Go For It

Drew Magary’s Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo runs every Thursday at Defector during the NFL season. This week's guest host is Victoria Zeller. Her debut novel, One of the Boys, is set to be released on May 13, 2025 by Levine Querido.

About a year ago now, I decided I wanted to bake bread.

I certainly did not grow up a baker, or even a cook at all: My skills in the kitchen stayed at the young bachelor-standard Kraft Mac/frozen pizza capacity into my early 20s. While my younger sisters were pressed into service at a young age, churning out cookies and brownies and birthday cakes with my mother, I was never called to duty. I was a boy, my sisters were girls. I could try to turn this into a moment of Injustice, yet another example of Young Victoria having a girlhood she didn’t know she wanted preemptively withheld from her; in reality, I was extremely fucking lazy. If I had been invited to participate, I would’ve said “no” and retreated to my room to play Madden. 

I wasn’t a quarantine convert to the Church of Sourdough, either; I survived working retail through 2020 by replaying Fallout: New Vegas and dissociating while YouTube served me autoplay garbage on a second screen. That’s probably how I made my way into Cooking YouTube, how I became acquainted with the various white millennial men that made me consider cooking for the first time in my life (it’s a little embarrassing to admit that I credit, like, 70 percent of my current prowess in the kitchen to Adam Ragusea, but we’re being vulnerable today).

Even as I took my first wobbly steps towards culinary competence, I was far, far too intimidated to consider baking. This was a language I hadn’t been taught to speak, and every time I tried to learn it, a wall of websites stared back at me and said: Baking is science, and you are not a scientist. Your only hope of success is purchasing these 20 kitchen implements and my cookbook, retailing at $29.95. If you don’t have a stand mixer, go fuck yourself. You don’t even have a sourdough starter, you fucking worm. You useless piece of shit.

After literal years of being too afraid to try, I finally took the plunge and started baking my own bread last December. And, friends, I have a secret to share with you. One that Big Bread doesn’t want you to know.

This shit is not hard.

I am, by nature, a very conservative football fan.

This is a fun party trick to pull out on people who 1) don’t assume the quiet artsy trans girl is sports-literate, 2) would certainly not assume she’s a Run The Damn Ball meathead, but if you’ve ever watched a game with me, you know. I believe in Honorable Ball, the principles of which look something like this:

• Running the ball solves most problems. If you cannot run the ball, you do not deserve to win.
• The game is won on the offensive and defensive lines. Being soft up front is an affront to Ball and a sign of deep moral failure.
• You should have a Grown-up Passing Game. You should not rely on play action, RPOs, or rollouts. If your quarterback can’t hang in the pocket, go through his reads, and make big boy throws, I do not have to take him seriously.
  • Note: RPO is conservative trickery and must be outlawed. 
• You should punt from your own side of the field on fourth down.*
• You should take the points on fourth down in field goal territory.*
• The “that boy nice” test is far more important to success than analytics.*
• You should not, under any circumstances, be the Miami Dolphins.*situational exceptions apply

You can chalk up a lot of this to my background as a lineman, but I also believe in Honorable Ball because it works. The Patriots beat the Bills approximately one billion times in my youth abiding by these principles, and even though the Chiefs like to pretend they’re a razzle dazzle flash-in-the-pan team, they’re at their best when they’re beating the shit out of you in the trenches (also, they win championships with defense!). Honorable Ball is dependable, steady, and above all, Predictable. It’s boring, but greatness in this sport is almost always boring.

So, I guess, that brings me to this big asshole.

The hiring of Campbell in 2021 was largely gawked at by the sports internet at large, and I, too, was skeptical initially. As soon as I saw him doing up-downs with his players in his first training camp, though, I knew he was the kinda guy I’d end up adoring: a total meathead, a true champion of Honorable Ball. And in most ways, he is that! The Lions are physical as hell, they run the piss out of the ball, and Jared Goff is one of the last true pocket passers in the game. They dabble in misdirection, trickery, and shenanigans, sure, but at their core, the Lions are a deeply boring football machine.

