Couch: So far, Rams quarterback Matt Stafford is the NFL’s best player and best story



Losing is a sickness, like cancer. It spreads through your system and transforms and defines you. It shuts down certain synapses in your brain, or something, imposes limits on you, and makes you the worst thing of all: a quitter.

That's why Matthew Stafford is the most amazing player in the NFL so far this season. Is he the best player in the year of the quarterback?

Sorry, Lamar Jackson fans. Kyler Murray fans. Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, and Patrick Mahomes fans. But yes, he is.

From my view as a coach — a college tennis coach — I think the most amazing thing in the NFL this year is Stafford's ability to simply not be a loser. After serving a 12-year sentence in Detroit, how did he come out of there with the belief that he could beat Tom Brady and the world champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers Sunday in front of a star-studded audience? LeBron James, Jason Sudeikis, and Dr. Dre were all there Sunday.

In an era of player empowerment, when Stafford left the Lions for the Rams, it didn't come across as a petulant player leaving to form his own team with his buddies. No, this was more of a release after 12 years of good behavior.

"I'm enjoying every minute of it, trying to make the most of it," Stafford said. "We'll see where it takes us. ... I'm trying to be myself every single day, bring my best every single day and see where that takes us."

If that means taking the Rams to the Super Bowl, then he'll be 34 years old when he gets there. Until now, being himself hadn't gotten him anywhere, not even one measly playoff win.

We always knew that Stafford had the skills, but he was still a test case for the Rams. While he looked like a great player on a terrible team, at some point you start wondering if he was just a loser. We measure great athletes by the titles. Stafford couldn't even win once in the postseason.

From a coach's perspective, I'll say that Stafford's ability to step in and lead the Rams to a 3-0 start, including Sunday's 34-24 win over Brady, is testimony to incredible inner strength. Maybe faith. Maybe great coaching along the way.

I took over as Roosevelt University's tennis coach four and a half years ago in the middle of a winless season. Our women's team was unquestionably the worst team in the worst program in America.

After a year of recruiting, you could see the difference between winners (new players) and losers (old guard) in the program. My No. 1 player, a senior, wanted to miss the first week of practices and the first two matches for her annual family water-ski vacation. I told her that if she went on the vacation, her scholarship would be removed and she'd be off the team. She could not see why two season-opening matches meant so much to me.

She was a loser. She had been taught to be one. I couldn't let the incoming freshmen see that or feel it. She knew how to prepare to lose, how to practice to lose, how to expect to lose in matches. She was maybe the most talented player the program had ever had. She had been infected by all the losing.

The only way through that was to schedule down and openly celebrate minor improvements as victories. It was hard to scrub the losing from the program.

When Stafford left for the Rams, I wondered if he was a loser, too. He was the first quarterback in NFL history to complete 60% of his passes in a season, the youngest to reach 20,000 career passing yards, and 30,000, 40,000, and 45,000.

History is filled with losers with great stats. Stafford had a stellar college career at Georgia, but in his final year there, 2008, he went into the season as a Heisman Trophy favorite on the No. 1-ranked team. Georgia would lose three games that year. He threw for five touchdowns and 407 yards against Georgia Tech ... in a loss.

Some of the NFL's all-time legendary players have been on losing teams: Dick Butkus and Gale Sayers of the 1960s Chicago Bears come to mind. Archie Manning, Joe Thomas, Floyd Little.

None of those guys ever played in a playoff game. More teams make the postseason now, and you'd think a quarterback in this era could manage one playoff win all by himself.

In three games with the Rams, Stafford has already thrown nine touchdown passes. He had three more Sunday against the Super Bowl champs. His connection with coach Sean McVay was immediate, as the Rams tried to develop a downfield passing game. Stafford has three touchdowns of 50 yards or more this year, including a 75-yarder Sunday to DeSean Jackson.

"He pushes it down the field so easily," Tampa coach Bruce Arians said. "You're right up in his face one time he finds a guy wide open down the field and gets it to him. A lot of guys, they see it but they can't get it to him. He's a special player."

Turns out, Stafford's a winner, too.

Couch: USA Today sports columnist Mike Freeman plays the role of clown in new column bashing the NFL



USA Today published a column this week claiming the NFL's new taunting rule is about "control of black bodies." Longtime NFL reporter Mike Freeman wrote the fascinating and baffling piece.

Yes, I thought the NFL went a little overboard penalizing taunting. When players taunt each other after big plays, it looks stupid, unprofessional, and self-indulgent. But I'm not sure it warrants a 15-yard penalty and a $10,000 fine. The league might have been best served asking refs to shrug their shoulders and give the offending player a look of disapproval. The NFL is a TV show with a cast of characters jockeying for attention.

So, apparently, is USA Today. Mike Freeman taunted those of us with common sense. He argued in print that the NFL's new policy is a plot to woo back Trump supporters who abandoned the league — which he calls "Trump adjacent" — over Colin Kaepernick. It's a curb on black protest and a "social justice counterbalance."

WTF?

"The league used Kaepernick as a cautionary tale," Freeman wrote. "'You can only protest in the way we deem appropriate. If you step outside of those boundaries, you'll get the Kaepernick treatment.'"

I don't think so. Is a 15-yard taunting penalty really a civil rights issue, Mike? I'm calling BS on Freeman here for recklessly bringing race into this, which minimizes serious race issues. He's wrong, and also what he said is insulting to black people.

