@YouTheReader, hopefully, you know the deal by now, but on Thursdays, @YouTheReaders submit a topic or take of your own. It doesn’t have to be just sports, just whatever is on your mind. All you have to do is send something to me that you think should be covered during the week and I promise to try my best to post it by Thursday. It can be as simple as a text or a DM to @You_The_Reader and also please don’t feel like any topic or take is irrelevant, the wider the field that Week to Week Notes can cover, the better.
My expertise admittedly is the Yankees, Jets, MLB, and the NFL. Despite loving to play basketball, I’ll only really start to cover the local winter sports come this Saturday. My thinking is the more teams&sports that get covered the better and there are so many of you that die-hard sports fans who know what you're talking about so this Thursday spot could only help.
@YouTheReader your default setting for His or Her Words, Not Mine is a team/sport/topic “fan insider.” If you wish to come up with your own @Name, I’ll run with that so that other @YouTheReaders could start to get to know your style as well. Either way, I won’t tell no one your name. Unless of course, you want your full name on Week to Week Notes.
His or Her Words, Not Mine
NY Jets Offseason Flight Plan
-From a village idiot writing about sports and Jets fan insiders.
1/19 ‘23
“Based case scenario - they get Rodgers - he makes the jets legit contenders. Zach learns and takes over in 2 years. The excitement of getting a legit HOF and then handing it over to a young talented player would be ridiculous. None of it will happen - and I’ll change my mind again later.”
“The scary thing is if Rodgers comes in, isn’t good, and then retires, we are screwed. Probably traded multiple 1st rounders to get him.”
“He would be good.”
“I don’t want him but if we got him I would be very excited.”
(@YouTheReader: These are the sort of hypotheticals that every sports fan base thinks about. None of us have any idea what is going to happen but we all try to speculate the possibilities. It’s the fun part of sports when your team isn’t playing.)
Hot Take of the Day 1/22 ‘23
“A couple of big ifs here, but if the Jets get a good QB and if the offensive line is healthy - The Jets are the best team in the division next year.”
Agreed. Plus if they can hit on another draft class, you never know. Can’t expect it to be as good as this last one, but they’ll have a 2-3 year window where everybody is on reasonable contracts.
“I think we gotta go OL with the first pick. Need to solidify the line.”
(@YouTheReader: Since Joe Namath left, the Jets have only won the AFC East twice, 1998 and ‘02. They also haven’t had a consistent solidified offensive line since ‘06 NFL Draft where they selected D'Brickashaw Ferguson and Nick Mangold, two ring of honor Jets who anchored the offensive line for a decade.)
Hot Take of the Day 1/24 ‘23
“I really think we are getting Aaron Rodgers and I am ready to go for the ride.”
*Alright completely out of left-field and just thought of this 5 mins ago/not sure if this is already a take out there but Matt LaFleur (Packer coach) and Rodgers always kinda had an awkwardness between them (play calling, who ran the offense, typical vet QB & young head whiz kid Head Coach stuff) could the Jets have let go of Mike Lafleur be a signal to Rodgers saying “Hey if you come to NY, we can run whatever offense you want.” I haven’t seen this anywhere and I don’t want to get our hopes up but just throwing this out there.*
*(Oh yeah, @YouTheReader if you ever see something without quotes and italics, that is the Village Idiot writing about sports. Are you surprised I’m a bit of a sports conspiracy theorist?)*
“I feel like that could make sense honestly. It just seems like there are a lot of breadcrumbs.”
Haha exactly again I don’t want want to get hopes up too much but it feels like one of those things where if a deal gets made everybody is going to be like “oh yeah, of course, this makes sense, Rodgers and his brother had beef.” Who knows lol.
“Eric Mangini was a good, young coach - trying to build a new culture. Pennington was the QB - unfortunately always got hurt. Woody wanted Favre - when it didn’t work Mangini was out. Saleh is probably gone too if next year doesn’t work out (maybe Joe Douglas too) so the question for them is, does Rogers buy them more time to build if he gets them into playoffs? I think they are building the right way and maybe Rogers lets them do that - who knows?
I think (again - this changed infra-day) my order of preference is:
1. Carr - we should be able to keep all of our 1st round picks and tho he’ll be expensive won’t break the bank. We see how important first-rounders can be when you make the right call. I think Carr is a better-than-average QB. We don’t need an elite QB to win (most of them lose every year when you think about it). If the o-line is healthy and we grab a couple more - and get Breece back to go with a very good defense, I feel this is the best way to go.
2. Rogers - hopefully only 1 1st round pick, but he would energize the fan base and immediately make the offense legit. He’d be expensive but I think he probably only 2 more years then he’s out. And the Jets can either develop Zach under him - or draft a QB in 2nd or 3rd round and develop (hopefully with his blessing tho so we don’t piss him off before he throws one pass for us). I would be all in for this for sure.
