Drew Magary’s Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo runs every Thursday at Defector during the NFL season. Got something you wanna contribute? Email the Roo. You can also read Drew over at SFGATE, and buy Drew’s books while you’re at it.
A few weeks ago I called my best friend Howard to chat on the phone. Howard and his wife just had their first kid, so I was checking in on the new parents, and on my spiritual nephew. I was gonna ask all of the usual questions. Is the baby sleeping well? Is the baby eating? Have you wanted to punch the baby yet because it wouldn’t stop screaming? But I never got a chance to go through my little rundown, because I’d called my man at the wrong time of day.
“I can’t talk right now,” he said. “We’re just sitting down to dinner.”
I looked at the clock. It was 4:45 p.m. I laughed out loud.
“Oh yeah,” I told him. “I remember being where you are right now.”
When you have kids, one of the first things you lose is dinner. You also lose sleep, money, free time, and the ability to have sex. But the loss of dinner is somehow one of the more conspicuous personal sacrifices. Before kids, I would eat dinner at what I considered to be a normal time: somewhere between 7:00 and 8:00 p.m. That’s a good time to eat dinner before you walk out the door to get shitfaced for the evening.
Then my wife delivered our first kid and the baby’s schedule became our own. We couldn’t eat dinner at the old time, because it fell smack dab in the middle of the bathing/feeding/burping/reading/putting to bed process, which could take anywhere from two hours to eight weeks. New parents have to steal time for themselves anywhere they can find it; it's why every new dad is reading this column while hiding out on the toilet. New parents are also exhausted, all of the time. They require calories just to make it through the day, and those calories can’t wait until well after sundown. A baby’s personal schedule is always a moving target, but my wife and I managed to find a consistent gap for dinner within it. It was right around 4:30-5:00 p.m. That’s when we would eat dinner, often with sunlight still blazing through the windows.
I grew to enjoy it. Part of this was the inevitable Stockholm Syndrome that comes from being imprisoned by parental responsibilities. But I was also trying to lose weight at the time, and eating dinner early—without eating anything else the rest of the night—was a big help in shedding pounds. Also, I hate NOT eating. I’m the kind of guy who treats happy hour as its own mealtime, so imagine my secret delight in getting to eat a full dinner, PLUS whatever leftover Annie’s shells and cheese the kid wouldn’t eat, at that time. Eventually, we established a set dinnertime of 5:30 p.m. and stuck to it, even when we had company over (my parents always thought we were weird to do this). After a few years, dinnertime migrated to 6:00, and then to 6:30 p.m, where it remains to this day. And it’ll stay at that time for the rest of my life, even after all of the kids have fled home.
You know why? Because eating dinner early kicks ass. First off, you get to eat. Secondly, pretty much every restaurant will have a table ready for you in the early bird window, which is important if you’re like me and have a family of five. Sometimes they’ll even give you a deal on apps! Thirdly, you have the rest of your night free once dinner is over. You can watch a whole movie, start up a primetime football game without any schedule conflicts, or maybe even go out for a drink. The night is yours when you eat early. I know that sounds weird if you’re the kind of person for whom dinner IS the evening’s entertainment. You book a table for 8:00 p.m, you round up your friends, and HEY PRESTO! You’ve got yourself a party.
But if I ever have to wait until 8:00 to get dinner in my belly now, I go insane. I will have to eat a secret first dinner at 6:00 just to tide myself over. I wasn’t made for late supping anymore, and I’m too old and tired to put up a cool facade that says otherwise. Actually, who says I’m the uncool one here? [Shifts into Hot Take mode] You late dinner eaters … you aspiring Spaniards … YOU are the uncool ones. You’re clogging up restaurants, making hungry old people wait, and depriving yourself of tasty food when you eat dinner at “normal” hours. And for what? So you can go to bed feeling like there’s a dump truck in your colon? It’s not worth it, kiddo.
If you want to experience true ecstasy, you’ll become Early Bird curious like me, a cool old guy who don’t give a fuck about nuthin’. And then you’ll treat yourself to a “midnight” snack at 8:00 p.m. It’s a regal way to live, and the only thing you have to lose in the transition is your pride. I can personally assure you that pride doesn’t taste as good as an extra helping of mac and cheese does. Eat early and live well, you fucker.
The Games
All games in the Jamboroo are evaluated for sheer watchability on a scale of 1 to 5 Throwgasms.