Of course, the media work in flocks. There also was Carron J. Phillips at Deadspin, who said that "after the fallout from the NFL's continued blackballing of Colin Kaepernick and exposure for race norming, this is the NFL's way of telling white America: 'Hey, don't worry. We still have these n*****s on a tight leash.'"

No. It isn't. The NFL is an outward-facing business that thinks taunting is a bad look and a turnoff to paying customers.

Not only that, but also there is no continued blackballing of Kaepernick. The league attempted to hold a tryout for him, but he sabotaged it, didn't show up, and tried to hijack the moment into self-promotion. He doesn't want to play in the NFL any more; it would wreck his career as a professional victim.

And NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is not so stupid as to think that a 15-yard taunting penalty can be used to bring back white fans who left the game because the league was allowing players to take a knee during the national anthem.

Talk about convoluted. I mean, what is the argument here exactly? That black athletes aren't capable of acting professionally or with a little decorum and self-control? And that they should be excused?

Isn't that insulting?

Football players aren't yelling in their opponents' faces or spinning the ball on the ground in front of them like a mic drop as an expression that Black Lives Matter. They're doing it because they are trained to be amped up. They're in a mentality of hitting the other guy and showing they're the better man.

And when they're done proving their point, they're just looking for an exclamation mark. Or, sometimes, they're just doing it for show.

And the NFL doesn't think that show sells.

In addition, the NFL isn't in any financial trouble over its social justice stances. It won that battle. Attendance is up, TV money is rolling in, and the league weathered the storm much better than the NBA did.

That's not to say there hasn't been a place for taunting in history or that it hasn't carried social meaning. Muhammad Ali used to do it. Jack Johnson did it, famously standing over James Jeffries, hand on hip.

Sometimes taunting is just for fun. I was at an Olympics where Usain Bolt was under the stands about to come out for a relay. He walked past an opposing relay team — and me — and told them to enjoy the sight of the bottom of his shoes. They laughed and told him they hoped he wouldn't drop the baton in front of all those people who are watching, and wouldn't that be embarrassing?

That's just the culture of sprinters. They did it for fun and were all laughing together and hugging after the race, which, of course, Bolt won.

As a tennis coach, I once worked with a high school kid whose dad asked for help. I hit with the kid for two minutes and thought "Uh-oh, this kid is way better than I'll ever be." Then we played an entire set in about 15 minutes, and I won 6-0.

The problem was clear: He was too nice. You might not know this, but as a one-on-one sport, tennis is very mentally aggressive. Attacking, really. I told the kid to taunt me:

"Any time you win a point, stare me down across the net, point at me and yell 'F YOU,'" I said. I was building a mentality. After a few minutes, I told him to stop pointing and screaming, but just to think those things inside.

That seems to be what Goodell is telling the players now.

"One theory," Freeman wrote, "is that the league knew it might face potential backlash from conservatives over some of the social justice measures it planned to enact this season, and the taunting rule emphasis was a way to appease conservatives who didn't like the measures."

One theory? Whose theory? Your friends in the media, who bow down for approval among themselves on Twitter?

No. The taunting penalty isn't "racist" as the Deadspin headline said. At some point, Phillips said, the NFL will take heat over these taunting penalties and "will put Tony Dungy on TV to speak on their behalf, as he so often does whenever the league needs him to put a positive spin on one of their racist decisions."

Now, if you want to talk racist, how about suggesting that Dungy is a puppet of the league's white owners and commissioner, not strong enough to think for himself?

I'm calling a penalty on that accusation.

Couch: USC likely regrets failing to hire Urban Meyer two years ago



USC could have had Urban Meyer two years ago. He was there for the taking. But a new school president, trying to clean up the school's sudden Hollywood-tabloid image, passed on the chance. Fans wanted him, and the buzz was always that he was coming. USC never said this so bluntly, but here's what happened: The school didn't want anything to do with Meyer's character issues.

Instead, USC stuck by the ultimate good guy, student mentor, character builder, and father figure Clay Helton as its football coach despite coming off a losing season. So what happened in the two years that ended up with Helton being fired Monday?

That had to do with college football's excessive and growing greed, which has exploded the past few months, legally. Alabama's quarterback is making a million dollars in endorsements, ESPN and the SEC have collaborated on a power play and cash-grab — stealing Texas and Oklahoma from the Big 12 — to corner the sport and its billions of dollars.

As Gordon Gekko said in "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps," now greed is not only good, it's legal.

USC was looking at all of that, studying the landscape two years after it started to clean things up, and thought this: Count us in. We want some. Don't leave us behind.

That's not to say Helton shouldn't have been fired. The program was dwindling under him. But why did USC stick with him after last season, only to fire him two games into this one?

Nothing had changed at USC, not even after the Trojans, who were 17.5-point favorites Saturday, fell behind Stanford by 29 in the fourth quarter before losing 42-28.

What changed is college football. When the SEC stole Texas and Oklahoma, panic went through the sport. The SEC was hoarding all of the sport's power and money,

So the Big Ten, ACC, and Pac 12 forged an alliance out of survival. And the Big 12, left out of that alliance to die, gobbled up Houston, BYU, Cincinnati, and Central Florida. The College Football Playoff is figuring out how to expand and in what way the new billions of dollars will fall.

USC simply does not want to be left out. Remember that stuff about Meyer and his character? Well, USC doesn't.

In 2019, when USC hired Carol Folt — who had worked to clean up North Carolina after its scandals — and athletic director Mike Bohn, Meyer had already been cleaning up his own image by working at Fox Sports.

