Category: Cue Cards

Cue Cards 12-9-13: NFL One Liners

clapperboardCue Cards is a series designed to assist with the common small talk about high-profile recent sporting events that is so omnipresent in the workplace, the bar, and other social settings.

On Mondays during in the fall, the conversation is so dominated by NFL football that the expression “Monday morning quarterback” has entered the vernacular. The phrase is defined by google as “a person who passes judgment on and criticizes something after the event.” With the popularity of fantasy football, we now have Monday morning quarterbacks talking about football from two different perspectives. We want you to be able to participate in this great tradition, so all fall we’ll be running NFL One Liners in our cue cards series on Monday. Use these tiny synopses throughout the day:

NFL One Liners

Indianapolis 28, Cincinnati 42 — The Bengals and the Colts were both in first place of their divisions before this game and both remain so after the game. Nothing to see here, let’s move on.

Atlanta 21, Green Bay 22 — The Packers have been trying to keep their playoff hopes alive for the last month while their star quarterback, Aaron Rodgers, heals from a fractured collarbone. Today’s victory over the hapless Falcons gives Rodgers a chance to come back next week and play the prodigal son role.

Cleveland 26, New England 27 — This result probably suits both teams just fine. The Browns are on their way to a better draft pick and the Patriots are on their way to the playoffs. The only negative aspect is that Patriots star tight-end Rob Gronkowski left the game with what is rumored to be a torn ACL.

Oakland 27, New York Jets 37 — These teams are bad and they didn’t even play in a snow storm. BORING!

Detroit 20, Philadelphia 34 — These teams are relatively good and they played in about a foot and a half of snow. AWESOME!

Miami 34, Pittsburgh 28 — My brother has a hard time reconciling the fact that the players on each team are not actually from the team’s location. The fact that the Miami team went to Pittsburgh, played in the snow and wind, and won, should help convince him.

Buffalo 6, Tampa Bay 27 — Buccaneers running back Bobby Rainey ran for an 80 yard touchdown in the first few minutes of the game and his team never looked back.

Kansas City 45, Washington 10 — I suspect that when the shutdown ended a few months ago, it was mistakenly shifted from the government to the football team.

Minnesota 26, Baltimore 29 — This game was 12-7 with less than three minutes left. And it didn’t go to overtime. The teams scored five touchdowns in the final 2:05 of the game. It’s insanity may only be matched by its impact for the Ravens and their fans if they make the playoffs because of it.

Tennessee 28, Denver 51 — After a brief detour, the Broncos train to the Super Bowl seems back on track.

St. Louis 10, Arizona 30 — There’s an old joke that goes, “Poor Mexico. So far from God, and so close to the United States.” Same could be said of both of these teams in relation to the other two teams in their division, the 49ers and Seahawks, whose dominance makes their fine play pale in comparison.

New York Giants 14, San Diego 37 — Both these teams vacillate wildly in terms of quality of play. Today the Chargers were up and the Giants were down but neither one is going to make the playoffs.

Seattle 17, San Francisco 19 — You know it was a rough game when the winning coach compared it to getting root canal.

Carolina 13, New Orleans 31 — The Panthers had won eight games in a row, but the Saints were unbeaten at home. Something had to give and in this case it wasn’t the gumbo.

Cue Cards 12-2-13: NFL One Liners

clapperboardCue Cards is a series designed to assist with the common small talk about high-profile recent sporting events that is so omnipresent in the workplace, the bar, and other social settings.

On Mondays during in the fall, the conversation is so dominated by NFL football that the expression “Monday morning quarterback” has entered the vernacular. The phrase is defined by google as “a person who passes judgment on and criticizes something after the event.” With the popularity of fantasy football, we now have Monday morning quarterbacks talking about football from two different perspectives. We want you to be able to participate in this great tradition, so all fall we’ll be running NFL One Liners in our cue cards series on Monday. Use these tiny synopses throughout the day:

NFL One Liners

Jacksonville 32, Cleveland 28 — Once in a while, two bad teams play each other and produce a great game. This back-and-forth game was one of those.

Tennessee 14, Indianapolis 22 — The Colts pretty much locked up the division championship and a playoff spot today by beating the Titans.

Chicago 20, Minnesota 23 — Both teams missed field goals which would have won the game in overtime before the Vikings finally kicked one successfully.