At the same time, however, something remarkable has happened:

Against all odds, the kneecap-biter himself—a cartoon caricature of a Big Stupid Ball Coach—has spearheaded a seismic shift in how NFL coaches approach fourth down, with teams now more far likely to go for it on fourth-and-short than ever before. A basic tenet of game management has shifted, maybe permanently, in just a few years, because one coach challenged football orthodoxy to a staring contest, and he won.

Somewhere, deep down, I can’t fucking stand it.

Here is what I’ve learned in my year of baking bread:

You don’t need a kitchen scale to measure out flour to the gram (you don’t need to measure flour at all!). You don’t need to make a sourdough starter, a biga, a poolish, or a pâte fermentée. You don’t need to knead the dough for a billion years, or even knead at all if you don’t want to (autolysis is your friend!). I barely even follow a recipe when I make my standard Dutch oven loaf these days, though you can find the procedure I use here if you’re curious. It took months to get good at this, sure, but my very first serious attempt was damn good, too. If you combine flour, water, yeast, salt, and time, you’re probably gonna get something good! People have been doing this for thousands of years; I promise you can, too.

In discovering all this, I have become extremely, extremely disillusioned with the Baking-Industrial Complex that exists to mystify this process to the average home baker. There are, of course, very good reasons to be more scientific than I usually am: if you’re baking on a large scale, if you’re obsessed with appearance/perfect texture/particular fermented flavors, etc. But I’m a writer, not a commercial baker, and all I want is a nice crusty loaf I can slather in butter in jam. So why was I so fucking scared of a basic pillar of baking?

Why do I hate when Dan Campbell goes for it on fourth-and-inches rather than kicking a field goal?

Learned helplessness is instilled in everyone in the western world.

I am, indeed, the stereotypical zillennial who gets paralyzing anxiety over making phone calls, but it’s not just people my age and younger. Americans (at least ones above the poverty line) are born into a level of privilege and abundance that previous generations couldn’t fathom. We’re pressured to specialize at a very young age, creating a class of experts in increasingly niche fields of study who remain hopeless at everything else. Of course, specialization isn’t new, but complete alienation from the basic functions of life—who produces the food you eat every day, how that food gets to the store you bought it from, or even who delivered that food to your doorstep—is a uniquely modern phenomenon, at least for us plebs. 

Was my years-long aversion to doing the eminently doable irrational, cowardly, and ultimately pointless? Yes. I know this, logically. And deep down, I think Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti, who repeatedly punted the game away in the single biggest moment in program history, also knows that he was being irrational, too.

If you don’t wanna follow me on this logical leap, honestly, you’re probably right to do so. I have a lot more empathy for people my age and younger that were force-fed internet slop and Growth Mindset bullshit from a young age than I do 60-year-old millionaires who piss their pants when the down marker switches from 3 to 4. But still, aversion to going for it on fourth down is a socially-imposed anxiety, one that is not based in material reality. And just like you can with baking, you can take a scientific approach to getting more comfortable with it: you can measure your ingredients to the gram, you can follow the recipe to the letter.

Or you can do what Dan Campbell does:

Does this vibes-based approach to trying new things lead to disaster? Abso-fuckin’-lutely. Dan Campbell should not have attempted an onside kick with 12 minutes left in the game against the Bills; I should not have eaten half of a test bake of visibly underdone dinner rolls after the first one made my stomach hurt. But the entire goddamn point of living is opening your heart to the unknown, to try, to be willing to throw a punch if you know you’re gonna lose the fight anyways. You’ve gotta be willing to go for it.

In that spirit, I am opening my heart to your fourth-down aggressiveness, Dan Campbell. I may not always approve of your Low Honor Ball, but goddammit, I respect your iconoclasm. Never stop being yourself.

The Games

All games in the Jamboroo are evaluated for sheer watchability on a scale of 1 to 5 Throwgasms.

