The NFL Seriously Had The Audacity To Troll Us With A Promo Commercial For This Upcoming Season's "Script".

USA Today - After a 2022 season full of thrills and chills, the NFL needs 2023 to be an epic follow-up. As such, the league and some of its biggest stars are already preparing a “script” — an unsubtle joking nod to the idea that Super Bowl 57’s final score was predetermined.

In a new video shared by the NFL’s Twitter account, actor Keegan Michael-Key leads a table read for the script of the 2023 season. He asks various stars — from Ja’Marr Chase and Justin Fields to Jalen Ramsey — for proposals on how to spice up this fall’s “story.”

Eventually, one of the writers even proposes writing Patrick Mahomes out of the narrative entirely after his dominance atop pro football. Of course, everyone uproariously agreed:

The audacity! The gall! 

Aside from Kirk Cousins stealing the show, 

and the idea of writing Patrick Mahomes entirely out of the script/season (something that Chiefs fans might not find too funny, considering how he finished last seasons Super Bowl run basically on life support) this commercial STUNK!

(I'll admit, Dexter Lawrence's dance moves were semi-impressive)

Catching passes with your abs D.K. Metcalf?

Retrofitting your legs with wheels Justin Fields? And don't even pretend to make light about "banning sacks", because as Andy Reid will tell you, we're already well on our way to that happening.

Catching a ball with no hands Ja'Marr Chase? 

Kelce and his mom were good, I love a good joke about older women wanting to bone Pretty Jimmy as much as the next guy.

But the rest of this stuff stunk.

I know you guys didn't write these "jokes" yourselves, but you gotta know when lame is lame and put your foot down and tell the dorks who did that you're not reading that on camera. 

Who were these fools who wrote this shit anyway? It sure wasn't the Nate Dawg I'll tell you that much.

Had it been Nate writing this commercial script, actual jaws would have been on the floor, like these, the entire clip.

As well as ours at home watching. 

(Sidebar - by now everybody knows, but it was seriously astonishing watching Nate whip out his spider monkey mask last night and go full Jeffrey Ross on everybody. He wasn't going after low hanging fruit like Portnoy does either. He was going after the biggest big shots in the company. Right from the jump. At one point I heard somebody at the table behind me comment, "Is he trying to get fired"? To which Zah replied, "No, Nate is just a savage. I've been trying to tell everybody for years." 

It was unbelievable to witness. 

I'm proposing, based on it, that for the Barstool 25th anniversary ceremony we do what Dave's been dreaming of with his "Evening Of Hate" event. He gets to get on stage and destroy everybody he wants for 2 hours. Get it all out in front of everybody. And get his main targets up there on stage if possible. Sitting at a dais. But when he's done, the ten people on stage sitting at the dais, get to turn the tables and roast him and whoever else they want. Like a reverse-roast of sorts. We'll promote it for a few months rather than a couple of weeks, and sell tickets for $40 bucks instead of $200, and sell the bitch out. Will be great times.)

But back to the NFL and them mocking us with this shit.

This is the ultimate diversion tactic that I'm sure some slick public relations firm they hired came up with, because they're worried about growing public sentiment distrusting officiating (don't forget how extra-extra-extra awful it was last year).

"Hey Roger, what if we leaned into the conspiracy theory, publicly acknowledging it and making light of the whole thing? That way people think you're not only aware of the skepticism, but you think it's so ridiculous you're running commercials about it with featuring your biggest stars?"

"Brilliant idea"

I wrote a blog last season that couldn't be published, for obvious reasons, at the time. Being technically, a gambling company, I should have known and not even wasted my time, but Mike Florio made some pretty damning comments that went very under the radar and should have been a bigger deal in my opinion. Considering how things have changed now, and Nicky Smokes was allowed to post a blog about the exact same subject, I'm going to try to sneak this in here. We'll see if it works.

But this all happened after this infamous call in the Washington and New York game, late in the season…

----Dante's Unpublished Blog From December 20, 2022----

Mike Florio Floated The Possibility of The NFL Having A Tim Donaghy Type Scandal On Its Hands After The Inexcusable Officiating This Weekend. And He's Dead On.