Miami 23, New York Jets 3 — For the first half of the season, a common story was how surprising it was that the Jets were winning games. Now we know why everyone was surprised!

Arizona 21, Philadelphia 24 — I’m not sure why, but these two teams are always connected in my mind. They’re both birds (Cardinals and Eagles) and they both tend to play fun, throw-a-lot styles. They played true to form today by playing a close game which left them both 7-5 on the year.

Tampa Bay 6, Carolina 27 — Eight straight victories for Carolina, many of them, like today’s, extremely convincing. Makes you think they are the best team in the league right now.

New England 34, Houston 31 — New England is definitely not the best team in the league. Too many close games against too many not-very-good opponents like the Texans. But, another game, another victory, and the Patriots are will easily win their division.

Atlanta 34, Buffalo 31 — This game was another just like the Cleveland v. Jacksonville game: two bad teams, one extremely entertaining game.

St. Louis 13, San Francisco 23 — Poor St. Louis, stuck in a division with Seattle and San Francisco. It’s hard to compete against those two teams.

Denver 35, Kansas City 28 — Three weeks ago the Chiefs were 9-0 and on top of the world. Now they’ve lost three straight and everyone is talking about them like they’ll never win another game. My guess is the truth is somewhere in-between.

Cincinnati 17, San Diego 10 — The Bengals don’t get a lot of respect — because they have a history of dumb decisions on and off the field, because they have a red-headed quarterback, and because they wear tiger-print helmets — but they’ve won twice the number of games that they’ve lost this year. That’s gotta count for something.

New York Giants 24, Washington 17 — In the last minute of this game, Washington had the ball and needed to go down the field and score a touchdown to tie the game up. The refs pulled a bait-and-switch move on them, the likes of which, I and announcers Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth had never seen before. What happened was that on second down the Redskins looked like they earned a new set of downs. Most of the officials on the field, including the guys with the chains and down sign on the side of the field acted like the Redskins had a first down but the head ref apparently did not agree. After the next play, which the Redskins thought was a first down, the head ref told the teams that it was now fourth down. The Redskins were furious but had no recourse and after one last unsuccessful play, they lost. People will definitely be talking about this today!

Cue Cards 11-25-13: NFL One Liners

clapperboardCue Cards is a series designed to assist with the common small talk about high-profile recent sporting events that is so omnipresent in the workplace, the bar, and other social settings.

On Mondays during in the fall, the conversation is so dominated by NFL football that the expression “Monday morning quarterback” has entered the vernacular. The phrase is defined by google as “a person who passes judgment on and criticizes something after the event.” With the popularity of fantasy football, we now have Monday morning quarterbacks talking about football from two different perspectives. We want you to be able to participate in this great tradition, so all fall we’ll be running NFL One Liners in our cue cards series on Monday. Use these tiny synopses throughout the day:

NFL One Liners

Pittsburgh 27, Cleveland 11 — When it comes to sports Cleveland plays the role of Pittsburgh’s little brother.

Tampa Bay 24, Detroit 21 — Ho, hum, another weekend, another insanely close game played by the Lions. Meanwhile, don’t look now but Tampa Bay has been playing pretty well and has won three games after starting the year with eight straight losses.

Minnesota 26, Green Bay 26 — This game ended in a tie. According to Wikipedia there have only been 19 tied games since 1974. This, oddly, makes a tie an exciting result!

San Diego 41, Kansas City 38 — Kansas City’s dream of an undefeated season came to an end last weekend but their super bowl chances may have met their demise this weekend when two of their best defensive players left the game with potentially serious injuries.

Chicago 21, St. Louis 41 — With the Bears losing, the Lions losing, and the Vikings and Packers tying, the division they are in, the NFC North, may soon get as bad a reputation as the NFC East has had this season. It’s a shame that the Rams are in what people consider the toughest division, the NFC West, because they’re actually pretty good.

Carolina 20, Miami 16 — Talking about good, as good as the Panthers have been in their seven game win streak, they are still behind the Saints for the division lead. They play the Saints twice in the next four weeks, so we’ll get a chance to see which team is better.

New York Jets 3, Baltimore 19 — In news that’s the opposite of good, the Jets have now lost their last two games by a combined score of 56 to 17.