Five Throwgasms
Bears at Packers: Every Sunday, I see Curt Menefee on my television. And every Sunday, I become more and more alarmed at the man’s posture. They cut to Menefee teasing the halftime show and he always looks like he’s got a wooden leg, plus six missing vertebrae. A stiff wind would turn this man’s skeleton into ash.
Four Throwgasms
Cowboys at Lions: There’s now a remote, but existing, chance that the Cowboys make the playoffs, which means there’s also a chance that the NFC title game could end up being a Micah Parsons Bowl between Dallas and Green Bay. I don’t know why I’m thinking these thoughts. I’d be better off cutting myself.
Colts at Jaguars: We’re all trying to figure out which fraud team is the best of all the fraud teams right now. Fraud teams are really having a moment this year, and one of them will have to beat the others. Will it be the Colts, whose quarterback is currently playing with a broken leg? Will it be the Jaguars, whose quarterback would probably throw a more accurate ball if his leg was broken? I promise you that this matchup will provide zero answers for you. Whichever team shits its pants last will lose this game and be out of the running.
Three Throwgasms
Texans at Chiefs: It’s never safe to write off the Chiefs before the body is cold. But this Texans defense is so legit that it’s carrying the rest of the team to a potential division title, even though Houston has no viable offensive linemen on its roster. C.J. Stroud could take a knee on every snap and the Texans could still win a game 20-0.
Eagles at Chargers: The tush push may be on the verge of dying a natural death. Here are some stats for you via the indispensable Mike Tanier:
Jalen Hurts Tush Push statistics for the last three years:
2023: 42 attempts, 35 first downs, 11 of them touchdowns, 3 stuffs, 1 lost fumble, 7.1% stuff rate.
2024: 35 attempts, 28 first downs, 10 of them touchdowns, 7 stuffs, 0 lost fumbles, 20.0% stuff rate.
2025: 24 attempts, 16 first downs, 8 of them touchdowns, 8 stuffs, 1 lost fumble, 33.3% stuff rate.
The figures above include all sneaks by Hurts (not backups) in the regular season. Fake tush push plays (which are very rare) are not included. I also hand-counted three motion penalties on short-yardage plays for 2025, three for 2024 and four in 2023. I may have missed a flag or two.
No matter how you slice the numbers, the Tush Push has gone from a money play to a relatively inefficient short-yardage play call.
Tanier crunched those numbers just for the Eagles, who are far better at executing the tush push than any other team. And I haven’t even gotten to the recent uptick in tight end tush pushes, all of which come off like something that Chuck Pagano drew up. The reason the tush push has been so effective for Philly is because they’ve had a dominant interior line for the bulk of this decade, and because Jalen Hurts might very well be the physically strongest quarterback in league history. If Philly had run a normal-ass QB sneak all these years, I doubt their success rate would be much lower than the stats you see up above. But they were loudly effective in not only running the tush push, but also in faking it to set up even bigger gains. Plus, the tush push formation looks unstoppable, so every other team was like, “Hey we can do that, too!”
They can’t. The sample size is large enough now. I can guarantee that you already have at least one painful memory of your own team running this play at a critical time and failing. Miserably. Bills fans know what I mean all too well. There’s a methodology to a good sneak. The QB needs to survey the defensive front before the snap, search for weaknesses/mismatches along the line, take the snap, wait a beat, and then plunge where there’s space to plunge. As the height of Pushmania, Jalen Hurts was still putting the majority of these best practices in place. All of those nuances get lost when you’re the Texans and you say DURRR I BET OUR TE2 COULD RUN A TUSH PUSH HE LOOKS BIG AND STRONG. Wrong. You’re asking to get your shit ruined when you put Cade Stover behind center.
The spate of tush push failures serves as proof that it never should have been under consideration for banishment. Here’s a play that does not have an automatic success rate, and which often requires a great deal of wiliness (and yes, strength) to succeed. In other words, it’s football. That means it’s subject to the same life cycle as other fad plays. Some team out there, maybe the Eagles, is gonna wise up and just go back to regular sneaks when they need a yard. Then we can forget that this whole stupid controversy was ever a thing.
Steelers at Ravens: No one deserves to win the AFC North but the Steelers REALLY don’t deserve it. Because guess who’s back on his bullshit again?
For those of you in Pittsburgh hoping that Aaron Rodgers would be the one to finally end Mike Tomlin’s coaching tenure, you might just get your wish.