Pro Football Talk - As explained in Playmakers, the NFL initially was alarmed by the NBA’s Tim Donaghy scandal. Eventually, the NFL decided that it’s impossible for one official to have enough of an impact on the outcome of a game to create any real concern that what happened to basketball could happen to football.

I’ve generally believed that, too. While it’s difficult for one official to deliver a win or a cover, there are ways for individual officials to nudge things in a given direction.

Mainly, the judgment calls provide the opening. Roughing the passer. Pass interference. Holding.

We all discovered another one Sunday night, thanks to the away-from-the-ball, inconsequential illegal formation foul on Commanders receiver Terry McLaurin. Anyone who pays any reasonably close attention to football at any level knows that wideouts routinely communicate with officials to get in the right position, confirming that they are or aren’t lined up on or off the ball.

So the hashtag #NFLRigged was flying around everywhere on twitter on Sunday. And for good reason. 

Nate was all over this from the jump on Sunday Night, and again on Monday morning as the rest of the country's pitchforks came out. And rightfully so.

That flag was fucking outrageous. Especially given the circumstances. And incredibly shady. And I'm not even pissed off because I had Washington +4 and was banking on them tying it up and winning in OT. I mean I was but when you see a call like that, with a flag that late come in, and followed by the cout de gras on the Commanders final play of the game, 

Your cares for your five team parlay you had nailed the first four legs on go completely out the window. (Just kidding. It's fucking bullshit).

But back to Florio and the tremendous points he made - 

“Obligation” or not, the closest official typically assists with the process. And for good reason. The players want to be properly lined up. And the officials don’t want to bog the game down with hypertechnical fouls regarding the pre-snap positioning of players on the fringes of the play.

Also, beyond the question of whether the pattern and practice has created a de facto obligation to help is the question of whether officials should ever affirmatively mislead receivers, by acting as if everything is fine when the player isn’t properly aligned.

If you watch the video, seriously, go ahead and watch it again- 

and observe the linesman and McLaurin, you'll see McLaurin seems to seek a thumbs up that he's lined up correctly - something anybody who's ever played a down of pop warner, flag, or higher level football will tell you happens on every single down, of every single game- he gets the approval and then the official seems to place his hand on the flag, waiting to decide whether to throw it or not based on the outcome of the play!

This flag took the game-tying TD off the board. This wasn't a false start at the 45 with 10 minutes to go in the 3rd we're talking about. 

Whatever the explanation, it’s a bad look for the NFL, because it demonstrates that, yes, Virginia (and Maryland and D.C.), there is a pathway for serious officiating shenanigans.

I continue to believe the NFL isn’t rigged, in the sense that the NFL doesn’t ever “want” specific teams to win or lose. I worry that a given official could, given the prevalence and ease of legalized gambling, get sufficiently swept up in it to corrupt objectivity and fairness.

And, frankly, it’s exhausting to be on the front line of trying to tell fans who think that, for example, the league office doesn’t want Daniel Snyder’s team in the playoffs.

Florio didn't harp on the egregious no-call PI on the final play, but I will. 

It only exacerbates the belief that there was no way Washington was winning this game.

And this shit happens EVERY. SINGLE. WEEK.

Ask any Bears fan and they'll tell you, yes the Green Bay Packers are an elite team compared to theirs, no they don't need the ref's help in beating them on an annual basis, twice. But do they get some serious ridiculous calls? Absolutely. And it's not just against them. It's week in and week out. 

What’s seriously insane, is the collective of people who believed David Stern’s (rip) narrative that Tim Donaghy was a lone wolf, rogue entity. That it started and stopped with him.

Lo-fucking-l.

Probably the same people who believe Oswald acted alone.

For anybody who watched NBA games religiously back at that time, and who’s caught it happen here and there since, basketball games are much easier to affect without most people noticing through small, subtle, calls, usually early in the game.

There’s obviously the greater propensity for whistles in basketball vs every other sport. But when you’d see a star player get a quick 3 fouls in the first quarter, forcing him to the bench, you knew that team was fucked that night. Having them off the floor dramatically influenced the game. Racking up a 4th and 5th, spaced out, foul later in the game didn’t seem so extreme. Considering most of the focus is only on the final 2 minutes, altering the game in the prior 46 is and was a piece of cake. 