Remember, he had been known as Urban Liar for bringing in criminals as Florida's coach and then for sticking by an assistant coach at Ohio State who had been accused of domestic violence. He had been suspended at Ohio State.

Already this week, there are rumors that USC is interested now in Meyer. Meyer had to say publicly there is "no chance" he'll take that job and that he's committed to the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Two years ago, USC was part of the Varsity Blues scandal, in which rich people were bribing their kids' way into schools. More people connected to USC were hit with criminal charges than at any other college. Also, a campus gynecologist was accused of sexual assaults covering decades. And a former assistant basketball coach pleaded guilty to accepting bribes.

That's why Folt and Bohn were brought in. And maybe their mission is still the same. Winning and integrity don't have to be mutually exclusive. But the focus now seems to be on making sure USC is able to keep its hands on college football's money and keep its spot at the table.

There are just a handful of national bluebloods left out there who aren't in the SEC. It's just Ohio State and Michigan in the Big Ten, Clemson and Florida State in the ACC, Notre Dame and USC.

Florida State is dropping fast from that group. And you don't have to look too hard to see that this week the sport is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the game of the century, Nebraska's win over Oklahoma. Those teams will play each other on Saturday with one problem.

Nebraska is no longer a blueblood.

USC doesn't want to be Nebraska.

So Helton is gone, taking with him a $10 million buyout. He still gets his. Other coaches who will be rumored for the job will have no interest, but will have the savvy to go back to their bosses and hit them up for big raises to keep them. They'll get theirs, too.

USC still needs to replace Pete Carroll, who left in 2009 after building the Trojans into one of the nation's superstar programs, but doing it with scandals.

That's the new direction now for USC. Big names will come up in the rumor mill. Maybe even Carroll's.

With more and more money pumped into the bubble of college football, the sport becomes more and more cutthroat.

A headline in the Los Angeles Times on Nov. 1, 2019, read: "Mike Bohn brings USC integrity, which means he can't hire Urban Meyer."

I wouldn't be surprised if Bohn is begging Meyer today.

Couch: Shohei Ohtani can thank Stephen A. Smith and social justice warriors for his soon-bestowed AL MVP award



It was Monday, July 12, when Stephen A. Smith, who is paid to bloviate and set off Twitter, mocked Shohei Ohtani as "a dude that needs an interpreter." Who knew at the time that, in saying that, Smith had clinched for Ohtani the American League Most Valuable Player award?

This is about the power of Twitter and the media's reckless obsession with it. The Twitter mob was so strong in July that it took the usually defiant Smith hostage and forced him to his knees to apologize to the Asian community multiple times. It also rewrote baseball history.

Ohtani, the Los Angeles Angels' slugger/pitcher who reminds everyone of Babe Ruth, has had a transcendent year. If current trends continue for the final two and a half weeks of the baseball season, though, one thing is sure: Ohtani will not deserve to be MVP. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. of the Toronto Blue Jays will. Yet Guerrero will have no chance, even if he wins the coveted Triple Crown — leading the league in home runs, runs batted in and batting average — while lifting his team to the playoffs.

Meanwhile, Ohtani's Angels are out of the playoff race with a losing record and in second-to-last place. Most Valuable Player? How valuable can Ohtani be? His team would have finished second to last without him.

The International Business Times called it "a virtual lock" that Ohtani will be the MVP with Guerrero finishing second, citing FanDuel's lopsided odds: Ohtani is a -7000 MVP favorite with Guerrero at +1500.

No player in baseball history has won the Triple Crown, led his team to the postseason, and not been named the MVP, not since the award was created. It's about to happen now because of the ridiculous state of modern media, which has offered up a historical MVP award in fealty to Twitter as a social statement.

Guerrero is just 22 and will have plenty of chances to win plenty of MVP awards. This is the mob's chance to stand up against anti-Asian hate when it has reared its ugly head again.

Ohtani has been amazing and so fun to watch, in the home run race and also with a 3.36 ERA in 21 starts as a pitcher. Those are the things that should be weighed.

Instead, the hate seems real. And there is nothing wrong with standing up for something. But what does that have to do with the MVP award? How do those things become the criteria?

It's still possible that Guerrero won't win the Triple Crown and that something will stop the Blue Jays' incredible surge and keep them out of the playoffs. If that happens, then fine, the media should vote for Ohtani as MVP.

Don't just hand over the award as an apology for society and Smith's stupidity.

Smith says plenty of dumb things on ESPN's "First Take." He's paid $12 million a year, reportedly, to do it. He is supposed to come as close to the line as possible without stepping over it. Sometimes he and FoxSports 1's Skip Bayless, trying to one-up each other, step over it anyway.

When Smith does that, like when he said that Steve Nash had gotten the Brooklyn Nets' coaching job out of "white privilege," he simply apologizes to make Twitter's overlords happy. Then he moves on, sometimes with a massive pay raise for the attention he got ESPN.

It's a little dance. Nobody on Twitter really wants Smith, or Bayless, to stop saying these things. They just want to be able to show outrage over them. They need Smith to keep talking, actually.

In July, this is what he said about Ohtani:

"... When you talk about an audience gravitating to the tube or to the ballpark to actually watch you, I don't think it helps that the No. 1 face is a dude that needs an interpreter so you can understand what the hell he's saying in this country."

Yes, that was stupid and hurtful. It just shouldn't have locked up the MVP award for Ohtani.