Two Throwgasms
Bengals at Bills: You and I are gonna have to reckon with the inevitability of Drake Maye. I can scream NEW ENGLAND AIN’T PLAYED NOBODY! all I want, and it won’t matter. Every other team in the league is a massive fraud, and Drake Maye is already the leader in the clubhouse for MVP. I thought I’d have more time to enjoy the Patriots suffering through a fallow period. But no. No, senile ol’ Bob Kraft just fell bass ackwards into another Hall of Famer behind center. This means war.
Rams at Cardinals
Falcons at Seahawks
One Throwgasm
Broncos at Raiders: You probably haven’t been paying attention to the Raiders, which is for the best. But Pete Carroll’s first year in Vegas has gone so badly that the NFL’s own information brokers feel comfortable enough to publish exposés about his tenure. Right after Carroll curbed OC Chip Kelly, Ian Rapoport gave us this spot of tea:
…based on the views of those who studied the offense and based on those who game-planned against it this season, they don't believe Kelly was running his own offense at all. It was unlike anything Kelly previously had run. In fact, defensive coordinators likened the Raiders offense this season more to Shane Waldron's offense with the Seahawks in 2023, Carroll's last year with Seattle. Kelly's trademark creative runs out of shotgun had been dramatically limited. Instead, the blend of Seattle and Las Vegas schemes tilted far more toward the under-center zone scheme Carroll favors. One previous opponent even had their scout team prepare cards based on Seattle plays of the past under Carroll, sources say.
Two things to keep in mind here. One: Shane Waldron was infamously fired by the Bears in the middle of last season when he couldn’t muster a decent offensive system for Caleb Williams to play in. Two: Carroll spent his pre-head coaching years working exclusively on the defensive side of the ball. Ever since Malcolm Butler, Seahawks fans have known you don’t want Pete anywhere near an offensive play sheet. Just like the Raiders to discover this fact a decade later.
Commanders at Vikings: If you think Joe Burrow coming back this year was a shit idea, consider Washington bringing back Jayden Daniels after we all watched arm break off just a few weeks ago. Did you assholes not hear all of us telling you to not RG3 this poor bastard? Jesus Christ.
Dolphins at Jets
Saints at Bucs
Titans at Browns
Pregame Song That Makes Me Wanna Run Through A Goddamn Brick Wall
“Countdown To Shutdown,” by The Hives! Yes, The Hives are still around, and reader Jason insists that they still very much rock:
This song kicks absolute ass. Something about these dudes attitudes and charisma makes their music just so energetic. Love it. Don't know if you've used it yet in a Jamboroo, but here it is.
I’m ruined for The Hives because of “Hate To Say I Told You So.” That was their breakout hit all the way back in 2000, and it’s one of the greatest rock songs ever recorded. It’s also one of the greatest guitar riffs in history, if not the greatest. I like plenty of other Hives songs, including the one Jason submitted up above, but I’m still waiting for them to record another song that knocks me over the way that “Hate To Say I Told You So” did. That’ll never happen. I’m an asshole for even thinking they could top it, and yet I keep hoping they can. No wonder I root the for football team I root for.
Fire This Asshole!
Is there anything more exciting than a coach losing his job? All year long, we’ll keep track of which coaches will almost certainly get fired at year’s end or sooner. And now, your current 2025 chopping block:
Brian Callahan—FIRED!
Brian Daboll—FIRED!
Jonathan Gannon*
Pete Carroll*
Mike McDaniel
Kevin Stefanski
Dan Quinn
Raheem Morris
Kevin O’Connell
Nick Sirianni
Mike Tomlin
Andy Reid
(* - potential midseason firing)
I’m halfway tempted to purge Mike McDaniel’s name from this cursed roster. The Dolphins may very well look at their recent dead-cat bounce and decide, “Eh, let’s give Mike a new QB to get hurt.” I’m kinda pulling for him.
Elsewhere, I have Kevin O’Connell listed above for eminently justifiable reasons. But the Vikings aren’t gonna fire him for the J.J. McCarthy fiasco. Here’s what will happen instead. Ownership will fire GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, and then everyone left in Eagan will blame Kwesi for the J.J. pick. That’s how this’ll go down. I like Kwesi, too. He unfucked a lot of things wrong with Minnesota’s roster, and I’ll always have a place in my heart for running Kirk Cousins out of town. But his draft record has been atrocious, so he’s about to get scapegoated all the way back to an assistant front office job in Cleveland. Won’t be pleasant.