Jacksonville 13, Houston 6 — Like Tampa Bay, Jacksonville started the season 0-8 but have started playing better in the last few weeks. Some of this is just what the stats people call “regression to the mean.” As I understand it, this just means that if a streak seems unbelievably good or bad, wait a bit and things will start evening out.

Tennessee 23, Oakland 19 — These two teams are right on the edge of having a chance to maybe make the playoffs. The Titans remain edgy but the Raiders have now fallen off.

Indianapolis 11, Arizona 40 — I have no idea what’s going on with the Colts. They have a good record, a great quarterback, and two of the last five games they’ve been absolutely blown out by the Rams and now the Cardinals. The Cardinals are solid but I wouldn’t expect them to dominate like this.

Dallas 24, New York Giants 21 — I mentioned how bad the NFC east has been so far — this game between two NFC East teams was exciting to watch regardless of the quality of team. Dallas was ahead 21-6 and almost lost the game. The Giants were able to tie it up at 21 but lost on a last-minute field goal.

Denver 31, New England 34 — This game was one of those transcendent games that make it worthwhile to watch sports. The fourteenth matchup between Quarterbacks Peyton Manning and Tom Brady (somehow this is a big deal even though they are NEVER on the field at the same time,) this game lived up to its hype. The visiting Broncos were winning 24-0 at halftime mostly because the Patriots kept fumbling over and over again in the cold. The second half was the exact opposite. The Patriots scored 31 points and then, in overtime, another three to win the game.

Cue Cards 11-18-2013 NFL One-Liners

clapperboardCue Cards is a series designed to assist with the common small talk about high-profile recent sporting events that is so omnipresent in the workplace, the bar, and other social settings.

On Mondays during in the fall, the conversation is so dominated by NFL football that the expression “Monday morning quarterback” has entered the vernacular. The phrase is defined by google as “a person who passes judgment on and criticizes something after the event.” With the popularity of fantasy football, we now have Monday morning quarterbacks talking about football from two different perspectives. We want you to be able to participate in this great tradition, so all fall we’ll be running NFL One Liners in our cue cards series on Monday. Use these tiny synopses throughout the day:

NFL One Liners

New York Jets 14, Buffalo 37 — Jets quarterback Geno Smith outdid himself in his pattern of alternating good and bad weeks. This was one of his bad weeks and it was very bad.

Baltimore 20, Chicago 23 — After being delayed by almost two hours because of tornado-like weather conditions, this game became everything football should be: sloppy, muddy, and suspenseful. The soaked home fans who stayed outside for five hours were rewarded with a win.

Cleveland 20, Cincinnati 41 — As my girlfriend pointed out, both of these teams wear orange which makes them hard to tell apart. Luckily, you can tell which team the Browns are because they’re usually losing.

Washington 16, Philadelphia 24 — The Eagles won their first home game of the season… and took possession of first place in their division. That doesn’t speak highly of the football teams in the NFC East.

Detroit 27, Pittsburgh 37 — The Steelers are doing their best to claw their way back into playoff contention after a bad start. The Lions are doing their best to claw their way out of playoff contention by losing to teams with less talent, like the Steelers.

Atlanta 28, Tampa Bay 41 — Well, well, well. After starting 0-8, the Buccaneers have won two games in a row. Maybe former Rutgers Coach, Greg Schiano won’t get fired from coaching Tampa Bay.

Arizona 27, Jacksonville 14 — Tied at 14 at half-time, the Arizona defense shut the Jaguars out in the second half to help their team win their third straight game.

Oakland 28, Houston 23 — At the start of the year, only the most die-hard football junkies had heard of quarterbacks Case Keenum and Matt McGloin. Today they played against each other in a real, live NFL game!

San Diego 16, Miami 20 — After one in the first quarter, the Chargers couldn’t produce another touchdown against a Miami Dolphins defense that’s probably pretty annoyed about all the dysfunction on the offensive line.

San Francisco 20, New Orleans 23 — The Saints are 5-0 at home and only 1-2 on the road. #gumbopower

Green Bay 13, New York Giants 27 — The Giants started 0-6. After four straight wins, they are 4-6 and looking like winners. But the quarterbacks for the past four teams they’ve played have all been terrible — making this point will make you seem unpopular in NY but knowledgeable everywhere.