Guerrero leads the league with 45 homers (one ahead of Ohtani) and a .315 batting average. He's third in RBIs with 103, in range of leader Salvador Perez of the Kansas City Royals, who has 109.

The Blue Jays have won 12 of the past 14 games, mostly behind incredible power hitting. Guerrero has driven the playoff push. Over a 15-game stretch before Tuesday's game, he hit .365 with nine homers. The Blue Jays were 9.5 games behind the New York Yankees on Aug. 27 and are now tied with them for the top wild card spot.

Detroit's Miguel Cabrera won the Triple Crown and MVP in 2012, and before that, no one had done it since Carl Yastrzemski in 1967 and Frank Robinson in 1966.

It's true that it's even rarer to have Ohtani in the home run chase and also among the league's better pitchers. I get that. But the Triple Crown on a playoff team? Who could be more valuable?

If that happens, even Stephen A. would think Guerrero deserves to be MVP. I doubt he'd say that, though.

Couch: Peyton and Eli Manning debut the future of sports broadcasting



I'm not sure exactly why the Manning brothers' Monday Night Football telecast worked so well. Peyton and Eli weren't even wearing yellow blazers! A fire alarm went off at one point. And when they had Russell Wilson on as a guest in the fourth quarter, Peyton wouldn't let him get a word in edgewise.

But they did work. There probably is some big reason for that, for why we're ready for a show like this now. There just was this feeling that you weren't being talked to, but instead were in on the whole thing with them.

They told funny stories, poked fun at each other, explained what was going on, and best of all, they gave great insight into what a quarterback is thinking during a game. Who knew that quarterbacks were so nerdy?

"Ray," Eli asked guest Ray Lewis, "would you want one of (Peyton's) helmets filled with quarters or $10,000 in cash? Which would be worth more?"

Eli liked to poke fun at the size of Peyton's forehead.

ESPN2 is going to give us 10 weeks of Peyton and Eli doing an alternative MNF broadcast. Next week is Detroit at Green Bay, and neither of them will be brutally honest about the brutal play of Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers.

For yesterday's Baltimore-Las Vegas game, they had guests Charles Barkley, Travis Kelce, Lewis, and Wilson along the way. And there is no doubt that they should be in the main booth doing the game on ABC.

What worked for the Mannings was when they stopped trying so hard and became a cross between Beavis and Butthead and the two old Muppet guys sitting in the theater box.

Turns out, Peyton is just like he is in those Nationwide commercials with Brad Paisley, where he shows off massive Peytonville and all the tiny doll people in the city have backstories. He's just that nerdy.

"Onsides kick, onsides kick, onsides kick!" Peyton yelled in the final seconds before overtime. The Raiders beat Baltimore 33-27, and the Mannings really didn't explain the narrative about how Lamar Jackson's fumbles did the Ravens in.

"What would you do if it's third down and all of a sudden Gruden calls a play you don't like?" Eli asked Peyton at one point.

Peyton started waving his arms, "'I'm gonna call my own play. I'm gonna call my own play. I can't hear you.'"

The trick, Peyton said, is to blame it on technical problems with what he's hearing in the headset. But the backups have to go along with it and not tell the coaches that they could hear the call fine:

"Everyone has to buy in," Peyton said. "You cannot sell your starting quarterback out."

For sure, they got off to a rough start. Peyton was talking too much. When they stopped performing, they became way more entertaining. It started hokey when Peyton did a little skit where he was drawing things up on the whiteboard.

Peyton kept smirking and shaking his head all night, or yelling "horrible call" when he didn't agree with the officials. He told one story about how he cursed out an official and felt so guilty about it that he asked the league for the official's home address so he could write him an apology note.

The league wouldn't give him the address. Peyton said they must have been afraid he was going to egg the official's home.

We got to find out how deeply quarterbacks hate crowd noise. When the Raiders, the home team, failed to pick up a first down on fourth and short, because the Baltimore defense broke through the line, Peyton jumped in:

"That's crowd-noise penetration. The offensive line is not getting off on the snap because they can't freaking hear … Drink your beer, quiet down, and let (Derek) Carr play quarterback."

Eli said this about Peyton: "He had that stadium trained. The fans would get fined if they talked while the Colts were on offense. If a guy was trying to order a beer, everyone would tell him to quiet down until the defense was on the field."

I'd call this a new model for broadcasting games, or even for sports talk shows. No one was yelling at me. No one was pretending anything at all. These guys were genuine, having a running conversation for more than three hours.

But I'd be afraid to see others pretending to be genuine.

My favorite line of the night was when Lewis was the guest and Eli talked to him about what it was like being a young quarterback facing him:

"I get up there and I'm saying, 'No. 52's the mike.' You were like, 'I'm not the mike, he's the mike.' I said, 'Wait, Ray's right. The other guy is the mike.' Then Ed Reed starts saying 'Hey, I want to be the mike.'"

They messed with Eli's head, and it worked that day.

"I had a 0.0 (passer) rating," he said. "That's hard to do."

Couch: ‘H-O-P-E and Change’ is Aaron Rodgers’ new football slogan



Aaron Rodgers has devolved from R-E-L-A-X to hopefully. The most self-assured quarterback in the NFL doesn't believe in the Green Bay Packers any more, and he's wishing for things to change instead of confidently proclaiming they will.

It is a dramatic pivot. During the off-season, he gave his teammates an excuse. He whined that the team that finished one possession from the Super Bowl wasn't good enough and that management wasn't giving him the respect he deserved. He threatened to quit.

