly vexing was the story being anonymously leaked to ESPN with a burner phone at 11 p.m. on Wednesday.

My question is, what difference does it make if it got out at 11 p.m., or 11 a.m. the next day? Because it didn’t change the story one bit.

As for who did it, my guess is it was someone who didn’t like Ime in the organization or maybe from outside. Like, I don’t know, the boyfriend or husband of the woman (or women) Udoka was sleeping with.

News Item: Why Do We Need To Know?

I’ll admit I’m curious to learn the full story, but I don’t see why the Celtics have to tell us. Washburn said Celtics fans deserve better after the Celtics press conference. Why? It’s a privately owned business, with employee privacy and legal liability issues at stake. And It’s hardly an important matter in the scheme of things. If you don’t like what they did, don’t watch. Like I quit being a Yankees fan after George Steinbrenner hired a convicted felon with mafia ties to dig on Dave Winfield.

We all have that choice here.

News Item: Social Media Does It Again

News flash: Social media is filled with gawking idiots and insensitive trolls. And they went right to work expressing who they thought the woman in question was. Washburn didn’t like it and intimated it was racist that the consensus settled on attractive Black women as the object of Udoka’s desire. I think it’s more likely the majority were sexist and settled on women most attractive to them as the likely candidate. Doesn’t make it right, or eliminate the discomfort of all the women, but that’s how those kinds of guys think.

News Item: What’s Next

It wasn’t all hysteria in the media. Chris Gasper wrote a solid analysis in the Boston Globe of why Brad Stevens taking over made the most sense. One that even included counter-arguments to his belief 34-year-old Joe Mazzulla is top young and inexperienced to take over for Udoka, which I agree with, even though I disagree with his contention that Stevens not being on top of his game his final three years as coach was because of burnout. I think it was because he fell in love with the 3-ball no matter what kind of shot it was, and got run over by the players, which led to all sorts of on-court issues and bad habits.

But given the situation, Gasper is right — Stevens is the best choice.

Now let’s see how it unfolds.

Email Dave Long at [email protected].

A few thoughts on interesting sports stories in recent weeks.

Count me as enthusiastically on board with the new 12-team college football championship tournament to start as early as 2024.

I love that champs from the six top leagues automatically make it, there will be six at-large bids and the four highest-ranked teams get an opening week bye.

The Boston Globe headline reading, “Six fumbles, two interceptions, and just 29 rushing yards” told all you needed to know as BC lost its home opener to Rutgers. But how does a football team with eight turnovers only lose by one point, 22-21?

Suspending George Steinbrenner for life is what got Fay Vincent fired as Baseball Commissioner in 1990 because the remaining owners didn’t want an employee with that kind of power over them. Hence Milwaukee owner Bud Selig replaced him. So give NBA commish Adam Silver props for having the stones to suspend Suns owner Robert Sarver a year for the range of abuses investigators uncovered.

Props also to Brad Stevens for not panicking after Danilo Gallinari went down with a torn ACL. Better off first giving Sam Hauser a shot as the bench three-point bomber to save their meager cap space/injury exemption for the better options available in February at the trade deadline or buy out market if he’s not the answer.

Who else saw the irony in Danny Ainge getting back (with the usual boatload of top picks) Collin Sexton in Utah’s trade of Donovan Mitchell to Cleveland? The now 23-year-old 20-point scorer was the lottery pick sent to Cleveland to get Kyrie Irving in 2017.

Amid the excitement of Aaron Judge’s chase to pass Babe Ruth and Roger Maris for the single-season AL home run record and, more importantly, most in Yankees history is the absolute lunacy of analytics’ impact on baseball, as when manager Aaron Boone batted him lead-off on a team with 7, 8 and 9 hitters hovering around the Mendoza line (.200) and also getting few walks. My baseball analytics say this: With no one on base in the first at-bat for the team’s best RBI guy, and thanks to the stiffs in front of him getting on base twice every 10 at-bats during his next three, instead of the nearly five that would be on if batting clean-up, he’ll hit with roughly 300 fewer guys on base over 150 games. Case in point: When he hit numbers 56, 57, 58 and 59 last week, three were solo homers and the fourth had one guy on. I’d like to hear the stat geeks explain the benefit of that.