Minnesota 20, Seattle 41 — The Seahawks hide their excellence in plain sight by wearing teal and playing in the Pacific Northwest. Apparently they are really good at winning football games!

Kansas City 17, Denver 27 — This was the most anticipated game of the day, the undefeated Chiefs traveling to Denver to play the 8-1 Broncos. The best defense in the league (the Chiefs) versus the best offense in the league (the Broncos.) It sort of lived up to its billing but not really. The teams play again in two weeks, so get ready for more hype!

Cue Cards 11-11-13: NFL One Liners

clapperboardCue Cards is a series designed to assist with the common small talk about high-profile recent sporting events that is so omnipresent in the workplace, the bar, and other social settings.

On Mondays during in the fall, the conversation is so dominated by NFL football that the expression “Monday morning quarterback” has entered the vernacular. The phrase is defined by google as “a person who passes judgment on and criticizes something after the event.” With the popularity of fantasy football, we now have Monday morning quarterbacks talking about football from two different perspectives. We want you to be able to participate in this great tradition, so all fall we’ll be running NFL One Liners in our cue cards series on Monday. Use these tiny synopses throughout the day:

NFL One Liners

Seattle 33, Atlanta 10 — One of the fun things about sports is that they are such an opinion-heavy world that almost no matter what happens in a game, it can be seen as confirming what “everyone” thought. Everyone thought that Seattle wasn’t as good as everyone thought they were. Looks like everyone (the second everyone) was right.

Detroit 21, Chicago 19 — The Lions last three games were decided by a combined six points. Exciting and in first place!

Philadelphia 27, Green Bay 13 — Talking about exciting, Eagles quarterback Nick Foles followed up his seven touchdown break-out from last week with a three touchdown performance in today’s win.

Jacksonville 29, Tennessee 27 — The Jaguars win! The Jaguars win! It’s worth saying twice because it probably won’t happen twice this year.

St. Louis 38, Indianapolis 8 — In the “what-the-bleep” game of the weekend, the last place Rams slaughtered the first place Colts. That’s quadruped on quadruped crime.

Oakland 20, New York Giants 24 — The Giants are basically like the villain in a horror film. Don’t assume they are out of it, even after a 0-6 start of the year. They’re now 3-6 and only two games back from the division lead.

Buffalo 10, Pittsburgh 23 — The Steelers would like the previous paragraph to be about them… but I just don’t think they have enough going on to catch up in their division.

Cincinnati 17, Baltimore 20 — This game went into overtime after receiver A.J. Green caught an absolutely absurd last second, desperation heave into the end zone.

Carolina 10, San Francisco 9 — Somewhat unsurprisingly, two very good teams that are known for their defense played a close, defensive game. I love this type of game in principal but in practice, I tend to switch over to the kind of games the Lions have been playing.

Houston 24, Arizona 27 — The Texans have now lost their star running back to a back injury, their starting quarterback to a mixture of not being good anymore and an ankle injury, their head coach to what is being called a “mini-stroke,” and seven straight games. Ouch.

Denver 28, San Diego 20 — Ho hum, another weekend, another Broncos victory. That said, it has to be concerning for Broncos fans that their quarterback, Peyton Manning, who is 37 years old and only a year removed from neck surgery, is getting progressively more injured with each victory.

Dallas 10, New Orleans 49 — Saints’ quarterback Drew Brees is absolutely, unbelievable at… beating my fantasy football team. Oh yeah, he’s pretty good at real football too.

Cue Cards 11-3-2013: NFL One Liners

clapperboardCue Cards is a series designed to assist with the common small talk about high-profile recent sporting events that is so omnipresent in the workplace, the bar, and other social settings.

On Mondays during in the fall, the conversation is so dominated by NFL football that the expression “Monday morning quarterback” has entered the vernacular. The phrase is defined by google as “a person who passes judgment on and criticizes something after the event.” With the popularity of fantasy football, we now have Monday morning quarterbacks talking about football from two different perspectives. We want you to be able to participate in this great tradition, so all fall we’ll be running NFL One Liners in our cue cards series on Monday. Use these tiny synopses throughout the day:

NFL One Liners

Kansas City 23, Buffalo 13 — The Chiefs are undefeated but people suspect they are not quite as good as that would suggest because they’ve played a lot of weak teams or teams missing important players this year. Down, 10 – 3 at the half, the Chiefs looked like they were on their way to confirming those suspicions before they rallied to win.