On Sunday, the Packers mirrored their leader, losing 38-3 at a neutral site to a New Orleans team with a brand-new QB, Jameis Winston, known for making mistakes. The Saints outclassed Rodgers and the Packers, outmuscled and outfinessed them at the same time. It was the worst Packers loss in the Rodgers era, and it reduced the reigning MVP to sell hope by saying this:

"This is hopefully an outlier moving forward."

And this: "This is a good kick in the you-know-where. Hopefully get us going in the right direction."

In 2014 after the Packers started 1-2 with a loss at lowly Detroit, Rodgers said, "Five letters here just for everybody out there in Packerland: R-E-L-A-X. Relax. We're going to be OK."

The Packers went all the way to the championship game that year. Since then, nervous Packers fans have attached those five letters to Rodgers and used them as a calming influence, like the British government's "Keep Calm and Carry On" campaign of World War II.

H-O-P-E and dissatisfaction are all that Rodgers is selling now. And his off-season behavior convinced his teammates not to believe, too.

Rodgers' self-absorption and summer-long temper tantrum have created a mess of a team that was supposed to be Super Bowl-ready. The rich superstar quarterback is always above the team, but Rodgers put himself too far above. They didn't know if he was coming back or not.

He made his teammates follow his drama all off-season, apparently not even telling any of them what was happening.

Rodgers paraded around on "Jeopardy," at the Kentucky Derby, in Hawaii, and on commercials getting his Rodgers Rate from Jake from State Farm.

And, of course, he spent it holding his breath and stomping his feet over what he perceived as bad treatment from Packers management for drafting a long-term project, Jordan Love, as his replacement instead of filling immediate needs.

"They wouldn't commit to me past 2021," Rodgers told Fox's Erin Andrews in a pregame interview Sunday. "So, I figured if they wanted to make a change, even though I just won MVP, why wait? They drafted my replacement, so let him play if that's what you want."

Boo hoo.

Rodgers channeled Michael Jordan all off-season. He talked about watching "The Last Dance," a documentary on Jordan's dynasty with the Chicago Bulls. He said he used to idolize Jordan. And then he came up with a game plan for building and rallying the team that mirrored Jordan's. He ridiculed and ripped into his general manager and team management.

"It's just kind of about a philosophy and maybe forgetting that it is about the people that make things go …" Rodgers told his friend, Kenny Mayne of ESPN, months ago. Remember? "People make an organization. People make a business. And sometimes that gets forgotten."

That was another Jordan thing. Years ago, Bulls general manager Jerry Krause had said that organizations win championships, not people. Jordan made fun of that.

But this blew up in Rodgers' face. He played it all wrong. He couldn't go 15 minutes without telling someone he was the MVP, and he kept his teammates out of the loop and uncertain.

"I'm not used to Aaron Rodgers looking like this," Tony Dungy said on NBC. He cited the possibility of rust or dysfunction of the off-season.

Rodgers was 15 for 28 for 133 yards and two interceptions. Two of his completions took circus catches from Davante Adams. One of his interceptions came as the Packers were close to scoring. Rodgers said that was the turning point of the game. He threw his other interception, Rodgers admitted, because he misread where the safety was going.

If Rodgers had spiked the ball on every attempt, his passer rating would have been 39.58. Instead, he finished at 36.8.

We'll call that the Rodgers Rate.

"Uncharacteristic of how we've practiced in training camp," Rodgers said, "(and) obviously how I've played over the years."

Coach Matt LaFleur took Rodgers out with 10 minutes left and gave Love his first NFL snaps. No word on whether Rodgers thought that was an insult to his legacy.

It's a 17-game season, and hope can carry the Packers for a while. But if things don't change, then when the hope fades, Rodgers will likely be changing teams during the off-season.

Couch: Tom Brady continues to demonstrate Bill Belichick was more impediment than launching pad



There is no charm about Tom Brady the way there is in most Old Guy versus Father Time stories.

Phil Mickelson was washed up at 50 before finding magic this spring to win the PGA Championship. Something just felt good about that. You felt your personal glory might still be reachable again at the right time and place with the right work and circumstance. By the time the U.S. Open came, Mickelson was washed up again, surely forever. His moment lives, though.

Through seven Super Bowl titles, I've never been inspired by Brady. Not even last year. Amazed, yes. But not inspired until Thursday night, with 1:24 left in the Tampa Bay-Dallas game in the NFL season opener. Brady and Tampa had the ball at their 25, trailing 29-28.

And you knew one thing for sure: The game was over. Brady was never going to fail. Forty-four years old didn't matter. Eighty-four seconds left and one timeout didn't matter. His age might amaze us, but to him that's not even a consideration. Brady didn't need magic for another moment because he's not living a moment.

The point of Tom Brady is clear now and particularly important today: It's that limitations and other people don't define who you are. Circumstances like age don't define you. Check your inevitabilities at the door.

Brady is no fluke. He's not finding old magic or a spark. He just is. And when he got out from under the thumb of Bill Belichick authoritatively telling him how things had to be done, how to think, how to face being past his time, Brady went to Tampa Bay and got better. That's because he was himself.

"It's nice that I've found my voice more," he said recently. "I really enjoy being around my teammates, my coaches. It's been a different environment, just really enjoying the experience of playing football, playing with a group of guys."

After a year and a half of COVID, we've had our fill of circumstances dictating. We've had enough of the media — social or traditional — or political parties telling us what to think or do. That's why there is so much rage out there now.

