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.
For roughly one hour, everything in Chicago was different. I saw it with my own eyes. I saw Caleb Williams start off his 2025 season, on Monday Night Football, looking every bit like the second coming of Patrick Mahomes that he was advertised to be. He completed his first 10 passes. He was so deft on his feet that Minnesota pass rushers could never get home. And he spread the wealth, completing passes to five different receivers on his first drive alone. That drive ended in a touchdown, with Williams winning a foot race to the pylon:
Given that I was cheering for the opposition, I had the sinking feeling that my own team was good and fucked. I had ample reason for believing so. The Bears had jettisoned their entire coaching staff during the offseason, replacing former head coach Matt Eberflus with red hot Detroit Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson. Johnson, a man whose face is set to “don’t fuck with me” at all times, was tasked with refashioning Chicago’s offense, Williams included, in the image of the 2024 Lions juggernaut: dominant line play, chunk plays down the field, all of that fun shit. Early on Monday night, the new head coach appeared well ahead of schedule in accomplishing that mission. The Bears really did look like the Lions (the Lions, meanwhile, looked like the Bears in getting trounced by Green Bay), and Williams really DID look like the second coming of Patrick Mahomes. I was shaken.
Their offense wouldn’t score another touchdown until garbage time.
After those perfect first 10 passes, Williams went 11-for-25. Once Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores turned his blitz knob to High, Williams got happy feet. He abandoned his progressions early. On multiple occasions, he missed receivers who were wide open down the field. He was the same QB he’d been the year prior: holding the ball too long, not finishing off his progressions, sulking like a kicked dog whenever things went sideways. Johnson hadn’t fixed a thing, and may never be able to.
It’s not particularly fair to declare any player a bust 18 games into their career. More important, it’s often quite stupid. Virtually every draftee struggles with the college-to-pro transition; insta-stars like Jayden Daniels are exceptions that make the task look much easier than it is. For everyone else, no matter their pedigree, it takes equal parts time and torture. Caleb Williams ended his rookie season finishing 71st among all quarterbacks in Expected Points Added, below the likes of Tim Boyle. But he was a rookie, and he was still one of the most widely heralded QB prospects ever to come out of the draft. He was Caleb Williams, for fuck’s sake. His name alone merited patience.
As of right now, that name is all the quarterback has to go on. Prior to the Monday night fiasco, indie blogger Ty Dunne published a massive, three-part investigation into the Bears’ handling of Williams that torched virtually every level of the organization. Eberflus was a clueless idiot. Former offensive coordinator Shane Waldron was a hapless enabler. Running backs coach David Walker was fired for allegedly sexually harassing coworkers. And defensive coordinator Alan Williams was forced to resign early in Williams’s rookie season after he, according to Dunne, constantly “engaged in sexually inappropriate behavior on an electronic device with a woman” while at the office. All classic Bears shit, but now with much higher stakes.
Worst of all was GM Ryan Poles, who according to Dunne rigged the team’s scouting process—if it could be called a scouting process at all—to cement Williams as the Bears’ pick at No. 1 overall last year without doing their proper diligence. If the Chicago front office had scouted Williams with an objective eye, they would have seen all of the flaws that have been on display now for over a year: the processing issues, the running around, all of it. They would have engineered a plan to correct those flaws, and then hired the right coaches to execute that plan. They did none of those things.
Williams himself appears disinclined to cultivate better playing habits. It's not just Dunne reporting as such. Just about everything that's been reported about Williams off the field, combined with his poor play, has veered conversations about him into every tired argument that you and I have had about pro athletes—especially black athletes—since time immemorial. Williams told ESPN’s Seth Wickersham that the coaches on Eberflus’s staff never taught him how to watch tape. Those same coaches told Dunne, anonymously, that Williams was lying. This is now a personal feud, one that's likely get uglier from here, and in familiar ways.
