Friday Fun

It's one week until the NFL Draft. Let's get ready!

As noted, in less than a week, the NFL draft begins. I’ve been less obsessed with it than normal because of course the 49ers have far less premium picks than normal, having traded them away for Trey Lance and Christian McCaffrey. That said, they actually have 11 picks due to compensatory picks being awarded, and for everyone it’s a great time to nerd out and get optimistic about the future.

• And this is where I want to stress how much of a crapshoot the draft is. The best teams whiff regularly, and while there are typically seven picks in a draft for each team, if a team hits on two or three of those picks, it is considered a great draft. And folks focus on the 1st round picks (as they should) but not that there are so many great players who are drafted in the 2nd, 3rd and even later rounds.

• This is also the ‘silly season’ in that teams are trying to get leverage - whether it’s to send out smoke signals of who they might draft (to get folks to make a trade for that pick), or garner interest in players they want to trade, etc. Whenever a national reporter like Adam Schefter or Ian Rapaport talks about chatter like this, it’s because someone leaked them this to get it into the media ether. In the last week, 49ers fans have been subjected to one story that suggested Brock Purdy might not be healthy enough to play in 2023 at all (this was a VERY intentionally bad reading of a quote he gave where he said he feels great, but until he throws he has no idea what it will be like) and a new one that says the 49ers have been fielding calls for Trey Lance and that he’s likely to be traded by or just after the draft next week.

  

  Clearly, these BOTH cannot be true, as the team would not trade Lance if there was much concern about Purdy - and there’s also no way the team knows how healthy Purdy is at this point. I’m also sure that if a team came and offered a LOT for Lance, the team would consider it as they think Purdy is the future at QB, and they do have a capable (if fairly bad) veteran backup in Sam Darnold. But this is also why I never take these discussions seriously. It’s all intentional rumors with an agenda. When you bite on that bait, you’re the fish.

• I posted here a week or two ago that I was really disappointed with Ted Lasso, and as such I should state that this week’s episode which took place mostly in Amsterdam was really, really good.

  

  The fact that Hannah Waddingham can look this adorable AND was the Septa chanting “Shame! Shame!” Shame!” in Game of Thrones continues to be baffling stuff.

  Did it need to be an hour long? It did not. But it felt a lot like the first two seasons in how silly it was, how sweet it was, etc. I think some part of that was eliminating (for this week) the Keeley story as it’s absolutely trying to tell way too many stories this season. (We also didn’t need the Leslie jazz musician bit, which felt a bit like someone watched too much Duke Silver on Parks & Recreation, but I still enjoyed it.) Given how much misery we’ve seen Rebecca go through this season, I liked her story here (even if we’re supposed to believe its going to be a one time thing, which … no chance) and the Colin storyline resolved in a surprisingly positive way I didn’t see coming. Good stuff.

  

• In a similar vein, this entire season of The Mandalorian has felt … iffy. It’s tonally been a lot more juvenile and goofy which is fine, but not the show I signed up for. But the season finale? Holy buckets, was that worthwhile. Totally satisfying stuff. Well done.

  

• I can’t even TALK about Succession this season - it’s so good I don’t want to tempt fate. Knowing that we’re wrapping this all up, it makes me eager to revisit my Top 25 TV shows to move it way up the rankings, a temptation I’ll need to resist in order to not overreact. But this is easily the best TV show currently on air, and I’ll hear no counterarguments.

• The greatest golfer of all time, Tiger Woods (and yes, Jack Nicklaus exists and is the greatest Champion golfer of all time), announced this week that he’s had yet another surgery and hopes to be back golfing on tour soon.

  

Actually, the note doesn’t SAY he hopes to be back competing and while I absolutely love watching Woods play golf, I sort of hope he hangs it up. Through repeated injuries suffered through the sport and his off-field issues, his body is a shell of his former self. Watching things like this is not fun for anyone.

It would be truly sad if in 15-20 years he couldn’t even be an honorary starter at The Masters because he’s too broken. Just get healthy and play money games at your club while driving a cart, and enjoy watching your kids grow up where you can still play against them casually. Tiger is a grown man and can make his own decisions but … I hope he’s thinking about the long-term, not just the immediate future.