It's why you can't find an Uber any more, because there aren't enough people willing to drive one. It's why employers can't find workers. People don't want to be defined by limitations any more. So they're just not taking the jobs they don't want.

Brady is the poster child for that. A few years ago, when he was still in New England with Belichick, I thought it was time for him to retire. A lot of people did. He was starting to fail. Belichick's dynasty needed a new cog at quarterback because Brady was getting too old.

Brady knew that age wasn't his limitation. Belichick was.

And when Brady won the Super Bowl last year in Tampa while Belichick failed in New England, that changed the picture of Belichick. For so long, Belichick was a genius on every coaching Mount Rushmore, and as long as you did what he said, you would win. Brady knew better.

Former New England cornerback Asante Samuel tweeted recently about Belichick, saying, "...without Brady he is just another coach in my opinion."

A trend has come up this year with athletes talking about their mental health. Simone Biles, Naomi Osaka. Just this week, women's national team soccer player Christen Press announced on social media, "I've made the difficult decision to take a couple of months away from the game to focus on my mental health."

Without using those words, that's what Brady did last year.

It was fun sport last year watching Brady win and Belichick lose and talking about who was winning their divorce. That was just about celebrity bickering.

It seems bigger now. Belichick has rebuilt his offensive line and now has the guy who is supposed to be the new Brady, rookie first-round draft pick Mac Jones, at quarterback.

The idea isn't that Jones is the greatest talent, but instead that he can be a perfect cog in Belichick's machine. If there was any doubt, Brady proved last year that he was never a cog in the first place. He made Belichick look human.

We've seen old athletes come back for greatness. George Foreman won the heavyweight title way past his prime and Jack Nicklaus won the Masters.

Those guys were different from Brady. He isn't finding old talents one last time. He is doing things his way, not Belichick's. That game-winning drive Thursday night was no surprise. Brady won't go away any time soon, either.

Couch: Add tennis star Naomi Osaka to Nike’s body count



Nike used to sell shoes. Phil Knight sold them out of his car at track meets. The Swoosh was a side brand, growing because it was attached to successful athletes.

Now, it's bigger than the athletes themselves. In fact, today Nike creates the athletes to feed the Swoosh.

It created Tiger Woods and made him into a black golfer, which he was never comfortable with. It built the Nike brand on him, as Michael Jordan's career finished up. Then it spit Tiger out. His career is probably over. With its massive $42 billion in annual revenues, Nike created LeBron James as a social justice warrior. And the biggest name in basketball is too afraid to say a negative word about the Swoosh's socially unjust connection to China.

We see its latest work: Nike created the future of women's tennis, Naomi Osaka, and then spit her out and left her career in ruins. She was built into a black, Asian social justice warrior. A trifecta! She should be coasting this week to another U.S. Open championship.

Instead, we might never see her on a tennis court again.

"I feel like for me, recently, like when I win, I don't feel happy," she said Friday, after an early-round loss to the 74th-ranked player in the world at the U.S. Open. "I feel like a relief. And then when I lose, I feel very sad. I don't think that's normal."

She started to cry and then said she was "trying to figure out what I want to do. I honestly don't know when I'm going to play my next tennis match."

No problem. Nike, and all of Osaka's other endorsers, already got theirs. It wasn't just Nike; Osaka got $50 million in endorsements, the most of any female athlete in the world. As a Japanese-American, she had been primed as the face of the Tokyo Olympics.

In 2018, she beat Serena Williams in the U.S. Open final and was known as the sweet young newcomer. Three years later, at the same tournament, she left after throwing her racquet, hitting balls into the stands, and crying.

Her career is in ruins.

Why am I putting this on the Swoosh? Because Osaka's crash and fall this year is just so reminiscent of Nike's playbook.

Earlier this year, in the two-part HBO documentary "Tiger," we got a look at how the Swoosh played a role in Tiger Woods' colossal rise and calamitous fall. In Woods' case, it was about how Nike forced Tiger into a role he was uncomfortable with, as the societal hero and black golfer.

Woods signed with Nike as a 20-year-old in 1996. In "Tiger," Jim Riswold, advertising director for Nike, said that he brought up the discussion with Nike, "Do we want to play the race card?" Nike's not stupid financially. Using Tiger to reach a wider range of golfers and expand the golf universe is a no-brainer. They said, "F---in' yeah. Let's do this."

Nike started a campaign about how some golf clubs still would not allow Woods to play at them.

This was not a role Woods was prepared for. He went on the Oprah show and said he was frustrated when people portrayed him as black. He had invented a word for himself when he was a kid: He is a Cablinasian, a mix of Caucasian, black, Indian, and Asian.

I remember the outcry of that well. I was in the middle of it. Oprah's people had invited me to that show, and when he said that, my story the next day in the Chicago Sun-Times was on the front page and picked up by Howard Stern, Dan Rather, and several other national media outlets. The show had been taped and wouldn't be seen until later in the week.

Oprah's people called that morning to say she was furious with me for turning his appearance into a racial thing. A few days later, the show got such good ratings that the same handlers called back and offered me free tickets to the show any time for me and my family.

Turning Woods into something he wasn't and keeping him under constant spotlight played a big role in his personal collapse.

"In reality, at that point in time, being Tiger Woods had taken its toll on Tiger Woods," Steve Williams, Woods' former caddie, said in the documentary.

