Posts Tagged ‘NFL’
Frozen Observations
Getting out of bed on mornings when the temperature outside is below zero and the first order of business involves walking a dog and tending to horses, takes an extra level of oomph that gets harder and harder to muster. Even Asher chose to stay in bed for an extra few minutes this morning after Cyndie opened the door of his crate.
But greet the day we must, and soon we found ourselves plodding along the North Loop trail on the snowless frozen tundra. I don’t know what depth the frost has reached at this point, but not very far beneath our land, the water table is still liquid. Hydrostatic pressure is pushing it up above ground where it freezes in slippery growing mounds on our trail.
Asher had no interest in lingering after the horses were taken care of because the pads of his feet were getting almost as cold as Cyndie’s fingers. The little black pigeon that I have taken to calling “Plucky,” must have been suffering from cold feet, too. After pecking away at the cracked grains beneath where Swings was eating and having spillage from Swings’ mouth shower its feathers, the fearless bird chose to perch on Light’s back.
To a bird’s feet, that must feel like standing on an electric blanket.
Our agenda for the day involves taking Asher up to the lake with us for a single overnight visit in order to meet a contractor tomorrow for a quote on carpentry work, both indoors and out. It’s tricky figuring out what to bring for such a short getaway that will still involve walking a dog in extremely cold temperatures.
We have horse duties covered for tonight and tomorrow morning, but that’s it, so we need to return by dinnertime tomorrow.
Tonight will be a big night for NFL fans as my Minnesota Vikings will be doing battle in Detroit against the Lions in a single-game competition that will determine Division Champion and playoff seeding. It is hard for my tiny mind to perceive that some people will be oblivious to the significance. It’s as if there might be other issues of greater importance in this world.
Not to the 8-year-old boy in me!
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Interesting Conditions
Here’s something I find interesting: The NFL team I have been a fan of for my entire life, the Minnesota Vikings, has exceeded most expectations to reach 14 wins in 16 games in 2024. We fans always wish for success like this, but I never expected such impressive results to happen this year.
Even more interesting is the fact that the Detroit Lions, who have been the better team for the last two years, are in the same Division as Minnesota, and the schedule has us facing each other next week in the last game of the regular season that will determine the Division champion and number one seed in the playoffs.
Very interesting.
Meanwhile, our weather continues to hover around the freezing point, causing the persistent fog to freeze on surfaces overnight and melt to merely wet during the day.
The way it froze on the driveway was really interesting. When I stepped out just an hour later, most of that had melted. Most being the keyword because there were still slippery spots every so often, invisibly hiding in plain sight.
I’m ever so grateful that there is nowhere we need to be driving in these conditions.
Walking to the barn in the mornings is hard enough.
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Different Language
I had no idea how complex the language is in NFL play calling until I heard it in the Netflix docuseries, “Quarterback.” Wow. Just wow. When I played as a kid, we said things like, “Screen pass right” or “End around.” Now they rattle off a series of bizarre combinations of words that sound as though they were tossed together like a salad.
In addition, they scream it out so fast it makes my head spin. If I was tired, sweating profusely, and being bombarded by the sound of a stadium full of crazy fans shouting at the top of their lungs, I don’t think I could process what the quarterback was reciting.
Somehow, a majority of the time, 11 guys all function in unison to execute the word salad that the quarterback called out. It gives me a whole new respect for what those athletes are doing in this sport.
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This 3-quarterback glimpse (I’ve only watched the first 4 episodes so far) has also helped me to have a better feel for the abuse an NFL quarterback endures every time a defensive player is able to make solid contact.
I will forever remember the groaning sound Kirk Cousins made in the recording of one particular hit because he made that sound as he lay on the ground after the hit, as he walked toward the sideline when he got up and he continued that groan even after he plopped down on the team bench to recover.
There’s no denying the fact that I’m largely enjoying this series because one of the featured quarterbacks happens to be the starter for a team I grew up watching, the Minnesota Vikings, but I’m finding the episodes fascinating enough that I’m convinced it would be worth it even if my team wasn’t represented.
One thing I’ll take from watching this is a greater inclination to forgive a team for “Too Much Time” infractions between plays or other mental errors.
They all must be struggling to cope with speaking “football (American)” as a second language. FSL.
“Y whatever.” [watch episode 4 to grasp that reference…]
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Holding On
Sometimes it feels like sanity in public society is precariously hanging on by mere threads. Scaremongering. Election deniers who are unable to provide evidence to support their wild range of accusations of widespread fraud. Crazy claims continue to survive the passage of time without losing momentum over the lack of reality-based proof. No, they just seem to grow the way wind-blown wildfires do.