Minnesota 23, Dallas 27 — The week after losing in the last minute of the game against the Lions, this week the Cowboys won in the last minute. This proves only that cowboys love drama.

Tennessee 28, St. Louis 21 — Football is a brutal sport and resting often helps. Before this game, the Titans had a week off. The Rams had one fewer day of rest than normal because they played last Monday. In a matchup of two mediocre teams, that might have been enough to decide who won.

New Orleans 20, New York Jets 26 — It’s starting to get creepy how Jets rookie quarterback Geno Smith alternates good and bad games. If you average ESPN’s proprietary measure of quarterback success, the QBR (quarterback rating) for the odd numbered weeks in the season so far (1, 3, 5, 7, 9) Smith receives a 52. Over even weeks, he has an average of 8.4. This week was an odd week — the Jets won.

San Diego 24, Washington 30 — Like the Cowboys, these two teams seem incapable of playing unentertaining games. Washington won, in part, by faking the Chargers defense out three times on the same running play from close to the end-zone they were trying to score on. Each time they gave the ball to little-known fullback Darrel Young who had only touched the ball twice all year before this game. This infuriated fantasy owners everywhere who were counting on more well-known Redskins scoring touchdowns.

Atlanta 10, Carolina 34 — It sure seems like when the Panthers win, they really win. Of the five games they’ve won so far, the closest one has been a 15 point margin.

Philadelphia 49, Oakland 20 — Eagles quarterback Nick Foles threw for seven touchdown passes in this game, tying the NFL record. You might remember that Peyton Manning threw seven touchdowns of his own on the opening night of this season. Before that, it hadn’t been done since 1969. Something strange is in the air. Or, you know, it might just be random.

Tampa Bay 24, Seattle 27 — In the same vein as the undefeated Chiefs, Seattle inspires suspicion that its true talent is not as good as its 8-1 record would suggest. The yet-to-win-a-game-this-year Buccaneers almost pulled off the upset but lost in overtime.

Baltimore 18, Cleveland 24 — Last year the Washington Redskins were 3-6 before winning their final seven games and making the playoffs. Their neighbors, the Baltimore Ravens would like to emulate them now that they are 3-5, and it’s possible, but it certainly feels like the defending Super Bowl champions have succumbed to what basketball coach Pat Riley famously called the “disease of me.”

Pittsburgh 31, New England 55 — For the past few weeks, the narrative surrounding Patriots star quarterback Tom Brady has been “what’s wrong with Tom Brady?” This week the narrative will be “nothing.”

Indianapolis 27, Houston 24 — The Texans were up 21-3 at halftime when head coach Gary Kubiak collapsed and was rushed to the hospital. Without Kubiak in the second half, the Texans were unable to prevent the Colts from coming back to win the game.

Cue Cards 10-28-2013: NFL One Liners

clapperboardCue Cards is a series designed to assist with the common small talk about high-profile recent sporting events that is so omnipresent in the workplace, the bar, and other social settings.

On Mondays during in the fall, the conversation is so dominated by NFL football that the expression “Monday morning quarterback” has entered the vernacular. The phrase is defined by google as “a person who passes judgment on and criticizes something after the event.” With the popularity of fantasy football, we now have Monday morning quarterbacks talking about football from two different perspectives. We want you to be able to participate in this great tradition, so all fall we’ll be running NFL One Liners in our cue cards series on Monday. Use these tiny synopses throughout the day:

NFL One Liners

Dallas 30, Detroit 31 — This was an absolutely crazy game. Detroit wide-receiver, Calvin Johnson, had over 300 receiving yards, which is usually the high-water-mark for an entire team, not one player. The Cowboys blew this game in the last few minutes by not remembering the Alamo.

Cleveland 17, Kansas City 23 — The Chiefs remain unbeaten and look impressive but people will be quick to point out that almost every team they’ve faced so far this year has been in some kind of disrepair. The Browns starting quarter-back in this game was the third best on their roster at the start of the year.

Miami 17, New England 27 — Between the Red Sox in the World Series and the Patriots win, Boston continues it’s streak as an outsize player on the sports scene. Especially for such a small city.[1]

Buffalo 17, New Orleans 35 — I had some New Orleans style etouffee for dinner on Saturday; the Saints had the Bills.