With Osaka, her "handlers are her greatest enemy. They have her going in all different directions that she is not prepared for: social justice queen, face of the Olympics, documentary subject, swimsuit model. Did I forget one?

"Oh yeah, tennis champion."

In 2019, a few months after Osaka beat Williams, she won the Australian Open and reached No. 1. She should have been on a high. Instead, she fired her coach, saying she wasn't willing to "put success over happiness."

In 2020, Osaka showed up at the U.S. Open pushing the black-tennis-player angle. She wore a different custom Nike COVID mask each day with the name of a black person killed, including Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.

This year, at 22, she was an endorsement queen, fully built for the Olympics.

Today's athletes' greatest relationships are with their marketers, often Nike. They are not with their coaches. Osaka's focus was no longer to become a better player but instead to do what her agents at IMG wanted, to do what Nike wanted.

They take a young, immature athlete without a fully formed worldview and create a brand beyond their depth. They are actually taking away the athlete's true voice and replacing it with a financially beneficial one. Then, they shine as much spotlight as possible.

Sometimes the athlete melts. That happened at this year's French Open, where Osaka said she wasn't going to talk to the media, then withdrew from the tournament under the backlash. She started talking about her mental health. She then dropped out of Wimbledon.

She lit the torch at the Olympics, lost early, cried in Cincinnati, and threw her racquet at the U.S. Open and cried again.

Osaka has to go away now to find who she really is and see if there is happiness there. Oh well, the Swoosh was fed.

Couch: Reaction to Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly’s poor execution proves Twitter has made journalism a joke



Brian Kelly made a joke. The Notre Dame football coach didn't take on race, religion, ethnicity, politics, sexual identification, or social injustice. Not that a joke shouldn't do those things. He made fun of no one. He offended no one.

The overlords at Twitter snapped their fingers, though, so the media came running. Even the usually harmless Chris Fowler, ABC/ESPN's college football analyst, jumped in on Twitter:

"uh..what do we think of Brian Kelly's humor attempt? It's a twist on an old one liner, saying his whole team 'should be executed.' but this is '21..yeah i don't think it works."

Uh, what did Fowler mean by "we"? What do "we" think? Is thinking a group project now? What do the media think?

Adam Rittenberg wrote on ESPN.com that Kelly's quip "immediately generated strong reaction on social media." FOXNews.com said, "The remarks went viral across social media." The Washington Post wrote, "Kelly's curious comment prompted backlash on social media."

Let's not confuse hot air with fire. Backlash, strong reaction, and going viral have replaced thought, instincts, and news judgment. Editors — trained, rational, smart human beings — used to decide what's newsworthy. Now Twitter decides.

The story on Kelly is this: Nothing happened and no one cared, but the media blew it up to feed the hungry beast of Twitter. So this isn't commentary on Kelly, other than to say that when it comes to his comedic skills, he's a fine football coach.

This is about the media and their unhealthy and dangerous love affair with Twitter. The media are obsessed to the level of stalkers. They are supposed to be leaders of independent thought, but instead stare at Twitter all day long and wait to be told what to say and think. Social media metastasized the cancerous journalism cliche "if it bleeds, it leads" into "if it trends, we pretend" it's newsworthy.

That's how a poorly executed wisecrack becomes the top story on ESPN.com.

After Notre Dame's overtime win over Florida State, Kelly played off an old one-liner from John McKay, football coach of the lowly Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the 1970s. After a bad game, someone supposedly asked McKay what he thought of his team's execution.

"I'm in favor of it," he said.

With Kelly, ABC's Katie George asked about Notre Dame trying to hold off FSU's late rally. Kelly said, "I'm in favor of execution. Maybe our entire team needs to be executed after tonight."

The funniest thing about Kelly's attempt at humor is how uncomfortably he botched it. It was not a "curious comment," as the Washington Post said.

"It was taken serious?" Kelly said Monday when asked to explain himself. "Are you people crazy? ...

"It's a John McKay quote that he used after a game. I was stealing one of his old quotes and being funny, because nobody likes to be funny any more. If you want to take me to town on that, please do."

No one could think Kelly was honestly calling for the mass murder of his football team. But somehow, this led to a reflection of Kelly's low moment at Notre Dame. Eleven years ago, student Declan Sullivan was filming football practice in heavy winds at the top of a 40-foot lift. It was too dangerous. Sullivan died.

And Twitter seems to think that Kelly's joke was in bad taste considering that he let Sullivan go up that lift in those winds.

Kelly is right that nobody likes to be funny any more. Twitter, and the media's kowtowing to it, won't allow it. Twitter is destroying humor and replacing it with cheap snark. No one can risk being offensive without worrying that some idiot on Twitter will say something and then a few more will retweet him, and then the Twitter algorithm will turn it into a trend that beckons the media mob.

McKay used to joke with reporters and give one-liners. He once said, "We didn't tackle well today, but we made up for it by not blocking." He said, "If a contest had 97 prizes, the 98th would be a trip to Green Bay." And, about coaching an expansion team: "You do a lot of praying, but most of the time the answer is no."

McKay couldn't have existed today because, as Fowler said, 'this is '21."

How did Kelly's harmless flub become a national story? Here's how:

There used to be something called shoe-leather reporting. A reporter walks the streets and talks to sources and gets a feel of things. That's how stories were uncovered. That, plus your instincts, helped you decide what might interest readers or be important to them. That's fading fast. Now, editors stare at numbers all day on a computer to see what's trending. That's the only way to figure out what people are thinking. Numbers.

