4th and a mile with Paul Muth

The Astros are MLB's Patriots, and World Power Rankings

Astros
There's only one move from here. Win. Photo by Getty Images

Weekend takeaways

Well, like I said last week, this past weekend certainly didn't disappoint. The Houston Roughnecks kicked off the season with a huge win, and UFC 247 put on one heck of a show. I learned two things Saturday night:

  1. Reddit's r/XFL appreciated my low effort Roughnecks merch.
  2. Derrick Lewis could not care less about meeting fans after a fight.

That poor guy was inundated with rabid UFC fight bros just dying to get a picture with the heavyweight Houston native once he had arrived to his official after party at Little Woodrow's EaDo. The cringe moment of the night was every fight bro who asked him to do the weigh-in fight pose. There's probably at least one fight bro on your friends list who's already changed his profile picture to that.

Taking a page from Foxborough's playbook

The Astros have more in common with the New England Patriots right now than they'd probably like to. They've both found sustained success (obviously New England has done it longer, don't @ me Patriots fans), but they've also been a source of controversy. Both went to their respective championships, and later it was discovered that both used cameras to steal signs from the defense the same year. The Astros did it in 2017, and coincidentally, the Patriots exactly a decade prior.

The Astros cheated, and the Patriots cheated. There's no denying it.

But here's the thing: you probably thought to yourself "oh yea!" when I brought up the Patriots thing, even though it's almost exactly what the Astros did. The reason you forgot, is because the Patriots kept winning after the fact.

The Astros did two things specifically that have the sporting world outside of Houston demanding blood:

  1. They cheated.
  2. They beat two of the largest markets in the sport in the process

There's a pretty good argument to be made that there would probably be a lot less chirping if the Kansas City Royals and Arizona Diamondbacks had been defeated rather than the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers, but here we are. One thing the Patriots at least had going for them was that they were caught spying on a New York Jets team that went 4-12 that season.

Everyone forgets the timeline because we're just now finding out about it, and as a result they think that the 2018 and 2019 seasons were tainted too. The 2019 season was legitimate, and all the more heartbreaking as a result, but it proves something that the dog day Astros fan already knows:

This team is still really, really good.

Vegas doesn't care how much anyone likes a team. They care how good they are, and right now the Astros have the third best odds to make it back to the World Series according to OddsShark.com.

It's painful to be an Astros fan right now. Practically every preseason marketing visual has been scrubbed clean of any Houston representation despite finishing the season in a World Series game 7. It's easy to guess why. But between that and every social media platform spewing venom in the comments section at anything even remotely associated with the Astros, it's understandable why fans would look for ways to just make it go away.

There is a way. The Patriots showed us all, and it's pretty simple.

They won. The Patriots, much like the Astros (at least at the moment) were hardly apologetic. They shrugged it off, continued winning, and eventually the spotlight moved away.

So for everyone's sake Astros...

Go win.

The ultimate world power rankings of the week



#5: Another dog being an awesome bro.

It's really easy to get on my list. Just be a dog doing something awesome like this:

#4: Ohio Medical board harshes fans' vibes

I love the fact that a panel of brilliant doctors had to be convened for this, but once they were they voted in opposition of the petitions that called them there in the first place. According to ESPN.com, It was determined Wednesday that "[b]eing a fan of the NFL's franchises in Cincinnati and Cleveland does not meet the condition requirements to purchase medical marijuana."

They must not be big sports fans, because there's at least some room for debate there if we're being honest.

#3 Football bro invents rule that the other football has been doing for years

I've seen a lot of memes floating around XFL and NFL pages that, well, aren't really memes. It's just the two league's logos and what they think is a hair-brained idea:

This isn't new. This is called relegation, and outside of the play-in game, they've been doing this in soccer for years. Look it up.

#2: Brown Jewelry

No other weird valentine's day gift will dominate your sports commercials more than Kay Jewelers trying to offload those weird brown--excuse me--"Chocolate" diamonds. I still haven't met anyone that has ever actually asked for them, but the TV said it's a thing. Enjoy your final week in the spotlight, weird brown diamond, we'll see you back on TV the day after Thanksgiving.

#1 Valentine's newest trend, pandering to the jaded

This seems like a new thing over the past few years, but if it isn't it's at least gained popularity. Capitalism has found a way to make even more money off of their fake holiday by catering to those who won't be celebrating it. So if you're a vulnerable, newly single person looking for an unhealthy attempt at catharsis, the San Antonio Zoo has just what you're craving. That's right, for $5 you can name a cockroach after your ex. And for those of you truly unable to cope you can drop $25 and they will happily name a pre-frozen rodent after them, to be fed to a reptile later on. Don't worry, for proof they'll send you a certificate that "can be shared on your own social media pages." They'll be live-streaming everything too, so don't worry about missing out!