I don’t understand it.
Why doesn’t truth snuff out the flames? Why aren’t healthy-minded people able to drown out the extremely offensive antisemitic and racist noise emanating from too many varieties of modern media?
It’s spookier than Halloween, I tell ya.
A full-sized Snickers would go a long way toward distracting me from how thin the tenuous line of healthy thinking is holding society together.
What should we believe? That kids will don wild costumes and roam door to door in neighborhoods to holler for tricks and treats?
Preposterous.
There is something else I don’t understand. How does a quarterback heave a football sixty yards downfield so that it reaches a racing receiver who is running at full speed and still able to look up at the last second as the ball drops perfectly within easy reach while all manner of defensive mayhem is unleashed around both guys?
Have you ever wondered what it would be like if NFL players dropped to the ground, writhing in pain each time an opponent committed a penalty against them? I’m poking fun at you, FIFA Men’s World Cup contenders.
I have yet to figure out how to reconcile the discontentment over the questionable (ahem…bribes?) award back in 2010 of this year’s World Cup to Qatar. Add to that the controversial treatment of immigrant laborers needed to build the infrastructure of stadiums and other facilities to support the global sporting event and the need to reschedule the tourney to the northern hemisphere winter season due to the average high temperature of the desert nation. It all feels just plain wrong trying to fully enjoy the game competitions under the tarnished situation of awarding Qatar the honor of hosting.
I suppose I could wear a black band on my arm while watching the games.
All these issues are meaningless to our horses. They are holding on to their sanity by simply being horses. I’m not sure they sense the climate is changing but they are vividly aware of how many warm, dry, and sunny days in a row we have been experiencing for months. It has become common lately to find the four of them gathered along the far fence of the hay field taking turns laying down to nap in the mid-morning sunshine.
When I feel like I’m barely holding on to my healthy mindset, my favorite remedy involves an extended quiet visit with the herd of horses.
Even though it feels weird to be outside in short sleeves at the end of October.
Happy Halloween!
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Super Sunday
It’s finally here. The big NFL game is happening in Minnesota this year and the hyped up media have whipped things into a frenzy for the last few days. I will be glad when it is all just a memory and we can get back to normal around in the Twin Cities.
Visitors were treated to a day of beautiful falling snow yesterday, and this morning, below zero cold with dangerous wind chills. This is the way we do winter.
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I gave Delilah a workout yesterday, making her leap through deep snow in an off-trail walk across some of our fields. I tried to capture the beauty of the falling flakes in the shot back toward the barns, and ended up getting one little blurry flake to show up.
At the time I pulled out the camera, we were out on a wind-swept slope covered by hardly any snow. Delilah took great fascination with some scent that grabbed her attention and scratched at the frozen ground, layed down and rubbed her fur against it repeatedly.
Now I need to go out and plow.
That’s another way we do winter.
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Thinking Ahead
One of the things about writing daily for a blog is the consistency of repeatedly coming upon the start of a new month. It keeps happening over and over again, I tell you. Like clockwork. Like turning pages of a calendar.
Somehow, we have reached the beginning of the month of August. Goodbye, July.
If I were sincerely successful in achieving the art of always living in the present moment, this transition to a new month would take on a lot less significance. But, August just oozes end of summer and throws me headlong into mental images of September.
The local media can’t stop talking about the great Minnesota State Fair already, which is the very definition of the start of September to me.
Cyndie served up locally grown sweet corn for dinner last night, because they grocery store had just received a batch and staff were in process of setting it out as she walked by the display. Summer may be a time for corn on the cob, but just-picked sweet corn is a delight that happens in August here and it always seems to end as quickly as it starts. If I blink while eating it, the school year will be starting by the time my eyes open.
And if ‘back to school’ ads in every form aren’t bad enough, the frighteningly early appearance of school buses on the road in August distorts every effort to avoid the trap of thinking ahead. Bus drivers are busy training and learning routes, so my mind leaps to planning how to time my travels to miss their constant stopping when the kids show up.
News reports from NFL training camps are all triggering a dormant remnant of youthful passion for the sport that always finds ways to rekindle within me despite my better judgement. Football is a mashup of fall associations that pulls all the way into winter and a playoff season that flows past the new year.
That definitely goes against staying grounded in the here and now.