Those rehashed arguments obscure compelling evidence that Williams possesses little aptitude for pro-style offenses, isn't interested in doing the work needed to gain it, can't execute basic cadences, and walks away from instruction. You’re more than allowed to interpret his coaches’ motives in talking to the press as suspect, and to dismiss all criticism of Williams as easy scapegoating. But first of all, these are the Bears, so wouldn’t it be wiser to conclude that everyone involved here is culpable on some level? Secondly, have you watched this guy play football? Because it’s hard to watch Caleb Williams fuck up in the exact same way, every game, and not conclude that there’s some truths to the knocks against him.
This is not an “I told you so” kind of essay. Everyone had Williams marked as the best player in last year’s draft, myself included. The people that had conflicting opinions likely held them strictly for content reasons. Though I root for a divisional rival, I don’t want Caleb Williams to fail. I don’t want him to be a lemon, because I hate bad quarterbacking. But how can you describe Williams as anything but a lemon so far, given everything we’ve seen on the field? When a rookie QB struggles, you can at least glean the areas where he’s improving. You can’t do that with Caleb Williams. He stinks, and not in any way that makes you confident that he’ll un-stink. Maybe Ben Johnson will successfully mold Caleb Williams into a star, and maybe the Bears will streamline their mess of a front office. But the 2024 draft is long past now, and you can only live off your potential upside for so long. Caleb Williams isn’t a good quarterback. I can hope he’ll become one someday, but this is football. Hope means nothing here.
The Games
All games in the Jamboroo are evaluated for sheer watchability on a scale of 1 to 5 Throwgasms.
Five Throwgasms
Commanders at Packers: This is one of the best matchups of the weekend, and it’s tonight! On Thursday Night Football! I’m as stunned as you are.
Eagles at Chiefs: The NFL loves tweaking a rule every year until that rule no longer reads as passable English, but I’ll be goddamned if they didn’t tweak their way to success with the new (again) kickoff rule. After moving touchbacks to the 35-yard line, live kickoff returns increased in Week 1 to levels not seen since 2010. That increase was perceptible in just about every game I watched last weekend. Returners broke loose and got their shit ruined in equal measure. It was glorious. Now that we’ve solved that, let’s now move our focus to fixing onside kicks. Roger Goodell, put in the XFL onside kickoff rules next offseason or I’ll break your stupid face.
Four Throwgasms
Bucs at Texans: Here’s a true story. I was in L.A. last weekend and spotted not one, but three Texans fans out in the wild (they were all together, but still). They were in town for the Texans-Rams game in Inglewood, and they were already decked out in team gear days before the game. One of them wore a cowboy hat with bull horns affixed to it. I was impressed, and I feel bad that their team is hellbent on wasting C.J.n Stroud’s entire career.
Three Throwgasms
Broncos at Colts: For years now, I’ve been playing games on the NYT Games app for free. I held off on buying a sub, because that was my little form of #Resistance against the Times’ Sanewashing Industrial Complex. But once they introduced Pips a couple of week ago (and put the Mini, Tiles, and Letter Boxed behind their paywall), I gave in. It took me a few days to grasp the rules of Pips. But once I did, it instantly shot to the top of my NYTG rankings. Eat a dick, Tiles. I’ll still play you, but Pips is the new king in town. It’s like someone reinvented the wood block puzzle. I feel smarter than Sean McVay whenever I finish the hard one.
Chargers at Raiders: If you thought you were safe from the dreaded MNF doubleheader … WRONG, FUCKO. This game here kicks off at 10:00 p.m. EST on Monday night, as do Houston and Seattle come Week 7. There are also two weeks of concurrent MNF games down the line, and those are far superior to staging them back to back. You don’t want ESPN in charge of a late NFL game. That’s when they let Chris Berman do pervert shit.
Seahawks at Steelers: Can’t wait to re-litigate the officiating from of this century’s dullest Super Bowls. Never gets old.
Falcons at Vikings: Get ready to hear the word “intangibles” a LOT during this broadcast.
Two Throwgasms
Bills at Jets: Josh Allen will get a statue in front of the new stadium he helped build instead of his fair share of the profits from it.
Before that happens though, I’m ready to gin up a controversy around the side-slide, Allen’s preferred method of going down at the end of a lengthy scramble. The ball is whistled dead the moment the QB gives himself up, so Allen created a workaround where he falls down sideways, so that the ball will be placed a hair farther than if he’d gone feet first. He leans back just enough for this to count as a slide, and defenders are much more likely to hit him late on this play because he waits until they’re two inches away before he pulls this little stunt. Someone will make a stink about this, probably after losing to Buffalo.