New York Giants 15, Philadelphia 7 — After starting the season with six losses, the Giants have won their second straight game and are shockingly still in contention to win the not-so-good-this-year NFC East division which contains the Eagles, Giants, Cowboys, and Redskins.

San Francisco 42, Jacksonville 10 — The NFL keeps putting games, like this one, in London in an effort to grow the game in Europe. Unfortunately they are games like this lopsided one.

New York Jets 9, Cincinnati 49 — Talking about lopsided games… the thing to say here is “Geno Smith (quarterback of the Jets) really played like a rookie.”

Pittsburgh 18, Oakland 21 — Nine years ago, my friends and I were instructing the non-sports fan in our midst to say “Ben Roethlisberger really played like a rookie.” We’re old and so is he!

Washington 21, Denver 45 — The Broncos had a sub-par day and still beat the Redskins by 24 points.

Atlanta 13, Arizona 27 — With the Falcons falling to 2-5 the story this week will be whether or not they trade tight-end Tony Gonzalez back to the Kansas City Chiefs who he played for during the first thirteen years of his career and where he’d have a better chance than in Atlanta to finally win a super bowl in what is probably his last season.

Green Bay 44, Minnesota 31 — Minnesota has started three quarterbacks this season. Aaron Rodgers has started for the Packers for the last five years and it shows.

Footnotes    (↵ returns to text)

  1. Just kidding all my Boston friends!↵

Cue Cards 10-21-2013: NFL One Liners

clapperboardCue Cards is a series designed to assist with the common small talk about high-profile recent sporting events that is so omnipresent in the workplace, the bar, and other social settings.

On Mondays during in the fall, the conversation is so dominated by NFL football that the expression “Monday morning quarterback” has entered the vernacular. The phrase is defined by google as “a person who passes judgment on and criticizes something after the event.” With the popularity of fantasy football, we now have Monday morning quarterbacks talking about football from two different perspectives. We want you to be able to participate in this great tradition, so all fall we’ll be running NFL One Liners in our cue cards series on Monday. Use these tiny synopses throughout the day:

NFL One Liners

Tampa Bay 23, Atlanta 31 — Usually the time to fire a head coach in the NFL is during the team’s bye week (the one week in seventeen that they get the weekend off.) Buccaneers coach Greg Schiano probably kept his job through the team’s bye by assigning the blame to the quarterback who they later cut from the team. The Buccaneers play again this Thursday and my guess is that after they lose that game they will fire Schiano anyway.

Cincinnati 27, Detroit 24 — This game featured two of the best wide receivers in the NFL, Calvin Johnson of the Lions and A.J. Green of the Bengals. They put on a show, catching a combined 310 yards and three touchdowns in a closely contested and entertaining game.

Buffalo 23, Miami 21 — Stuck in the same division as the Patriots, these teams have not had much success over the past decade. This year, they have both shown flashes of goodness but their inconsistency likely dooms them to another year of not making the playoffs.

New England 27, New York Jets 30 — The Jets and Patriots are rivals so any close game between them takes on at least epic pretensions. This game went back and forth and into overtime before being decided partially on an obscure rule which will be the subject of conversation among infuriated Boston fans tomorrow. A good way to defuse the situation is to point out that their baseball team is in the World Series and the football team is 5-2.

Dallas 17, Philadelphia 3 — This game was a great example of how unpredictable football can be. Every expert, pundit, and gambler thought this was going to be a high scoring game. At half-time the game was 3-0.

Chicago 41, Washington 45 — Talking about high scoring games… even losing starting quarterback Jay Cutler to a groin injury in the first half didn’t keep the Bears from almost keeping pace with the controversially named Washington Redskins.

St. Louis 15, Carolina 30 — Carolina is unexpectedly good. If they didn’t wear teal, I think people would be taking them more seriously.

San Diego 24, Jacksonville 6 — Jacksonville’s horrible play is drawing focus from the fact that they are the only team I’ve ever seen that plays with matte helmets. I think I like it.

San Francisco 31, Tennessee 17 — This game was not as close as the score suggests. The 49ers are bigger and meaner than most of the other teams in the league and most weeks that’s all they’ll need to win.

