NIAGARA FALLS, NY: Happy Monday. We are officially in November, so we’re two months from the year’s end. And now we can see all of our snowbird friends getting ready to fly down south. With that said, let’s get to today’s topics: we’ve got the Rangers weekly review, the Knicks report, the WNBA Finals, and finally the New York football state of mind.
Rangers Weekly Review
The Rangers played only two games in the past week and lost both. I don’t want to blame the young goalie Dylan Garand, but it’s starting to look like the team is missing the leadership of a veteran goalie. It just looks like they’re giving up a lot of goals—I mean, the goals per game seem to be hitting at least three, so that’s a huge concern. You can’t win chasing like that.
It just seems like there are bad turnovers from guys trying to do too much, or the defense not picking up a man. I feel like sometimes when you have a safe vault of a goaltender, you can be sloppy and still win, and they don’t have that now. They have to be better, and I think that’s the challenge. Again, I think we need to trade for a better goaltender.
Knicks Week
The Knicks got their first win of the regular season, and their second win of the season against the Bulls. But they did take a loss in their first NBA Cup game against the Sixers.
Funny enough, people forget that the Knicks did the “brace”—as the British say—or the double: winning the NBA Cup and the NBA Finals, because America’s America. There’s no real treble or three-peat except, I guess, having the best regular-season record, being in the NBA Finals, and winning the NBA Cup. But nobody’s done that yet because the Cup is only three years old. Somebody’s going to do it in the next 10 years, I feel.
The only positive of the Knicks’ losses: the majority of the season’s losses have been by only like 5 points, so they’re in it. They just have to get a couple of things right, and I think they’re getting there. They still have to solve the Mitchell Robinson problem, which they haven’t.
WNBA Finals
Congratulations to the Golden State Valkyries. I do want to recognize the Atlanta Dream for playing in an incredible tournament and pushing it to seven games.
I also want to touch on the fact that they have to play Game 7 on Thursday at 12:30 in the afternoon to accommodate the fact that they couldn’t play it in their home stadium, which only seats 3,500. I think this whole drama has been made a little too big, although the Dream don’t go to the Hawks’ arena—they go to the Hawks’ state-of-the-art building. I just don’t understand: if the NCAA can arrange tournaments that have two games happening within hours of each other, how can the pros not do it? I mean, I guess when people buy those tickets, they buy for the whole two or three games, but you could clearly have a game tip off at like 5:00 and have the next game at 8:30 or 9:00. Start one game earlier instead of being late.
But the Valkyries, in only their second year, are now WNBA champions, and they’re probably the first WNBA 3.0 team to win a title. They’ve done great work in finding their talent and their coach, and they are an organization a lot of teams really need to start modeling. I’m looking at you, Chicago Sky.
NY Football State Of Mind
Buffalo Bills
The Bills beat the Ravens, and I mean, Bills fans are happy, but they really didn’t beat anybody.
Lamar Jackson, in his first game back after three weeks out with an injury, was injured on the first play. Literally the first play. Tyler Huntley goes in, plays about a quarter before he, too, gets injured, and then undrafted emergency quarterback Joe Fagnano ends up finishing the game. He played three quarters and did all right, but he was overwhelmed, as you can imagine.
What annoyed me is the Ravens didn’t run nearly as much as they should have to protect this young quarterback. They went to a lot of spread offense, and I don’t know where this idea came from that if you have Derrick Henry, you give him maybe 15 touches all game.
The Bills looked a little sloppy with bad turnovers, but again, the Ravens made turnovers and the rookie wasn’t going to figure out that defense. So Buffalo did what was expected, pulled away, and won big.
NY Jets
The J-E-T-S lost a game they could have won again. I don’t know if Aaron Glenn has a three-year plan, but this second year you’re supposed to be here being competitive, and they just definitely aren’t.
The offense put up a bunch of numbers, but the defense couldn’t stop anything, and when they needed a stop, they didn’t get it until all the timeouts were used. I don’t even think they got a stop out of it—they got a stop because the Raiders just wanted to crash it up one yard, one yard, and kick the field goal to force the Jets to have to score a touchdown.
And then the Jets had it on the Raiders’ 35-yard line with 14 seconds left, needing a touchdown, and they did a Hail Mary, which I disagree with. They could run somebody out to the flat and do a little quick pass and with maybe six seconds left be at the 20, forcing the Raiders to actually have to defend and bring an actual rush.
It’s the same thing as the last few losses: it’s all about situational football, and how it doesn’t matter how many decent stops the opposing offense makes—if you get the stop when you need to stop them on the punt, then everything they did before was essentially worthless. And the same goes for the offense: when you get inside the five-yard line, you need a touchdown, so you don’t need field goals when it’s there, and from the two, you have to find a way to punch it in.
Come back tomorrow for The Big Aristotle.
