Sunday Smorgasbord

What do we have here, just hours away from the start of a Week 2 Sunday in the NFL? Why, we have a series of mini-columns, all presented as one. All killer, no filler, you might say, if you were trying to write a catchy slogan as part of a introduction to creative writing class. Away we go!

On Broderick Jones

This hurts to admit, particularly when your day job sees you theatrically dancing around the building singing “Bruh-bruh-bruh-derick Jones” to the tune of the “Rocky” theme on the occasion of his drafting, but Jones was the large wet blanket over an otherwise refreshing, encouraging Week 1 offensive performance against the Jets.

He wasn’t just bad, he was “potentially disrupt future game plans” bad. Will McDonald beat him with speed and power, and Quinnen Williams beat him with power. This happened repeatedly, to the point where I assumed the Jets’ defensive strategy at the end of the game would be “try to destroy the guy wearing 77, and assume good things will follow.”

Jones held up marginally better in the latter stages of that Steelers win, but the overall numbers were ghastly. Pro Football Focus charted him with three sacks allowed, one quarterback hit allowed, and four total pressures allowed. It felt worse than that. He wasn’t getting destroyed on every play, but when he lost, he lost badly.

I expect Jones to be better this week, primarily because it would be hard for him to be worse, but the Steelers don’t really have any other alternatives if he doesn’t. Andrus Peat isn’t really a realistic option; the Steelers are pot-committed to Jones.

It does seem like Jones cares when he’s on the field. There are no malcontent tendencies, he doesn’t have hangdog body language, but the results just haven’t been there. He was drafted to play left tackle, and this is the first crack he’s getting at it. The athletic ability is there. That’s why he was the 14th pick, and why the Steelers traded up to get him (ironically, the Jets reportedly also coveted Jones, and McDonald was their “consolation” pick when the Steelers plucked him out from under their nose).

Ultimately, you draft a guy in the first round to play left tackle because you think he can handle anyone in the league 1-on-1. Jones is a long way from that. I’d think Steelers fans would settle for average play, at this point. If that doesn’t happen, the offense will get very predictable, very quickly, because any pass play of substance will have to put Aaron Rodgers on the move to his right. This is a big week for Jones, against a better defensive front than he saw in New Jersey.

On Arthur Smith

Smith, the kids would say, was “in his bag” against the Jets. In fact, if you look at the way PFF graded Aaron Rodgers (worse grade than the aforementioned Broderick Jones - I’ll pause for a quick lol here), it’s clear that they felt that Smith was the real star of the day for the Steelers.

I can see that, if I’m being honest. Not the Rodgers grade, per se, but the idea that Smith dialed up one of his best games since taking the offensive coordinator job. Despite the total absence of a running game, and the fact that the Jets’ pass rush was getting home with regularity, Smith found a way to keep New York off balance, and consistently took advantage of very poor secondary play from guys not named Sauce Gardner.

I do think Rodgers deserves credit in this way: He made reads and throws that previous Steelers quarterbacks wouldn’t have. Mitch Trubisky had the physical talent but refused to acknowledge half of the field. Kenny Pickett would have wilted immediately in the face of the pass rush. Russell Wilson and Justin Fields would have been allergic to the middle of the field, and only Wilson, you might argue, would have made even half the big throws Rodgers did. So, score one for the old guy, whose are still has snap, crackle, and also pop.

(Terrible cereal, by the way.)

One other thing: It’s worth wondering if this is what Smith is capable of when Mike Tomlin takes off the restrictor plate. It’s clear by now, even just one week in, that Tomlin respects Rodgers enough to let him do his thing. Even Wilson, a Super Bowl champion, didn’t command a similar level of deference from Tomlin. If Smith’s offensive line protects Rodgers better, and the running game gets going on any sort of steady basis, the Steelers offense might even start to look…*looks around, lowers voice*

…fun.

On the Pirates

A sincere thank you to the Milwaukee Brewers and Baltimore Orioles. Why? Because people were starting to get a little insane about the Pirates on account of a late-season “surge.”

From August 18th through September 4th, the Pirates went 12-4, turning a 52-73 record into 64-77. In other words, they went from “pretty terrible” to “merely bad.” Sounds somewhat encouraging, right? Wrong. The surge of competence was starting to trick people into thinking that Ben Cherington really hadn’t done that bad of a job team building, and that the real problem was Derek Shelton.