Cleveland 13, Green Bay 31 — A few years back legitimate sports writers questioned whether the Cincinnati Bengals made a mistake because they drafted a red-headed quarterback. It seems like having the last name of Weeden should have been a red flag for Cleveland’s general managers. Alas, it wasn’t.

Houston 16, Kansas City 17 — The Chiefs squeak by the Texans to remain undefeated.

Baltimore 16, Pittsburgh 19 — The defending Super Bowl champion Ravens lose their third game out of the last for while exhibiting why people say the NFL stands for “not for long.”

Denver 33, Indianapolis 39 — The game with the best plot of the weekend saw legendary quarterback Peyton Manning returning to the city he played for for 14 seasons to face the team that released him. Indianapolis’ defense frustrated the high-flying Denver offense all night and led their team to victory. Losing this game actually makes me like Peyton Manning more — he was clearly emotional about returning to what used to be his home and it affected his play.

Cue Cards 10-14-2013: NFL One Liners & Bonus Baseball

clapperboardCue Cards is a series designed to assist with the common small talk about high-profile recent sporting events that is so omnipresent in the workplace, the bar, and other social settings.

On Mondays during in the fall, the conversation is so dominated by NFL football that the expression “Monday morning quarterback” has entered the vernacular. The phrase is defined by google as “a person who passes judgment on and criticizes something after the event.” With the popularity of fantasy football, we now have Monday morning quarterbacks talking about football from two different perspectives. We want you to be able to participate in this great tradition, so all fall we’ll be running NFL One Liners in our cue cards series on Monday. Use these tiny synopses throughout the day:

NFL One Liners

Cincinnati 27, Buffalo 24 — If the Bengals needed overtime to beat the Bills, who didn’t even have their best quarterback playing, they’re not a serious playoff contender.

Detroit 31, Cleveland 17 — Lions rookie tight-end Joseph Fauria caught three touchdowns and did a different celebratory dance each time.

Oakland 7, Kansas City 24 — Kansas City continues it’s undefeated season on the strength of its defense which sacked quarterback Terrelle Pryor 10 times and intercepted him three times.

Carolina 35, Minnesota 10 — The Vikings signed deposed former Buccaneer quarterback Josh Freeman in the middle of last week. You’ll hear a lot of talk about how “distracting” that was to the Vikings.

Pittsburgh 19, New York Jets 6 — The Steelers win their first game of the season sending the Jets back to earth after a week of flying high following their big victory over the Falcons.

Philadelphia 31, Tampa Bay 20 — Eagles quarterback Michael Vick missed this game because of an injured hamstring and might never get it back after replacement Nick Foles’ four touchdown day.

Green Bay 19, Baltimore 17 — Green Bay squeaked out a victory in this matchup between two teams that have been very, very good over the last five years but are struggling to get things together this year.

St. Louis 38, Houston 13 — Talking about struggling to get things together, there’s going to be a lot of people quoting Apollo 13 after the Texans lost their fourth game in a row.

Jacksonville 19, Denver 35 — The story with this game all week was that Vegas bookmakers had set the Broncos as 28 point favorites, equalling the highest line ever. Denver won but it was much closer than expected so now the story will be about how the plucky Jaguars showed so much heart.

Tennessee 13, Seattle 20 — This game was a comedy of errors that ended in a Seahawks win which undoubtedly made their cutest fan very happy.

New Orleans 27, New England 30 — In our post last week about how to negotiate with a fan in your life who wants to watch football all day, we mentioned that one of the reasons was chasing the rare game that becomes a transcendent experience. This was one of those games. Leading in the last five minutes, the Saints had two chances to win the game but failed to get a first down both times leaving Tom Brady and the Patriots with about fifty seconds to go down the field and score a touchdown… which was exactly what they did.

Arizona 20, San Francisco 32 — The Forty Niners are like the weather in San Francisco: unexpectedly fierce.

Washington 16, Dallas 31 — The good news for Washington is that their quarterback, Robert Griffin III, finally looked like he wasn’t hampered all that much by his knee which is recovering from ACL surgery. The bad news is that at 1-4 on the year, it might be too late for them this season.