Note: I am not discussing Chiefs at Steelers or Ravens at Texans. These games will likely be great! But the ever-creeping scourge of capital means they will have already happened by the time you’re reading this, and I do not wish to create a time paradox. Furthermore, I do not respect Netflix or the Kansas City Chiefs. Thank you for your understanding at this time.

Five Throwgasms

Cardinals at Rams: I have prepared two apologies I’d like to issue on behalf of the American people, if you’ll indulge me:

Dear Jonathan Gannon and Matthew Stafford,

First, to Coach Gannon: I don’t think we got off on the right foot. We were introduced to you via the industrial accident your Eagles defense oversaw in Super Bowl LVII, which wasn’t a great first impression, and it didn’t get much better from there. 

We called you NFL Pete Buttigieg. Football’s Kendall Roy, even. Everything about your first offseason in Arizona made it look like you were brought to the desert to be the sacrificial lamb, the guy who would take a miserably undertalented roster to 1-16 record, get fired, and deliver Caleb Williams to the handsome young offensive mind tapped to take your place. 

And yet! Here you are, Coach. You punched above your weight in Year 1 to gut out four wins with the worst roster in football, and you elevated another poor roster to competence in Year 2. While your defense hasn’t exactly lit the world on fire, you absolutely deserve credit for getting solid play from a unit that relies on significant contributions from Mack Wilson, Starling Thomas V, LJ Collier, and Roy Lopez. The internet may find your affect unsettling, but whatever you’re doing seems to be working, at least on the macro level. You’re a certified Ball Coach, and none of us can take that away from you.

(Note: This section was longer and more complimentary before you lost to the Panthers on Sunday. You really made me look like a goddamn moron, Coach. Thanks.) 

Now, to Matthew Stafford: I feel as though I personally wronged you, Matt—can I call you Matt? You were easy to ignore in Detroit, unfortunately, thanks to a flurry of circumstances outside of your control. It was easy to draw up your early career production to the presence of Calvin Johnson, and while that certainly helped, we never really considered you Elite. You had one single Pro Bowl nod in Detroit despite a decade of high level play, and not a single All-Pro placement or MVP vote. You had personal success under the watchful eye of Jim Schwartz, Jim Caldwell, and Matt Fucking Patricia, even if that personal success often failed to turn into much of anything for the Lions. 

I can’t speak for everyone, but when you were in Detroit, I always filed you in the Tannehill/Cousins/Flacco cabinet in my brain. You belonged with the quarterbacks who were good enough to have individual impressive or effective seasons, not ones that were serious contenders for the crown of QB1.

In hindsight, it’s obvious that we just didn’t have the context for you. Because you, Matt, were a herald for players we did not yet know.

In Los Angeles, you’ve been an absolute delight. You won a Super Bowl immediately, battled back from an injury-riddled 2022 campaign, and are playing the best football of your life in your mid-30s. Every time I watch the Rams, you make at least one play that breaks my brain. Just a few weeks ago, you reduced my team to ashes, and I can’t even really be mad about it. 

Rather than being the ugly duckling of your generation of franchise quarterbacks, Matt, you were the prototype for the freakishly gifted creative madmen that dominate today’s game. Without you, there is no Patrick Mahomes, no Josh Allen, no Lamar Jackson. As the saying goes, you’re my favorite quarterback’s favorite quarterback. You were born 10 years too early to slot right in as their natural contemporaries, but nobody should be surprised that you’re the last of the old guard holding serve with them. I don’t know how many more years you can keep this up, but I hope it’s 10. Fifteen. Twenty. I want to watch you do this shit forever.

Whenever you retire, Matt, I stand ready to lead the charge for your Hall of Fame candidacy. Between your impressive counting stats, your Super Bowl ring, and the Eye Test you pass with flying colors, you should absolutely make it in. 