If the numbers go high enough, a buzzer goes off and an editor calls a reporter to do a "story." The story is carefully crafted to try to get in on the trend.

They even write headlines based on search engine optimization, which means they have tricks so that if you call up a Twitter trend on Google, their story will come up first.

Meanwhile, the Twitter algorithm plays all of this stuff up and makes it go even more viral.

Longtime sports writer Jeff Goodman can see the obvious. He tweeted Monday: "So the first two headlines on ESPN are about Brian Kelly making a joke and a golfer backing a tennis player. I miss the old days when news was actually news."

Twitter is executing independent thought, humor, human interaction, and news itself. That's not funny.

Couch: The Indianapolis Colts could set COVID example for the rest of sports



Carson Wentz is feeling the pressure. Coming off a terrible year, he's the new quarterback and hope of the Indianapolis Colts. If that's not enough, Wentz is being bullied into a COVID vaccine he doesn't want. By not getting it, though, he knows he could hurt his team.

"It keeps me up at night," he said.

Wentz's personal struggle led columnist Gregg Doyel of the Indianapolis Star to write that he was known as a selfish player before coming to the Colts and that his anti-vax stance proves it. If the Colts would release Wentz now, Doyel wrote, "I'd help pack his bags. Where does he live? Because he'll need a ride to the airport."

Doyel is bullying Wentz and therefore the Colts. Wentz needed the support of his teammates, and it appears that the quarterback of the defense, linebacker Darius Leonard, stepped up and defended him Thursday. Leonard, who also has been vilified in social media and local media as a me-first anti-vaxxer, talked about his reasons for not getting the shot.

"I'm just a down South guy," he said. "I want to see more. I want to learn more. I want to get more educated about it. Just got to think about it. Don't want to rush into it. I've got to see everything. I'm listening to all the vaccinated guys here. I'm not — you see on social media — I'm not pro-vax. I'm not anti-vax …

"I think once I get a grasp of it — just like the playbook — you've got to get comfortable with something. You can say, 'OK, I'm going to put this in my body.'"

We might be seeing a breakthrough in the debate about the NFL's COVID vaccine crisis, though. And by that, I mean that the Colts might be starting a public debate about it rather than what we've seen so far, which is vaxxers barking at their moon and anti-vaxxers barking at theirs.

We don't recognize actual thinking on this topic, don't grasp nuance or lack of absolute certainty. No one asks the questions. No one offers the answers.

Leonard is an example of what big-name football players should be doing. That might be what's going on with the Colts and could lead to a healthy discussion about the vaccination.

The pressure to be jabbed has created a new minority: Unvaxxed Americans.

They don't have a voice. And the media were supposed to speak for the voiceless. Instead, they are bullying them on a highly personal subject. That's not about agreeing with the unvaxxed, but just recognizing their right to be heard. That's America. It's what has made America the envy of the world.

The Colts have what is believed to be the lowest vaccination rate in the NFL. General manager Chris Ballard told reporters they are at roughly 75%. Meanwhile, NFL protocols — approved by the Players Association — are much more stringent on unvaccinated players than on vaccinated ones. That has turned the Colts' preseason into an absolute mess and threatens to jeopardize a team that figures to contend for the AFC South title.

It's not as if Leonard shed incredible amounts of light into his decision-making process and what he sees as the pros or cons of the jab. What stood out was his willingness to stand up and talk about it at all.

The players' union, the media, and the social media mob have all been on the attack on players who don't want the vaccine. The pressure is working, as most players are getting it anyway.

Those who don't get it, though, are endangering their teams' seasons because they could endure strict penalties and longer time sitting out on the COVID-19 list. That's why coaches and general managers are factoring vaccine status into roster cuts.

If the players believe the protocols are too strict or that the players' union shouldn't have accepted them — or even that people shouldn't vilify players for not wanting the jab — then the star players will have to be the ones to stand up and say so. They are the players at less risk of being cut because they haven't been vaccinated.

"When you don't know about something, you've got to educate yourself more about it and figure out what it is, and you've got to make a decision from there," Leonard said. "You've got to make sure you understand your decision and understand what's going in your body and the long-term effects and stuff like that."

The Colts are on the margins here, with a low vaccine rate, a contending but not dominant team, and a quarterback who still needs to prove he's NFL-capable.

Wentz, the most important player on the team, said this week that his decision on the vaccine is a "fluid situation. I'm weighing every pro and con out there. The media are attacking without listening, barking at the moon."

Selfishness was not the knock on Wentz last year. He couldn't stay healthy in Philadelphia and didn't connect personally with his receivers.

Whispers of selfishness as a player don't match up with someone making health decisions, anyway. There's nothing wrong with being selfish about your personal health. We need to hear more of what Wentz has to say, what he's thinking. That will take guts on his part, though.

The Colts exemplify exactly how the protocols could ruin a season. Offensive tackle Eric Fisher got COVID, and because he had been in contact with All-Pro left guard Quenton Nelson, Nelson went on the reserve/COVID-19 list. It is believed that Nelson's contact with Wentz and players Ryan Kelly and Zach Pascal led to those players going on the list and sitting out, too.

You can see how this can spread fast. What if all of that happened the week of a big game? Or going into the playoffs?

The players have to decide whether to take a jab they don't want to put in their bodies or risk hurting their teams and feeling pressure from mob rule. Meanwhile, their own union isn't standing up for them.

Leonard stood up and at least started the discussion. Others need to follow.