Jim Harbaugh’s Lifehack Of The Week
“My brother John’s family only plays touch football on Thanksgiving. Disgusting.”
Great Moments In Poop History
Reader Grippy sends in this truly appalling story I call TOP LOG:
This story hinges on the reader understanding that I had a real phobia about pressing my velvety white ass into a strange toilet seat until I was into my 30s. OK, good? Gather round:
I was at a party that I convinced my idiot friend to throw. It was a gratuitous orgy of hard alcohol that none of us yet understood how to consume in moderation. As things wound down in the wee small hours, I felt a massive glacier of waste break away and start sliding toward freedom. I was NOT going to unload this rot into the common bathroom with the crowd still there, especially as I had a misguided idea that I might score.
Up to my friend’s bedroom I went. If you read my disclaimer, you’ll understand why I decided not to plop down, but to drunkenly squat over the loo and uncork a massive, dark and greasy great oak log of shit. My sense of relief quickly evaporated when I stood up and noticed that the lid was still down. There sat a shit the size of a baguette, totally drydocked and staring right back at me, accusingly.On cue, someone started pounding on the door. It was my friend yelling that he was about to puke.
My pants were still down. The pounding was frantic. It smelled bad in there and it was his goddamn bathroom. I could not refuse.
I grabbed some TP, wrapped my hand with it as best I could, and picked up my own waste. A catcher’s mitt grab. With my other hand, I opened the door and my friend ran in, lifted the shit-smeared toilet lid, and proceeded to firehose booze and tacos into the water. The smells commingling in that room were quickly trending Old Testament. I stood there quietly, with a turd in my hand, wondering about the best course of action. Do I toss it in the wastepaper basket and play dumb? Toss it out the window? There was a LOT of vomit still churning, and the situation would have been hard to explain if someone had walked in at that moment.
Luckily, nobody did and my friend finally stumbled away to rinse his mouth. I told him I still needed to wipe my filthy backside and dispose of the ass-hoagie currently warming my hand. To my surprise, he nodded and left. We had words about it the next day, hung over as hell and debating who would clean the bathroom. Still friends.
This is how best friends are forged.
Brick Johnson’s Executive Proposal Of The Week
“Yo Dad, can my buddy Brody and me give the fire-at-will order next time they find more boat people to kill? That would be SICK!"
Gametime Cheap Beer Of The Week
Mountain Brew Lager, which was discontinued in 2020 until consumer demand convinced them to bring it back! David tells us this heartwarming comeback story:
Stewart's (or Stort's in the local dialect) is a venerable Upstate NY institution. They introduced the Mountain Bew Lager in 2010 or so and sold it until 2020. From the Times Union, "The old Mountain Brew recipe — which was produced at Rochester’s Genesee Brewery — was focused on value, according to Chad Kiesow, Stewart’s Shops' chief operating officer. Some people liked the flavor; others thought the beer tasted like ‘motor oil,’ said Stewart’s public relations manager Robin Cooper." The new beer is being produced by Paradox Brewery (an Adirondack Brewery that produces good beers). Rather than being sold as a six-pack for $2.99, it will be a two-pack (19.2 oz cans) sold for $4. Still pretty cheap. I can't tell you what it tastes like because, thanks to the pandemic and recent medical news, I am no longer drinking alcohol.
I’m guessing that it tastes a whole lot like the can it comes in. That’s my kind of shitty beer.
Gameday Movie Of The Week For Titans Fans
Tarsem’s The Fall, which wasn’t available on streaming until well after I’d bought it on DVD. Turns out that DVD version hadn’t been encoded for American DVD players, so it didn’t work on my machine. This is the bind that our streaming overlords put us in when they leave titles off their server farms. Evil.
Anyway, the movie! The Fall has a cult following because Tarsem, best known as the dude who directed REM’s “Losing My Religion” video, shoots some of the most gorgeous film you’ve ever encountered. The story for this one is about an early 20th century stuntman (a young Lee Pace) who tells a little girl (Catinca Untaru) a crazy-ass fairy tale story while he’s all doped up on meds in the hospital. The fairy tale itself is compelling, but you won’t give a shit because you’ll be too busy staring at all of the visuals with your jaw agape. Tarsem has only made four movies since this one. I would him to make another 200 before he dies. Maybe give him a Star Wars movie too, just to see what he’d do with it. Four stars.
Gratuitous Simpsons Quote
“Ooh, hammer.”
Enjoy the games, everyone.