Giants at Cowboys: It’s over for Russell Wilson. He needs to get pinched for aggravated assault or something so that the Giants can end this charade.
Jaguars at Bengals
Bears at Lions
Rams at Titans
One Throwgasm
Patriots at Dolphins: I’d like to get on with Mike McDaniel moving into broadcasting, because he was clearly made for that gig. He can’t coach worth a shit, and yet he still managed to trick everyone into believing he could for years, all because he’s such an adorable fella at his press conferences. Get me that man in Fox's A booth.
And gimme Dan Campbell up there too once his coaching career winds down. ESPN tried for years, gratingly so, to make Jon Gruden into the next John Madden. They won’t have to lift a finger for Campbell to become that kind of rock star color guy. Two generations from now, our grandchildren will be playing Campbell ’52 on the PS8 and complaining about the processing speed. I’m down.
Browns at Ravens
Panthers at Cardinals
49ers at Saints
Pregame Song That Makes Me Wanna Run Through A Goddamn Brick Wall
“Brothers in Arms (12th Man),” by Gridiron! Now that’s a fitting band name for this space. From Adam:
Gridiron are amazing. I have written to you about them before, and, bafflingly, they haven't made the Jamboroo yet, despite being essentially the perfect band for it. They are SO fucking hard and so much of their music uses football references. The members are Eagles and Lions fans, and at one show, they had an Eagles game playing on the big screen onstage behind them. Their whole album, No Good at Goodbyes, is amazing.
Let me just take a moment to appreciate a rock band that puts the game on behind them during a set. That tells you that they’re a conscientious lot. By the way, this sounds like Rage Against The Machine, if RATM only wrote songs about football.
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:
Shane Steichen
Mike McDaniel***************
Brian Daboll*
Brian Callahan*
Ben Johnson
Mike Vrabel
Kevin Stefanski
Dave Caneles
(* - potential midseason firing)
The Dolphins are the brightest burning tire fire in the league right now, but it’s worth keeping an eye on how much shit their division rivals in New England are currently eating:
New England emphasized running the ball. It’s part of Vrabel’s core identity as a coach. He wanted to have a balanced offense and lean on tough plays in the run game. Neither happened. The Patriots dropped back to pass 49 times and ran only 15 designed rushes.
Remind me: who did Mike Vrabel hire to be the playcaller in charge here?
OK yeah, that tracks. Exactly how many coaches owe their careers to Tom Brady now? 52? This shit is getting out of hand.
Great Moments In Poop History
Reader Marc sends in this story I call BEEN CAUGHT POOPING:
This was during a grocery store trip to the local Pathmark on Long Island NY in the late 80s. It was during summer vacation, when my mother was forced to take us both since my dad would be at work all day. We weren't bad kids, but we did get thrown out of the house a time or two.
At the grocery store, my mother would send my brother and I out to pick out some food on our own. We always took a detour into the toy aisle, which was in a separate and fairly private alcove apart from the main area of the store. All of a sudden I had massive bubble gut. For some reason, it never occurred to nine-year-old me that there would be a bathroom a customer could use in the store. This may have been my first time I ever had to take a crap out of the comfort of my own home. Even so, I don't think I would have made it to a bathroom in time.
I don't remember what I possibly could have eaten as a nine-year-old to cause such a massive and sudden dump to come on, but it did. My little brother was the lookout, so I dropped my pants and took a shit right in the aisle. I pissed all over a bunch of jars baby food across from me. The dump was massive and a muddy type. I had nothing to wipe with, so the rest of my grocery trip was not the greatest from a comfort standpoint.
Eventually our mother came by to get us. Upon seeing the pile of shit, she was horrified and about as embarrassed as a mother could get. Luckily for all of us, no one had come by the section yet. We checked out our groceries and got back to the car. The entire ride home was my mother lecturing my little brother not to tell a soul about the grocery store dump. Then, upon getting home, I was ordered to strip down and shower. That was the last my mother ever spoke of the incident.