Sport: Baseball
Teams: The Detroit Tigers and the Boston Red Sox
When: Sunday, October 13
Context: Game two of the American League Championship Series, Detroit was up 1 game to zero
Result: The Red Sox won 6-5
Sports Fans will be Talking About:

  • Boston’s transcendent sports day continued into the night at Fenway park. Down 5-0, the Red Sox scored one run in the sixth and then four in the eighth when David Ortiz, known as Big Papi, hit a grand slam (a home run with three of his teammates already on base) to tie the game. The Sox then scored one in the bottom of the ninth to win the game.
  • If there’s anyone at work today from Boston, you’ll be able to tell from the big circles under their eyes and the goofy grin that keeps appearing on their faces. Last night’s game reminded Bostonians of 2004 when the Red Sox and David Ortiz seemed to do this almost every night during the playoffs on their way to winning their first world series in 86 years.

What’s Next: They play again tomorrow at 4:07 for game three of the seven game series.

Cue Cards 10-7-2013: NFL One Liners

clapperboardCue Cards is a series designed to assist with the common small talk about high-profile recent sporting events that is so omnipresent in the workplace, the bar, and other social settings.

On Mondays during in the fall, the conversation is so dominated by NFL football that the expression “Monday morning quarterback” has entered the vernacular. The phrase is defined by google as “a person who passes judgment on and criticizes something after the event.” With the popularity of fantasy football, we now have Monday morning quarterbacks talking about football from two different perspectives. We want you to be able to participate in this great tradition, so all fall we’ll be running NFL One Liners in our cue cards series on Monday. Use these tiny synopses throughout the day:

NFL One Liners

New Orleans 26, Chicago 18 — The Saints go marching into Chicago and come out with a win. Apologies for the pun. The NFL seems to be dividing itself into good teams and teams that look like they are unstoppable video-game football teams. Chicago is a good team. New Orleans is a video-game team.

New England 6, Cincinnati 13 — Cincinnati seems to specialize in winning ugly. In a New England rainstorm, Patriots quarterback Tom Brady did not score a single touchdown for the first time in 53 games.

Detroit 9, Green Bay 22 — Talking about video games, the Lions star wide-receiver Calvin Johnson (nick-named Megatron) did not play in this game because of an injury and his team was not able to generate much offense without him.

Kansas City 26, Tennessee 17 — This game is an example of the importance of quarterbacks. The Chiefs remain undefeated behind their new quarterback this season, Alex Smith. After their quarterback, Jake Locker, sustained a hip injury last game, the Titans were forced to turn to backup quarterback and Harvard man, Ryan Fitzpatrick, and lose.

Seattle 28, Indianapolis 34 — For reasons unclear even to me, I consistently think the Seahawks are not as good as they are. Today I was right.

Jacksonville 20, St. Louis 34 — There is no better medicine this year for an ailing football team than playing the Jaguars.

Baltimore 26, Miami 23 — It’s pretty clear that both of these teams are good.

Philadelphia 36, New York Giants 21 — It’s pretty clear that both of these teams are not good.

Carolina 6, Arizona 22 — Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton played like a super-hero in his rookie year two seasons ago but seems to have wedged his cloak in a phone booth since then.

Denver 51, Dallas 48 — This game tied for the fourth highest scoring game in NFL history. Both teams played like video-game teams. Dallas’ quarterback Tony Romo has been known for always messing up at the last minute his entire career and played to type by throwing an interception in the last three minutes of the game that led to Denver’s winning field goal. Romo is the guy who does everything right, right until he stubs his toe, scratches on the eight ball, and steps on the tines of a hoe which flies up to hit him in the face.

Houston 3, San Francisco 31 — The story coming into this game was that Texans quarterback Matt Schaub had thrown an interception which the defensive team had then converted into a touchdown on that play in each of the last three games. Although that is the most destructive thing an offense can do, it’s also relatively random whether or not the defense scores once they intercept the ball. Random or not, Schaub had done it for a fourth time within the first few minutes of this game. He threw two more interceptions before being replaced by backup T.J. Yates. Fans will spend the next week talking about whether Schaub should lose his job for good.

Oakland 27, San Diego 17 — The Oakland Raiders share a stadium with the major league baseball Oakland Athletics who were hosting a playoff game Saturday night. The stadium workers needed more time to convert from baseball to football so the start time for this game was moved from 1:25 Pacific Time to 8:35 Pacific Time. We had the fourth highest scoring game ever in Dallas this weekend, this may be the latest game ever.