Friday Recap: Luck-Adjusted Explosive Offenses, Airlines are Banks and the Ringer has Breakdowns

Not much written from me, but a large podcast portfolio. In the meantime, read about the Vikings, Jaguars and Bengals offenses or about how parental rights are a dogwhistle. Airlines are banks.

Not much written work this week, but hopefully the extensive list of recommendations helps buoy that. There’s been a lot of interesting stuff happening, inside and outside of football. As always, paywalled pieces are marked with a ($).

My Work

• My piece on the Vikings’ close loss to the Chargers ($)

• The Norse Code Podcast preview of the Panthers game with guest Billy Marshall

• My postgame live stream with B/R grading player performances.

• The postgame podcast on Minnesota Football Party following the game as well as the preview for the Panthers game

Work I liked (sports)

• Over at the Athletic, Alec Lewis has a good piece ($) on the VIkings’ explosive offense, and how it seemingly hasn’t materialized.

• Kevin Cole has adjusted quarterback efficiency for luck. In that calculation, Kirk Cousins looks a bit better, and Jordan Love looks a fair bit worse than his efficiency numbers imply.

• Steven Ruiz has a great piece on how broken the Bengals offense is right now.

• Also at the Ringer, Benjamin Solak has a piece on the Jaguars offense

Work I liked (non-sports)

• YouTuber Zoe Bee on the dogwhistle of “parent’s rights”

• Airlines are just banks now

• There’s often a misunderstanding that Minneapolis “defunded the police.” They did not and police budgets went up. But most interestingly, Mother Jones makes the case that the opposite is true — that the police defunded Minneapolis.

• Joe Biden is the most pro-union president we’ve seen since World War II. Here’s a Washington Post piece on the union news website that has played an outsized role in Biden’s role in the union wins we’ve seen across the country.

• Elon Musk fired half of Twitter’s Election Integrity team after Twitter opened up hiring to expand the team. TechDirt makes the case that this is because a manager liked a tweet calling him a fucking dipshit. Who’s to say.