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Prepare for the battle of the charismatic punters
Punters Marquette King (left) and Pat McAfee (right) will have their chance at a true punter/showmanship battle this holiday weekend. Getty Images

Prepare for the battle of the charismatic punters

Among the more unexpected development of the 2016 NFL season is the emergence of the swaggy punter. Pat McAfee has been around for a bit, celebrating coffin corner punts and drunkenly diving into canals, though this year Raiders punter Marquette King has been one of the breakout stars of the NFL.

It seems counterintuitive for this to be the year that King finally got noticed by the public at large in his fourth season, given that the Raiders have been an offensive powerhouse in 2016, suggesting that a punter would be of less use. Nevertheless, King has been among the league’s best, which has helped a defense that started the year highly suspect and has improved as the season has gone on.

It helps, of course, that King is extremely entertaining both on the field and on social media. He’s celebrated punts by pretending to ride a horse off the field. He’s made comments on Twitter about showing up in the club in full pads after winning a championship, inspired by the Cubs finally breaking their 100+ year title drought. He even has fun with the weekly media press availability sessions that players often find tedious.

On Saturday, King’s and McAfee’s teams face off in an important game. Oakland had clinched a playoff berth for the first time in 14 years, and has the inside track on a first-round bye. McAfee’s Colts are within a game of first place in the AFC South, which is always up for grabs for any team floating around .500. You might expect the young franchise quarterbacks Andrew Luck and Derek Carr to command all the attention going in, and yet it was King who was the prominent figure to come out of the midweek press availability time.

If head-to-head battles between opposing quarterbacks are considered silly because they never actually oppose one another, then what is there to make of a punter showdown? Well, one way to make it a more direct affair is to judge their respective dancing, and they seem up to it.

I don’t know if Vegas is laying odds on a potential punter dance-off, but you’d have to favor King big-time if that exists. 

We must learn the truth about Eagles Fan Friday

Something’s afoul in Philadelphia, and it’s not just most everything there. It appears something suspicious is going on with the Eagles weekly ticket giveaway. The same guy has won the contest five times this season. He’s lost count how many times over the past few years he’s scored free tickets. Lloyd, who goes by the @YungYle handle on Twitter, has just dominated the Fan Friday promotion, and says it’s not because he has any connection to the team. It’s because, he says, he has a notification set up for the Eagles Twitter feed and knows roughly when during the week that the team announces the promotion, which requires being the first person to high-five the team’s mascot, Swoop.

So all the haters are out here crying conspiracy and yet Lloyd is just putting in the work necessary to clock out of his job to go high-five a big plush eagle for tickets to see a bad team. That’s the spirit that should be inspiring our riven country in these dark times.

That said, if it is a conspiracy, that would be fantastic. Eagles Twitter is one of the best to drive nuts with this sort of thing, so I endorse that wholeheartedly.


Yes, the NFL not fining Ezekiel Elliott is a double standard but just let it go

It’s a good thing that the NFL didn’t end up fining Ezekiel Elliott for leaping into the Salvation Army cauldron during Sunday night’s win over the Buccaneers, even though he was penalized for it. It also sucks that many other players have been dinged by the league for similar expressions of joy.

And those players are letting the world know of their understandable frustration. Odell Beckham has complained, as has Steelers running back Le’Veon Bell.

As we saw with the My Cause My Cleats campaign, the NFL will only allow anything resembling fun if it can be packaged in some sort of noble gesture toward charity. And Elliott’s stunt has worked wonders toward that end. As of Tuesday, the Salvation Army had received $850,000 in online donations since Sunday night. That’s definitely a positive. What would also be a positive would be the league relaxing a lot of its celebration rules. We all know this. We don’t need every example of the league’s killjoy tendencies brought forward as if that particular player was being picked on. As always, the league assessed a PR possibility and cynically played it in the best way for itself. Nitpicking the NFL’s contradictions on these things is less important than getting the NFL to allow more leeway on celebrations across the board. 

Try to imagine how much of a mark you have to be to care about the initial Pro Bowl roster

Could you do it? Could you picture the futility of your outrage over the players that will almost certainly bow out of this barely watchable exhibition? If you can’t, you’re a mammoth NFL mark and need to reevaluate everything in your life. If you can, well, there’s hope for you yet. You just like wasting your time with pointless debate. That’s fine. But that’s what food arguments on Twitter are for.

Red Zone bathroom pass

NFL watchability ratings are generally pointless. Everyone has access to the same prime time games and their quality typically corresponds to the night they’re broadcast. Sunday night is the best, Monday night is next, then there’s Thursday night and its unspeakable horrors.

Instead, here’s my expectation of how many bathroom breaks you might be able to get away with during a slate of games on Sunday. It’s generally going to be more difficult during the early slate because the NFL still insists on frontloading most of their Sunday nights into the early slot.

It’s time to say farewell to Thursday and Monday night games until September. The latter is sending us off with a Lions-Cowboys potential thriller, while Thursday bows out with a not-bad though still appropriately mediocre game in Eagles-Giants. No more Gruden for another nine months, except for the rampant speculation that he’s going to get into coaching again.

Early slate: Miami at Buffalo / New York Jets at New England / Tennessee at Jacksonville / Minnesota at Green Bay / San Diego at Cleveland / Washington at Chicago / Atlanta at Carolina

Expected breaks: It’s Christmas Eve. Hang out with your family if that’s what you’re doing. There are a couple decent games on display here, but nothing to beat the band. Vikings-Packers is the closest thing to a must-see. Beyond that, it’s mostly forgettable fare.

Late slate: Indianapolis at Oakland / Tampa Bay at New Orleans / Arizona at Seattle / San Francisco at Los Angeles

Expected breaks: One. The Colts, Raiders, Buccaneers, and Seahawks have playoff positioning to jostle for, so there’s a good amount at stake here. Plus, y’know, punter hijinx. At this point, family has had a chance to mingle and get on your nerves with a comment or two. That means it’s time to settle in for the evening with some football. These are a bit earlier on the West Coast, so there’s an excuse to ignore people until they’ve gotten a too comfortable to give you a hard time.

Christmas Day: Baltimore at Pittsburgh / Denver at Kansas City

Only one game at a time on Christmas so not a lot of worry about whether you need to find a moment to hit the john. Either way, the NFL lucked out with some quality and important matchups. They’re late enough in the day that you shouldn’t have to worry about neglecting your loved ones, though the Ravens-Steelers game means they might not want to see your intensity if you’re a fan of one of these teams.

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