To this day, nearly 30 years later my brother and I often wonder who the poor bastard was who had to clean up that shit, and what was going through their head. We also wonder if a customer discovered the dump first, possibly stepped in it/rolled a shopping cart through it, or how it was reported to a worker.
Can’t be any worse than the seafood case at that store. AMIRITE?!
Brick Johnson’s Executive Proposal Of The Week
“Dad, why do our jerseys not have a Charlie Kirk memorial patch yet? My buddy Erps made one that that is straight fire. I’ll AirDrop it to you.”
Gametime Cheap Beer Of The Week
Dutch Gold, which is neither Dutch nor gold. Oh dear. Even the shrink wrap is daunting when it comes to this gnarly brew. Reader PK (not Peter King) has the background:
Despite the name, this beer is only available in Ireland, where its price of four cans for five euros makes it a favorite amongst college students and penny pinchers. When I was in college, I was a member of the Dutch Society. This society had nothing to do with the Netherlands, but was in fact named after Dutch Gold. Every year, we would take the membership dues, spend all of it on Dutch Gold (or a cheaper beer) and spend the rest of the year drinking the stockpile.
The university tolerated us, presumably because they thought we were educating people on the rich culture of Holland but also because, despite what you might guess, our events were actually always pretty chill, and never got out of hand while I was there. Every year I manned the signup booth, where, inevitably, an exchange student from the Low Countries would come up, hoping to meet his countrymen, and maybe find some familiarity in this new place, only to find that no, the Dutch Society wasn't actually about all that.
I do not remember what this beer tastes like.
You aren’t supposed to.
Gameday Movie Of The Week For Dolphins Fans
No Country For Old Men. When I saw this movie for the first time, back in 2007, I was left baffled by its ending. I told no one this, because I was (and am) a loyal Coen Brothers devotee, and because I read this review from Bill Simmons after the fact:
I hated everything after we didn't see Josh Brolin get gunned down. You're never talking me into it. I hated English majors in college and I hate movies that are vehemently defended by English majors now. The last twenty minutes sucked. I will argue this to the death.
Given that Bill Simmons’s taste in pop culture is frozen in 1988, and given that he has all the curiosity of a Trump child, I didn’t want to be seen having movie takes that aligned with him. Besides, I was an English major. I had to back my people, dammit. Also, I knew that if Simmons hated the end of No Country, then he—and by extension me—had to be wrong. The Coen brothers were smarter than me, as was the late Cormac McCarthy, who wrote the original novel. Those parties clearly knew something that I didn’t.
That’s why the ending to No Country stuck in my brain long after I’d seen the movie that first time. There was something there I wasn’t grasping. Same as how I didn’t get Slayer before the light came on. So I went back a few days ago and rewatched No Country For Old Men, in its entirety, for the first time. The light came on instantly, thanks to Tommy Lee Jones’s opening monologue. Here’s the part of it that set me right:
The crime you see now, it's hard to even take its measure. It's not that I'm afraid of it. I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job. But, I don't want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don't understand. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He'd have to say, "O.K., I'll be part of this world."
That’s the story of this movie, right there. A small town sheriff encounters an evil so cruel, and so omnipotent, that he realizes that he’s no match for it. We spend the next couple of hours watching Josh Brolin attempt (in vain) to get away from Javier Bardem’s psycho maniac, but those two aren’t the fulcrum of the story. Jones is. That’s why No Country For Old Men ends the way it does, with Jones quitting his job in surrender as an unstoppable evil continues its march across the landscape. Shit, the point of the ending is right there in the title. You don’t have to be an English major to realize it. You can just have a curious mind. This is, indeed, one of the greatest movies ever made. Four stars.
Also, Bardem deserved his Oscar, but Jones too delivered a legendary performance. Watch this flick again and it’s as clear as day.
Gratuitous Simpsons Quote
“I'll tell you what made this town great: good old-fashioned gumption! There's nothing here a little elbow-grease won't fix! So let's roll up our sleeves, and—(falls asleep)”
Enjoy the games, everyone.
