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The Week In Gregg Easterbrook

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Magary has already spotted Easterbrook’s argument that a banal last-minute kneel-down “was the most exciting NCAA play TMQ has seen in years.” Amazingly, I don’t even think that was the most ridiculous thing in the column this week. For example:

Then there’s Kaepernick. He is a gifted athlete who has an engaging personal story, and he looks great naked. (In consecutive offseasons, Kaepernick has stripped to pose for magazine covers.) But increasingly it seems he is in over his head as an NFL quarterback.

The nude photograph thing speaks for itself (particularly given the amount of space Easterbrook has spent thigh-rubbing about cheerleaders over the years.) On the football point…in over his head? Look, Kaepernick didn’t have a great game last week, and he makes some of the mistakes one would expect of a young QB. Yes, challenging Richard Sherman on first down with the conference championship game on the line wasn’t a great decision. But we should also remember that he was one throw away from a road win against a team that humiliated one of the greatest QBs in league history on a neutral field two weeks later. He was a top-10 QB last year, and he’s been above-average this year. He’s very good.

Things get worse!

Latest Nutty Sports Contract: Over the weekend Robert Quinn signed a mega extension with about $41 million guaranteed. The Rams want to lock him up, contractually speaking, because he was second in sacks in 2013. But Les Mouflons were mediocre on defense in 2013, and since the start of that season, have allowed at least 30 points on six occasions. If Quinn is a franchise-quality defender, why is the St. Louis defense unimpressive?

Well, first of all, the Rams had the 11th best defense in the league last year and the 7th best in 2012, so the empirical basis for the claim is erroneous. Nobody paid to write about the NFL should use “arbitrary number of games with X points allowed” as a metric, not least because a team’s offense is highly relevant to how many points a team allows. But even if the Rams did have a mediocre defense, so what? Houston had a below-average defense last year; does that mean J.J. Watt isn’t a “franchise player”? The 1983 Giants allowed an above-average number of points-per-game, so that means Lawrence Taylor wasn’t a franchise player? Or maybe in a team player even great players can play on mediocre teams? And this point is entirely obvious? Ye Gods. This is “Jon Hunstman could still surprise you!” level stuff.

Still relevant.

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