Here’s a stark illustration of what pitching is today vs. in the era when men were men, even when a guy is pitching great, as Arizona’s Zac Gallen did when he recently tied back-in-the-day-ers Orel Hershiser and Don Drysdale (plus Zack Greinke) for the all-time record of making six straight starts without allowing a run.

The difference is that Gallen never made it past the seventh inning in any of his starts while throwing 41.1 innings. For Drysdale it was six complete game shutouts, while Hershiser matched that and needed to go extra innings once to earn the all-time record at 59.

That’s two full games’ worth of innings more than Gallen. How can those feats be considered the same thing?

Hey, Matt Patricia, what’s the over-under in Patriots games for when you’ll finally call a few screen passes to help reduce the pressure on Mac Jones?

The “I did not know that” fact of the week, courtesy of Concord sports aficionado Jeff Smith via Facebook: While I saw the old man play a lot when he was hooping for Saint Anselm, I didn’t know Steelers tight end Patrick Freiermuth, who caught a TD vs. the Pats on Sunday, is the son of back in the day Hawks/Oyster River HS star John Freiermuth.

Best comic line I’ve heard from a broadcaster in a long time came from Ian Eagle during Sunday’s Patriots-Pittsburgh game. His partner Charles Davis made a Seinfeld reference about Nelson Agholor taking the “marble rye” (Jerry stole one from an “old bag” in one episode) into the end zone after a leap over and snatch away from the defender. Eagle followed that during the replay by saying that “was real and spectacular,” which is what Teri Hatcher said to end a show Jerry spent trying to find out if her, ah, impressive anatomy was real or enhanced. Yada, yada, yada.

Glad the aforementioned Eagle also cleared up why Pittsburgh is finally retiring the number of Steelers great Franco Harris 40 years after he last played. Turns out it’s to coincide with the 50th anniversary of his “Immaculate Reception” that stuck a dagger much deeper into the heart of Raiders Nation than the tuck rule did in early 2002. Makes perfect sense since it is unchallenged as the NFL’s most shocking ending and one of its greatest games.

Incidentally, my introduction to Harris came when he played with Lydell Mitchell at Penn State in one of the greatest college backfields ever. In those days WPIX in New York used to air condensed one-hour versions of PSU games on Sunday mornings. I watched every week, but thanks to the quirky delivery of whoever the announcer was, it was almost two seasons before I realized he was not the hard-running Irish fullback named Frank O’Harris I thought he was, but instead the son of an Italian mom and English dad named Franco Harris.

I hope all the LIV golfers taking Saudi Arabia blood money saw the gut-wrenching 60 Minutes special on the bravery and brutal sacrifice of the FDNY on 9-11 and its aftermath that ran on the 21st anniversary, ’cause their being so tied to that attack is one of the things SA is trying to whitewash with their golf PR campaign.

Email Dave Long at [email protected].

With Week 1 gone and 16 games still left to play, here are a few people worth keeping an eye on before the Pats see them at some point as the season unfolds.

Bill Belichick: After Sunday’s 20-7 loss to Miami, he remains at 321 career wins. Thus he still needs four more to move past NFL founder George Halas’s 324 into second place for all time in career coaching wins, and that would then be 26 behind the 347 of all-time leader Don Shula, a guy who made the chase a little more personal by calling Coach B “Beli-cheat” after the spy-gate nonsense of 2007. I always thought that was a jealously petty shot by Shula to diminish the Pats’ attempt at surpassing Shula’s undefeated Dolphins of 1972 by finishing 19-0.

It gets a little murky between regular wins and overall wins, however, as today’s expanded playoff format helped Coach B to a 31-19 lead over Shula in post-season wins.

All of which means the 70-year-old Belchick will need three full seasons averaging nine wins per to pass Shula, while Papa Bear hopefully will be in the rear view mirror in October. While Belichick has the expanded playoffs on his side, Halas did his damage in 40 years, Shula 33, while it’ll be just 31 for Belichick if he gets there in three years.