Ultimately, there is one aspect that towers above all the rest of the issues of August. One that tears me away from the present moment in an ever-so-subtle –yet not so subtle at all– change that is absolutely happening in the precise minutes of each and every late-July/early-August day. It is the constant slipping of the sunrise and sunset times.
The first time I notice it is suddenly dark when I am leaving for work in the morning, I feel an uncanny urge to wear a flannel shirt. I start wondering where I stashed my driving gloves last April. I notice a nagging compulsion to fill the firewood rack on the back deck.
Today may only be August 1st, but this time of year unleashes a flood of energy dragging me uncontrollably ahead into September and beyond.
Actually, it’s all probably just a symptom of the powerful true root cause… Autumn is my absolute favorite time of year.
Happy August everyone!
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Reluctant Fan
Two nights in a row now, I have stayed up past my bedtime to see evening entertainment. Last night it was the NFL Minnesota Vikings. I call myself a reluctant fan because I don’t like how the league and the games have changed over time.
I grew up in a household where Minnesota sports were always on the TV or radio. We had season tickets to the Vikings games starting back from the time the team arrived to the state.
If I couldn’t go to the games in person, I wanted to watch them on television. That television coverage is part of what killed the game for me. TV networks took over and began to control the timing of the breaks. I lost my love of watching the games in person.
Eventually, I lost interest in watching my team fail. Other things claimed that time slot for me and I figured I had broken the spell. I was free of the game’s allure.
That was before my old home team began to show signs of being successful again. The pull at the beginning of each season is hard to resist, so I tend to check them out, just in case they might perform well.
This year, it was made more dramatic by the loss of our quarterback right before the season was about to start. All the excited anticipation went out the door in a blink and our usual inevitable doom seemed to settle in before we had a chance to get started.
If that wasn’t enough, we lost our star running back in the second game. A smarter me would have bailed on the team right away. But something happened.
We won games. We put up good stats. We started earning respect, reminding me of teams of old, when I was a kid.
Against my better judgement, I slinked my way onto the bandwagon. The coaching staff seem to be leading the team the way winners do, and they are succeeding despite the loss of key players.
They are making me feel young again.
The pessimist in me is wondering how long this is gonna last, but the kid in me is going to just enjoy the ride for as far as it is able to carry me.
Like a fan, only with a little bit of baggage… called reluctance.
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Losing Effort
I imagine that watching Minnesota Vikings football is a little like having bought a ticket to the lottery, but I can’t say for sure, because I don’t buy lottery tickets. I would guess that a lottery ticket provides inspiration to dream of becoming independently wealthy. A Vikings fan can only hope for the possibility their team won’t come up short of a necessary victory.
I have suffered the psychological abuse of being a Vikings fan my entire life. It’s been hard, because the franchise has often fielded great teams of incredible athletes. When I was a kid, the team was respected by fans and foes for having a dominating defense. The Minnesota Vikings were good teams and won enough games to earn their way to 4 Superbowls, from which they came away losers, all 4 times.
It’s the repeated dashing of hopes that begins to feel like some kind of a mental endurance test.
Yesterday’s game was one of the worst kind. Leading for most of the playoff game, then falling behind late, and finally achieving a position on the field where they had a chance to win as time runs out. The field goal attempt was wide left. Game over.
Season over.
Hopes dashed.
I wonder what I would do with a billion dollar lottery win.
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Sports Spectating
There was a big sports championship waged yesterday in the U.S., ending the National Football League season for another year. Congratulations to the fans of the Baltimore Ravens.
American football is a team sport, 11 vs. 11. Each play is a battle of eleven different 1-on-1 competitions. I think that is what provides much of the intrigue of our game.
When it comes to players on offense trying to execute a block, all they need to do is occupy the person to whom they are assigned, for the brief moment of play. Sometimes, it can be as simple as getting positioned between the defender and the ball carrier. The offensive team knows where the play is intended to go, so it would seem they have the advantage.
The defensive players are tasked with needing to quickly deduce what is happening, fight off or avoid the block, and then make a play for the ball.
Many of the individual match-ups on any given play, could probably be judged a draw. Then it comes down to a player who can be either a hero, or a goat, which may produce a gain, or loss, of particular significance.
For as slow as the actual 60-minutes of play-clock takes to run (games take around 3 hours), there is a lot of action that happens in each short burst. It is a pleasant distraction from the real world, while it lasts.
Now that we have arrived at the NFL off-season, I can return my discretionary attention to things that actually matter.
As if. I do still have the sport of hockey for frivolous entertainment, you realize. Yes, the truth is, I’m rather hopeless when it comes to the distractions of spectator sports.
Relative Something 