To think this was an isolated incident is banana land.

To think that humans can be totally objective, and operate without any subjectivity whatsoever - towards certain players, teams, cities, etc- while officiating an NFL game is clown talk. 

I’m not necessarily saying that refs or the NFL fixes games, but I’m not saying they don’t. 

And what's crazy is if they really want to, and actually do "fix" games, they're totally within their means to. No joke.

Media Post - Just so we’re clear: In 2007, the New England Patriots were caught cheating, videotaping opponents’ formations and coaching signals — even with evidence destroyed by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. Turned out they’d been doing it for 10 years. A Jets fan and season-ticket holder, Carl Mayer, sued the Patriots, asking for reimbursement to all Jets fans who went to those games. He lost.

But why did he lose?

If you read the brief one-paragraph explanation that ran in The New York Times on May 19, 2010, you’d only learn that “Mayer failed to prove any legal right to damages.”

OK, but why not? Google and Bing your way around the internet and you’ll find explanations hard to come by from any sports, business or legal reporter. But at least the court decision is online, and you can read it for yourself.

Since you probably won’t, here’s the tl;dr: The NFL argued, and the court agreed, that people who buy tickets to an NFL game have the contractual right to a seat to watch two teams play each other, and nothing else. The court even quoted Mayer’s ticket stub, which reads: “This ticket only grants entry into the stadium and a spectator seat for the specified NFL game.” (emphasis added)

If the Patriots cheated to win that game, well, tough. Legally extrapolate that and it means: If any NFL outcome is fixed, well, tough.

Also in 2010, in a separate court case against the NFL over branded items like hats and shirts, the league presented itself not as 32 separate teams, but as one singular business “unit in the entertainment marketplace.”

Throughout that case, the NFL repeatedly positioned itself legally as a “sports entertainment” business, not a genuinely contested “sport.” College football, for example, is legally classified as a “collegiate sport.” The only other “sports entertainment” businesses are professional wrestling and roller derby.

I think the part that makes most fans, (definitely myself), so dubious, and think the leagues are shady as fuck, is the complete lack of accountability that officials and referees have.

A player could have the worst performance of their life, after losing a loved one, finding out they've been traded and have to pack up their family and move across the country, and they're still required to face the media. To stand in front of a microphone and have their performance dissected by little nerds with tape recorders trying to push their buttons to set them off and get a sound byte.

But referees? 

They can totally botch a call, an entire game, changing the course of a team's season, a player's or coach's career, and nada. 

They run into the tunnel and hide behind the shield. Or the crest. Or the commissioner. 

If a player or coach calls them out on it they're fined tens of thousands of dollars.

And on top of it you have clowns like Dean Blandino who the league and the networks trot out and throw on telecasts to offer insight, or comment on things after the fact on Monday's where they usually defend the calls in question like they're explaining something to a mentally challenged child. Occassionaly they will offer a half-ass apology. 

Either way, it's fucking lunacy.

Call Mike Florio and myself crazy all you want, but keep in mind you’re also calling Earl Campbell nuts too.

"And we all know, now that we’re grown men, that wrestling’s fake. Well, football is not played like it was when I played." -- retired Houston Oilers RB and Hall of Famer Earl Campbell

"We're talking about a different NFL now … before it was more about the game. Now it's such an entertainment business. It's turning into the WWE really. It's like the Vince McMahon stuff. Basically, [Roger] Goodell is like Vince McMahon." -- Cleveland Browns tackle Joe Thomas

"[The NFL is] like a spectacle of violence, for entertainment, and you're the actors in it. You're complicit in that: You put on the uniform. And it's a trivial thing at its core. It's make-believe, really. That's the truth about it."-- former 49ers linebacker Chris Borland

p.s. - Florio mentioning that show "Playmakers" was a major blast from the past. Remember that shit? And how fast the NFL freaked out about it and squashed it? They might have more power than the Feds. Shout out Omar Gooding and Wild And Crazy Kids. I see you player.

Damn that felt good to get out. Also Playmakers was an awesome show, way ahead of its time.

Here's the full NFL commercial again.

The lesson to be learned from all of this, is Goodell always wins.