Love,

Your friend Victoria

P.S. Coach Gannon: why do you have so many fuckin teeth man

Four Throwgasms

Packers at Vikings: Will this game be an absolute banger? Yes. Do I wanna talk ball? Only adjacently.

I am so, so glad I never lost faith in Sam Darnold. If Kyle Shanahan wasn’t attached to his self-insert Sonic OC at quarterback—if he’d had the courage—he would’ve put in Sam last season and my Sam Darnold Super Bowl MVP call from the preseason would’ve paid off (not that I’m bitter about it or anything). Still, this 13-2 start is for the TRUE Darnarriors out there, the ones who never lost faith. We won, boys. This one’s for us.

Secondly: I wanna talk about how absolutely goddamn adorable the Vikings defense is. They play like rabid dogs on the field, sure, but their increasingly elaborate choreographed celebration dances are what I truly care about. Firstly: Camryn Bynum and Josh Metellus absolutely fucking nailed the dance from White Chicks two weeks back, and I’m not done gawking at it yet.

This week, the Vikings defense celebrated the game-winning touchdown with a callback to 2008 Disney Channel original movie Camp Rock, and Bynum blessed us with BEHIND-THE-SCENES REHEARSAL FOOTAGE.

This is so goddamn cute it makes me want to throw up. This is the shit fanfic writers dream of. If you don’t like this, go to hell. 

Three Throwgasms

Falcons at Commanders: This one might have some heat on it, y’all. I don’t know if Michael Penix Jr. is going to work out in the long run—these last few weeks should not be treated as anything more than a trial run for him–but aesthetically, I love watching him play. This isn’t a novel observation, but his whip-crack quickdraw throwing motion makes him look like a mirrored version of Philip Rivers. And not to get a little juvenile in such a serious column, but we can’t ever stop enjoying that this man’s name is Michael Penix Jr. Like, his jersey says PENIX JR in big letters on the back. What a gift from the universe he is.

On the other side, I am so, so glad that Jayden Daniels reminded everyone that he’s the offensive rookie of the year against the Eagles. I saw you all stray from God’s light with your “Bo” “Nix” talk, but I never lost faith. Unfortunately, his level of play is elevating the marrow-deep mediocrity of Dan Quinn and Kliff Kingsbury, which will likely hurt him long-term. If you’re listening, God, please teach this guy how to protect himself and get him some real coaches. 

Broncos at Bengals: Yet another island game, because this weekend has eight goddamn island games. This one has playoff implications: if the Bengals win out (Broncos, at Steelers) and the Broncos lose out (at Bengals, Chiefs), Cincinnati can steal the seven seed from Denver. Will this be, like, Good Football? No idea!

Two Throwgasms

Seahawks at Bears: If you’re still entertaining company—or you are the company—on Thursday afternoon, this game is the last leg on your journey. The GameAbove Sports Bowl™ and the Rate Bowl™ will get you from 2:00 p.m. through kickoff in Chicago. If you’re watching this game with a surly uncle who wants to complain about Caleb Williams’s painted nails, just let him know Caleb follows “End Wokeness” on Twitter (or, if you know your uncle’s a foot guy, tell him he and Caleb have something in common). If that still doesn’t work, the 68 Ventures Bowl™ kicks off at 9:00 p.m.

Panthers at Buccaneers: I, too, am cheering for Bryce Young. I was not a fan of his in the predraft process (my rankings that year went 1. Richardson, 2. Stroud, 3. Young, 4. Levis, which, lol), but he deserves this mini Linsanity run. 

But Victoria, how can a five-game stretch of statistically average quarterback play and a 1-4 record be a Linsanity run? Mind your damn business, OK? It’s the Panthers. We’re grading on a curve. Be nice.

Lions at 49ers: Given how the Lions season ended last year, Dan Campbell’s gonna be real mean in this one. Like, triple-reverse Penei Sewell TD pass to Jared Goff-level mean. This is gonna be a real shitfest.

