PMT DB
PMT DB
The Cleveland Browns are 3-1, Deshaun Watson is smiling, and Big Cat is once again being asked to explain why this time the Browns are different. PFT has the evidence: Thursday night football, a Steelers team that cannot defend anybody, and Darnell Washington requiring what appeared to be six Browns defenders and a Jason Statham stunt team to bring him down. The Game of the Century delivered, even if the Browns nearly gifted Pittsburgh a final drive by kicking the ball into the end zone with ten seconds left.
Big CatThe Browns are a good football team
The Browns are good. They might be a good football team. If they can get consistent play from Deshaun, they will be in the race for the division at the end of the year.
The real opening act was Mike Tomlin's Minecraft city, a 12-year urban-planning project featuring luxury high-rises, aquariums, glass roofs, waterfront property, and an obsession with urban density. Big Cat watched it with his son and immediately created a new Minecraft employee who does not have a job or a football franchise to coach.
Big CatMike Tomlin's Minecraft video is the video of the year
Mike Tomlin's Minecraft was the video of the year. I'll say that right now. His attention to detail was just remarkable, and his love for exterior design and interior design—he loved building out furniture on all the patios.
Playoff Baseball Pain
The White Sox are the fun team left standing. Chase Meidroth's October moment, the young players running wild, and a clubhouse that looked like it had discovered both baseball and alcohol at the same time had Big Cat ready to believe. Meanwhile, the Cubs scored one run in San Diego, the Red Sox had one magical month, and Max delivered the most devastating Phillies obituary imaginable.
MaxThe Phillies are dead and need to blow it up
The Phillies are dead. They're never gonna get back to what they were with this core. And they gotta blow it up. It's super sad because we're gonna go into a really low point in the Philadelphia Phillies organization and it just has to be done.
PFT's solution to the MLB wild-card round is to stop pretending a best-of-three is a series. There are no counter-moves, no ebb and flow, and apparently no joy unless the Cubs are the ones winning it. The playoff format debate gets even better when Eric Hosmer arrives later and explains why five days without live pitching can turn a hitter's eyes into two rusty windshield wipers.
Week 4 Football Takes
The NFL preview starts with Jayden Daniels' elbow, which PFT believes is less an injury and more a ticking time bomb attached to a quarterback who wants to play. Then Glenn Tape Watch takes a hard left turn from Drake Maye's alleged post-traumatic Super Bowl stress into a full Tommy DeVito propaganda film. The footage looks like Maye is making beautiful throws until everyone realizes it is actually Tommy DeVito tape. Somewhere, a Giants fan is nodding solemnly.
Drake Maye is suffering from post-traumatic Super Bowl stress
What I am seeing from Drake, though, is maybe a lack of belief in himself. He's not regressed. I'm seeing more so PTSB from Drake post-traumatic Super Bowl where he got his clock cleaned in the Super Bowl and now he is kind of dealing with some shell shock.
Tommy DeVito is what a real quarterback looks like
I think it would do Drake a lot of good to see what a real quarterback looks like. If you don't start Tommy DeVito, you're racist. Tommy DeVito stole our hearts.
The picks cover everything from Hate Week and the Bears quarterback decision to the Derrick Henry revenge game, the Raiders' three-game Super Bowl dynasty, and Big Cat closing his eyes and believing in Bo Nix. PFT also puts San Francisco above Buffalo as the best team in football, which is exactly the kind of statement that guarantees a weird fourth-quarter loss.
PFT CommenterThe 49ers are the best team in football
I think the 49ers right now are playing like the 49ers are the best team in football. I would put them above the Bills right now.
Hank, meanwhile, is ready to save the Chargers season before it even begins. His argument is mostly that they are 0-3 and therefore have to win now, but sometimes that is all a desperate fan needs. The Chargers-Seahawks game becomes the official "please do something" game of the week.
HankThe Chargers will finally win this week
This is the week. Because they're 0-3, they need to win. If they're ever gonna put anything together, they have to start this week.
Eric Hosmer's Playoff Board
Eric Hosmer brings the perfect combination of veteran baseball knowledge and a willingness to say that a team simply cannot hit. He loves the White Sox energy, thinks Cleveland's bye could create rust, and explains why Mason Miller's 105-mile-per-hour fastball paired with a wipeout slider is basically a human no-fly zone for right-handed hitters.
There is no chance against Mason Miller
Mason Miller's slider is one of the best pitches in baseball. You've got 105 with a wipeout slider, so there's really nothing you can do if you're a right-handed hitter. There's just absolutely no chance against Mason Miller.
Hosmer backs the Yankees against the Rays and sees Milwaukee as a complete team with too much depth and athleticism for the Padres to handle easily. He also likes Philadelphia's left-handed pitching and veteran lineup against the Dodgers, though Max's headphones remain in a state of emergency throughout the conversation. The interview gets wonderfully specific when Hosmer explains how playoff hitters adjust between at-bats, then wonderfully unserious when he promises Zach a gold card in exchange for ice cream.
Alshon Jeffery Remembers Everything
Alshon Jeffery walks into the studio and immediately has to answer for saying Chicago was merely a workplace after leaving the Bears. He softens the blow by praising the city, the fans, and the weather he had to learn to survive after arriving from South Carolina, where negative five degrees apparently qualifies as science fiction.
The Eagles Super Bowl stories are the centerpiece. Jeffery says the 2017 team never panicked when Carson Wentz went down because the locker room genuinely operated as one giant group chat, and he says the Eagles receivers dominated the Patriots in practice before the Super Bowl. That leads directly to a new theory about Malcolm Butler: maybe Bill Belichick simply saw Alshon and company cooking all week and decided not to feed them.
The Eagles receivers dominated the Patriots in practice
All our receivers, we dominated that whole week too. We took it as, we're playing against Super Bowl champs. We gotta see what they got. Every one-on-one route, I don't think we dropped the ball. They went from press coverage to everybody back.
Jeffery is also fully willing to declare Jalen Hurts the best quarterback in football, then ranks the recent quarterback class with Caleb Williams first, Bo Nix second, and Jayden Daniels third. He even gives the 2017 Bears a championship in the alternate universe where they do not have to play Philadelphia.
Jalen Hurts is the best quarterback in the NFL
To me, yeah, Jalen is the best quarterback in the NFL. I'm biased, but I'm gonna ride, I'm gonna stamp there, I'm gonna ride on that because look at the statistics against any quarterback, I'm sure, besides Mahomes. But other than that, look at the statistics and even playing against each other. He's outplayed him in the two Super Bowls.
That is a remarkably generous thing to say about a team that lost to the Eagles, but it is also exactly the kind of sports-history rewrite that makes a former teammate worth putting in front of a microphone.
Fyre Fest of the Week
Hank's Fyre Fest is getting clipped for missing a golf shot while trying to hit it as hard as possible, then having the internet treat one ugly swing as a complete scouting report. PFT's Fyre Fest is more expensive: he bought Wizards season tickets while living in Chicago and has now realized that attending the games requires either constant flights or finding a lot of very grateful Washington basketball fans.
Big Cat's problem is simpler. He had to tell his kids that the Cubs season was over, which led to the devastating follow-up question: “So we just have to wait a month and then we can play more games?” No, young Cubs fans. Sometimes baseball just takes your happiness and leaves you with the Bears.
And somewhere in the office, Zach is moving the television out of his bedroom so he cannot accidentally fall asleep at 7 p.m. and miss work. Professionalism has never looked so much like a TV placement issue.
