While everybody today is talking about Myles Garrett and wondering if assault with a deadly weapon is enough to merit a longer than rest-of-season suspension in Roger Goodell’s NFL, I’m thinking of some other names:
Vance McDonald, Jaylen Samuels, James Washington, Nick Vannett, Tevin Jones, Trey Edmunds, Tony Brooks James, and Johnny Holton. Those were the “skill players” who Mason Rudolph had to toy with for most of the game last night in Cleveland. Throw in an offensive line that has crashed and burned since Mike Munchak left town, and you’ve just cooked up a recipe for losing ugly. The Browns were only too happy to oblige, despite themselves.
That the Steelers are now 5-5 and were coming off a four-game win streak is truly amazing, considering the injuries they’ve endured. James Conner, JuJu Smith-Schuster and Diontae Johnson all went down last night, so I expect Coach Mike Tomlin and GM Kevin Colbert will be scouring the waiver wire, the transfer portal, and the local YMCA for any warm bodies willing to help the cause. I mean, Johnny “Hellfire” Holton was the go-to guy last night with seven targets, mostly go patterns. Thank goodness the guy finally caught a ball on his last look — it was getting embarrassing. It’s his 12th career catch in four seasons, a stark reminder that John Stallworth is not walking through that door. Lynn Swann is not … well, you get the picture.
The Steelers have scored seven offensive TDs in the last five games — four of them wins! — so thank heavens for T.J. Watt, Cam Hayward, Minkah Fitzpatrick and the defense. The lone score last night wasn’t the fanciest: Cleveland practically rickshawed the Steelers downfield with four penalties, three for first downs, including one that set up shop inside the five.
The Brownies are who they are, but kudos for stepping up and saving Freddie Kitchens’ job for another week. Cleveland’s last six coaches have been famously fired following a Steelers game, but Kitchens should be safe, at least for another two weeks when they’ll meet again in Pittsburgh.
The question is: How will the Browns perform without their best defensive player who just couldn’t help himself last night. The furies still upon him despite the game decided and the clock ticking away, he found Mason Rudolph’s helmet in his hand and did what comes naturally: He beat Rudolph on the head with it. In the World of You and Me that would lead to jail time. In Goodellville, it merits a two-month vacation? Will there be any more? We’ll see.
***** *****
If you’re reading this right now, there’s a decent chance that you’ve coached kids in sports at some time or another, either guiding your kid’s Little League teams or helping out in the neighborhood. If not, maybe you’ve been positively influenced by a coach sometime in your life. At the very least, you have family or friends who have raved about a wonderful coach they’ve met along their journey of life, and what that coach has meant to them in an almost spiritual way.
My question is: How long do you think that’s going to last?
We all got a reprieve on Monday when a New Jersey jury of four men and four women cleared a high school JV baseball coach — John Suk — of blatant negligence and recklessness for telling a kid to slide into third base on a routine play, a throw from deep leftfield to third. The player, then a freshman, tore up his ankle in awful fashion, which prompted his father to sue, blaming both the third base coach and the school administration for hiring the then-23-year-old coach. The plaintiff and his father were looking for a seven-figure settlement.
The plaintiff’s two lawyers, a couple of highbrow types who know their way around a jury, took what seems like the frightful F-you of frivolousness and made a case of it. For seven years this dragged on. The lawyers presented Suk as “an inattentive and unqualified lout,” according to Steve Politi, who covered the trial for NJ Advance Media. Yet Suk is a former high school catcher, not a video-game nerd looking for a paycheck by coaching third base in a JV game. He simply told a kid to slide into third base. Happens all the time. Not to slide into Indiana Jones’ snake pit, not to slide into the Jersey swamps, not even to slide into a Kardashian’s DMs. Slide into third … damn … base.
“He must be held accountable for what he did!” one of the attorney’s said during the opening remarks. Crazy, huh? You’d think this one would get thrown out post haste and everybody sent on with their lives. But seven years later …
“As I watch this unfold from the nearly empty gallery, I first am overcome with the ridiculousness of the scene,” reported Politi, adding, “Yes, I have found the intersection of our overly litigious society and our out-of-control youth sports culture.”
Fortunately, the jury ruled in favor of us all (after a lengthy deliberation, and by a vote of seven to one!). Can you imagine if the verdict had gone the other way? Who would dare coach Little League? How could high schools afford the malpractice insurance for their coaches?
We’re already experiencing a dearth of young, incoming game officials, umpires, and referees. People just don’t want to step into the mess anymore. And the veteran officials are gradually leaving. So, games are being cancelled, or not even scheduled, across the nation because of it.
Now I’m wondering how long until the disease of blame-everyone-else keeps good, young coaches from entering the arena? Years from now, after one of these lawsuits actually clicks, will we look back and wonder how we lost it all?
Probably. And we’ll blame everybody else.