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CJ Stroud can secure his second playoff win on Saturday. Photo by Alex Slitz/Getty Images.

Everyone raved about the leadership of second-year quarterback C.J. Stroud this week as the Houston Texans prepared for their wild-card playoff game against the Los Angeles Chargers.

Everyone, that is, except the man himself.

“I don’t think I’m a great (leader),” Stroud said sheepishly. “I don’t know. That’s probably a bad thing to say about yourself, but I don’t think I’m all that when it comes to leading. I just try to be myself.”

But the 23-year-old Stroud simply being himself is exactly what makes him the undisputed leader of this team.

“C.J. is authentic, he’s real,” coach DeMeco Ryans said. “It’s not only here, it’s in the locker room around the guys and that’s what leadership is to me. As you evolve as a leader, you just be authentic to yourself. You don’t have to make up anything or make up a speech or make up something to say to guys. C.J. is being C.J.”

Sixth-year offensive lineman Tytus Howard said he knew early on that Stroud would be special.

“He has that aura about him that when he speaks, everybody listens,” he said.

Stroud has helped the Texans win the AFC South and reach the playoffs for a second straight season after they had combined for just 11 wins in the three years before he was drafted second overall.

He was named AP Offensive Rookie of the Year last season, when Houston beat the Browns in the first round before falling to the Ravens in the divisional round.

His stats haven’t been as good as they were in his fabulous rookie season when he threw just five interceptions. But he has put together another strong season in Year 2 despite missing top receiver Nico Collins for five games early and losing Stefon Diggs and Tank Dell to season-ending injuries in the second half of the season. He also started every game despite being sacked a whopping 52 times.

“He’s taken some crazy shots,” Howard said. “But even if he’s getting sacked and stuff like that, he just never lets that get to him. He just continues to fight through it, and it basically uplifts the entire offense.”

He also finds ways to encourage the team off the field and works to build chemistry through team get-togethers. He often invites the guys over to his house for dinner or to watch games. Recently, he rented out a movie theater for a private screening of “Gladiator II.”

“He’s like, ‘I want the guys to come in and bond together because this thing builds off the field and on the field,’” Howard said. “So, we need to be closer.”

Another thing that makes Stroud an effective leader is that his teammates know that he truly cares about them as people and not just players. That was evident in the loss to the Chiefs when Dell was seriously injured. Stroud openly wept as Dell was tended to on the field and remained distraught after he was carted off.

“It was good for people to see me in that light and knowing that there is still a human factor to me,” he said. "And I think that was good for people to see that we’re just normal people at the end of the day.”

Stroud said some of the leaders who molded him were his father, his coaches in high school and college, and more recently Ryans.

His coach said Stroud has been able to lead the team effectively early in his career because he knows there are others he can lean on if he needs help.

“Understanding that it’s not all on him as a leader, it’s all of our guys just buying in, doing what they have to do,” Ryans said. “But also, C.J. understanding a lot of guys are looking up to him on the team and he takes that role seriously. But it’s not a heavy weight for him because we have other leaders, as well, around him.”

Stroud considers himself stubborn and though some consider that a bad quality, he thinks it’s helped him be a better leader. He's had the trait as long as he can remember.

“That kind of carried into the sport,” he said. “Even as a kid, my mom used to always say how stubborn I was and just having a standard is how I hear it. It’s stubborn (but) I just have a standard on how I like things to be done and how I hold myself is a standard.”

And, to be clear, he doesn’t consider himself a bad leader, but he did enjoy hearing that others on the team consider him a great one.

“I just don’t look at myself in that light of just I’m all-world at that,” he said. “But I try my best to lead by example and it’s cool because I don’t ask guys and to hear what they have to say about that is kind of cool.”

Though he doesn’t consider himself a great leader, Stroud does have strong feelings about what constitutes one. And he’s hoping that he’ll be able to do that for his team Saturday to help the Texans to a victory, which would make him the sixth quarterback in NFL history to start and win a playoff game in both of his first two seasons.

“That would be making everybody around you better,” he said of great leaders. “Kind of like a point guard on the offense, the quarterback on the football team, the pitcher on a baseball team — just making everybody around you better.”

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