After the September 4th win, the Bucs were 52-51 under Don Kelly. The talk was getting unsettling for sane Pirates fans, who want Cherington on the first train out of town the second the last pitch of the season gets thrown.

“Maybe this team is closer than we think.”

“They’re just a bat or two away, maybe Cherington sees that now.”

I could go on, but you get the idea.

Truly unsettling was the notion that Bob Nutting would see it that way, too. Nutting has proven himself willing to pay people not to work; when he fired Clint Hurdle and Neal Huntington, he ate somewhere in the low-eight figures to do so. Still, it was easy to imagine him not wanting to upset the apple cart if the team finished on a legitimate tear, maybe even threatening to sniff .500.

Thanks to the noble, valiant Brewers and Orioles, those fears will hopefully prove unwarranted. Milwaukee fully outclassed the Pirates in a three-game sweep, outscoring them 19-5 in the process, and battering Bubba Chandler, to boot. Baltimore followed it up with a three-game sweep that saw each contest decided by just one run, with the Pirates failing to get to three runs in any of the games. Add in a series-opening loss to the Nationals and poof! You’ve got a seven-game losing streak, and hopefully a bucket of cold water to the face of the owner, lest he was starting to get crazy ideas about keeping him GM around for next year.

He still might do exactly that, but I’d think that the chances of it happening are less now than they were 10 days ago.

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On Terence Crawford

Boxing has taken its lumps, and deservedly so, for the better part of the last 30 years. The sport has been rendered an afterthought because of its failure to deliver big fights, let alone super fights, a major decline in American heavyweights, and its tendency to fall victim to chicanery on the judges’ scorecards.

Floyd Mayweather Jr. was the biggest draw in the sport, but also an interminable bore and a bad guy to boot. People paid to see the fights, and left disappointed after he would outclass one past-his-prime big name after another.

We got a rare taste of what the sport could be late Saturday night (Sunday morning for us rugged East Coasters) when Canelo Alvarez squared up with Terence Crawford.

Crawford entered undefeated, a pristine 41-0, having not been challenged seriously by anyone since bursting on the scene with a sublime knockout of Yuriorkis Gamboa in June of 2014. Among true boxing nerds, his status as the best in the sport was not really up for debate.

He was jumping up two weight classes and 21 pounds total (147 to 168) to fight Alvarez, a man with one of the best chins in boxing history, and a nearly-perfect 63-2-2 record (I would debate the legitimacy of the decisions in all three of his fights with Gennady Golovkin, but I digress.)

Alvarez deserves a ton of credit for assuming almost all of the risk here, as the naturally bigger man does in any of these situations. He was fighting because that’s what he does; he’s one of the best ambassadors of the sport because he hasn’t really ducked anyone.

Crawford wasn’t just fighting for Alvarez’s Super Middleweight belts, he wasn’t just fighting to become the first male boxer in the four-belt era to be undisputed champion in three different weight classes, he was fighting for history.

And he made it. There are levels in boxing, and as great as Alvarez is, and as much as he will continue to receive his flowers for being a willing participant against anyone, Crawford is on a different level. I’d argue his peers are more the Sugar Ray Robinsons of the sport than any of his contemporaries.

Crawford is a clear level above everyone else. He’s just better. He’s a sharpshooting counterpuncher who can fight southpaw or orthodox, his ring IQ is immense, and unlike, say, Mayweather, when he gets an opponent in trouble, he goes in for the kill.

Knocking out Alvarez was always going to be a tough proposition, but Crawford clearly hurt him while also never once appearing in any danger himself. He was quicker to the punch at virtually every turn, and by the end of the fight, Alvarez, who typically walks down intimidated opponents and batters them into submission, was shaking his head in frustration and backing away after getting tagged with multiple clean combinations.

If you love greatness, in any sport, you owe it to yourself to watch the fight. It was the best fighter of the last 30 years, maybe longer, at the absolute top of his game.

What’s next for Crawford? Maybe nothing. There’s nothing left to prove, realistically no one left to fight. If his next move is to retire - for real, and not in the boxing sense of the word - no one could blame him. He’s earned his place among the immortals.