As for hardware, he, Halas and back in the day Packers coach Curly Lambeau are tied with six NFL title teams each, while Shula was a paltry 2-5 in NFL title games, which includes somehow losing to the Jets in SB3.

Josh McDaniels: Guys rarely get a third chance when they flunk out after being a hot-shot head coach. So he’s on a personal hot seat in Year 1 with Oakland, er, I mean Las Vegas after his fairly disastrous turn in Denver. But that was over 10 years ago and that’s a lot more time than Coach B had before coming to New England for Round 2 after he was fired by Cleveland. By the time Vegas and the Pats meet on Dec. 18, we’ll know how his second chance has started, and whether the Pats’ O has survived his departure.

Tyreek Hill: While his departure didn’t seem to bother Patrick Mahomes much as he threw for five TDs in KC’s Week 1 44-21 blowout of Phoenix, he did occupy the Patriots’ attention all afternoon in Miami’s 20-7 win with eight catches (on 12 targets) for 94 yards. That helped distracted attention from game MVP Jaylen Waddle. Why? Because speed kills, which Bill B should have addressed in the off-season by trading for a proven ready-on-Day 1 home run hitter instead of drafting a maybe one in Round 2.

Hill will show us all why twice each year until at least 2026.

Jonathan Taylor: My friend the insurance mogul Dick Lombardi was right that I missed a lot by not paying attention when he was killing it in college at Wisconsin. My loss. After last season’s 1,811 rushing yards he’s 20 shy of 3,000 yards in two seasons and already has 29 TDs and averaged 5.3 a carry. He got off the same in Sunday’s 20-20 tie in Houston with 161 (5.2 per) and a TD. They (gulp) see him and Indy on Nov. 6.

The QBs: The Patriots defense will have its hands full as they face two guys drafted ahead of Mac Jones in 2021, along with three MVP contenders.

Zach Wilson and Justin Fields: Both were thoroughly outplayed by Mac in their rookie seasons. So besides rookie mistakes and dumb injuries, not much is on their resumes yet. Wilson is already hurt and expected to miss the Jets’ first month, But Fields got off nicely by beating fellow 2021 draftee Trey Lance by throwing for two scores in Chicago’s 19-10 upset of the ’49ers.

Lamar Jackson: He comes to Foxboro in Week 3. He’s an MVP winner once already, but took Baltimore’s sure playoff mid-season spot with him when he went out for the season in Week 12 last year. This is always the fear/risk when a QB’s game revolves around running as much as his does. But when he’s healthy, watch out, as his production as a runner is what makes him so dangerous and fun to watch.

Aaron Rodgers: Not a huge fan, but there’s no denying how good the reigning MVP is in the regular season. And now that the Green Bay brass caved to his “trade me or else” snit, they’ll see him in Week 4 at GB.

Josh Allen: All I can say about him is, I was right after being all in on him despite an up and down rookie year, and all the local media geniuses (Michael Felger, Tony Mazz and the Globe’s Ben Volin) mocking him as a bust during his early years were dead wrong. He’s a beast who crushed NE twice last year and who started the same way last Thursday night as Buffalo thumped the defending champs to give more credence to him as my pick for MVP.

Sean McVay: They won’t see him, but if you’re looking for who has the best chance to eventually pass Shula or Belichick’s final total, look no further. Hired at 31, he’s got an eight-year head start on Coach B and had 55 wins in his first five seasons to Coach B’s 36. He made his first SB in Year 3 and got his first SB win in Year 5. For BB both came in Year 7. Even his coaching tree is better. Zac Taylor got Cincy to the SB in Year 3 and Matt LaFleur is 39-10 in three years with GB while Bill’s assistants have mostly failed as head coaches.

Interestingly the guy with NFL best winning percentage (.759) also started at a really young age. John Madden was just 33 when Al Davis hired him to coach Oakland in 1969.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Email Dave Long at [email protected].