Chargers at Patriots
Cowboys at Eagles

One Throwgasm

Jets at Bills: Are you surprised I went this long without mentioning the Bills? I guess I am, too, but the highest compliment I can pay to them is that I don’t have much to say. They process teams into a fine paste with grim effectiveness. The quarterback is sick, the offensive line is sick, the running backs are sick. A weird game against the Patriots in beer-slushie weather does not move me. This team has exceeded my wildest expectations, and I plan on enjoying this as much as possible until the clock hits 0:00 on their season, no matter when it ends. 

Regarding the Jets: It’s so rare anything that good happens anymore, man. Polite society has taken L after L this year, but at least we can cherish this absolute train accident of a season happening to a total piece of shit. I wish you nothing but pain and misery for the rest of your days, Aaron Rodgers. Go to hell.

Titans at Jaguars
Colts at Giants
Dolphins at Browns
Raiders at Saints

Pregame Playlist That Makes Me Wanna Pour Myself A Toddy, Put My Feet Up, And Watch A Terrible Mid-Week Bowl Game 

Cozy Christmas Jazz! This is the good shit right here, folks. I do not consider myself a Christmas music person—retail PTSD, most likely—but I’m blasting this playlist all December. This is what Christmas music should be: something relaxing to put on in the background while you decorate cookies, wrap presents, or stuff your face with rum balls with half-a-dozen of your stupidest cousins. If you’re like me and you try to extend Christmas Vibes through to the New Year, I also find this to be a good soundtrack to eating a bunch of sugar cookies in your pajamas while your partner is still asleep.

(If you don’t celebrate Christmas, consider “instrumental jazz for winter,” another standby of mine this time of year. It still hits all the Holiday Beats for me without having the baggage of Cultural Christianity.)

Fire This Asshole!

Note: This is my list, not Drew’s, so it looks a little different than usual. Drew will back to fire half the league again next week. 

Robert Saleh
Dennis Allen
Matt Eberflus
Doug Pederson
Kevin Stefanski
Brian Daboll
Mike McCarthy
Jerod Mayo
Antonio Pierce
Jeff Ulbrich*

*This may come across as overly harsh or unnecessary, but I will remind you that the New York Jets fired Robert Saleh, who had a 2-3 record, specifically because Woody Johnson (and his large sons) believed Ulbrich could right the ship and get this team into the playoffs. The Jets looked decent under Saleh; under Ulbrich, they’ve been a laughingstock. I don’t know if a team has ever fired two head coaches in one season, but if it’s ever gonna happen, it might be right here.

Gametime Cheap Beer Of The Week

Samuel Adams Holiday White Ale! I could not tell you how or why this is a “holiday” beer, because lemme tell ya, it’s just a lawnmower beer with a vaguely seasonal label. These always find their way into my parents’ fridge this time of year, and as someone who pretty much only drinks lawnmower beer, I deeply appreciate that Samuel Adams has given me an out from Cranberry Sours and Candy Cane Triple IPAs and all the other nonsense you’re supposed to drink this time of year. Beer is not supposed to taste like pinecones or candy, it’s supposed to taste like seltzer someone left a slice of bread in for a week. Grow up.

Gameday Movie Of The Week For Giants Fans

Come and See! Clean, wholesome fun for the whole family! The Giants fan in your life will laugh, cry, and fall in love with a lovable cast of characters! Now on VHS, probably!

(This is one of the greatest films I’ve ever seen, though it did give me nightmares for, like, a full month. Aleksei Kravchenko as Flyora gives the single greatest performance a child actor ever has, and it still guts me every time I see it. Come and See is a much better use of two and a half hours of your time than the New York Giants are. Still, don’t watch this with your children unless they’re, like, extremely metal.)

Gratuitous Simpsons Quote of the Week

I did not grow up with The Simpsons, and most of the jokes I’ve seen passed around out of context don’t do all that much for me (sorry, Olds). 

There is one exception.

Happy holidays, everyone!!!