3). Lamar. We would immediately be in Super Bowl discussions - and likely would for a couple of years. Extremely expensive and would cost probably 3 first-round picks. If we got this wrong we would pay for it for another decade or more. Too risky in my view but would be extremely exciting if they went for it.
4) Garappalo - keep draft picks, relatively cheap I think compared to others. His relationship with Saleh is apparently good. He’s a pro and would make us better right away. Gets hurt a lot and there is a ceiling. I’m not so sure id be as excited as simply satisfied that we have a QB - so would focus on what else we can do to get better (and definitely would want to draft a QB).
5) Draft a QB. This would be a disaster if we had to do this but…… if we got someone good, and turned the page on Zach, we essentially reset with hopefully a much better QB who will be cheap for the next several years. I don’t think they can afford to do this, but if it fell their way and didn’t have to give up too much I guess it would be exciting to give it one more try.
6). Sam (Darnold) - fans would not be excited - I’m not sure the players would either. But if he was on a short-term team-friendly deal - and he finally had a good line, with good weapons and good defense - it would be a great story until they find the real franchise QB.”
(@YouTheReader: A lot to unpack there but extremely rational takes that I not only agree with but don’t think I even need to annotate. Great points and I love doing these sections because it just goes to show how on any given minute, hour, day, etc. fans’ thoughts can change in an instant. It’s also nice because we all know we’re just spitballing ideas and we couldn’t really care less about who is ‘right’, we just want to see the Jets win.)
Selfishly I want Aaron Rodgers because if they got a new #12 I’d buy Madden for the first time in years. No, I just think he would immediately crank the culture up a notch at One Jets Drive. Rodgers leading the most talented group of young Jets homegrown players that I’ve ever witnessed would have to work. While they may only have a 2-3 year Super Bowl window with Rodgers at the helm, they will only have a 2-3 year window as is before they have to start paying Sauce, G. Wilson, Breece Hall, etc. Rodgers may attract vets who’d possibly take a bit of a pay cut and look for one more shot at a Super Bowl sort of like what Brady did in Tampa. Even if Rodgers weren’t to hoist a Super Bowl trophy, I think the culture around the team would shift from Same ‘Ol Jets hoping to sneak into the Wild Card Round to Super Bowl contenders the instant a trade agreement is in place. There are risks in every transaction, I just think Rodgers would maximize fan excitement and give this roster its best possible chance at reaching its potential sooner.
Giants Fan Insider
Giants Fan Insider: “Embarrassing 1st half performance but this was a 5-12 roster that went 9-7-1 and won a playoff game against a 13-win team on the road. Can’t really complain. The GM has a lot of work to do. Linebacker, Interior O-Line, Wide Reciever, and Corner besides Adoreee are all practice squad players right now.”
Tongue-In-Cheek-Tone Other Team insider: “POV of a lot of giant fans before the game ‘We’re going to beat the Eagles’ and then after giants game ‘no one expected us to be here.’”
Giants Fan Insider: “Yeah I don’t really like the no one expected us to be here stuff. No moral victories. For as good as Daniel Jones played last week he looked like a backup QB last night.”
Tongue-In-Cheek-Tone Other Team insider: “Is he gone?”
Giants Fan Insider: “I would be shocked. They would have to be getting Lamar or something for that to happen. My guess is a 3 yr 70 million deal.”
(@YouTheReader: Rational Giants fan take. 3 years 70 million seems fair. Could Daniel Jones get more on the open market? Maybe, but does he really want to miss out on 10th Street Pizza within walking distance? I think not.)
NY Yankee Candle Talk
“Scott Rolen in the HOF but not #23 is a travesty. Ridiculous.”
Yeah, I thought Rolen was a really good player but growing up never thought of him as a HOF.
“Hall of very good.”
(@YouTheReader: #23 that the Yankee fan insider is referring to is none other than Don “Donnie Baseball” Mattingly. His career was cut short due to chronic back injuries, but at his peak, any Yankee fan that was alive during that time vouches that he was an Icon. Ask any Yankee fan that watched the Yanks during their champagne championship dry spell of ‘79 to ‘95 and I bet you Mattingly was either their favorite player or their favorite player’s favorite player. Mattingly played a gold-glove level at first base, sprayed the ball to all fields as a contact hitter, and even had the power to hit a home run in 8 consecutive games (when he hit 10 in the 8 game stretch). Nothing against Scott Rolen, he was a gold-glove third baseman who may have had a bit more longevity, but if he is headed to Cooperstown then so should Donnie Baseball.)
That’s great “Let’s go MJ, c’mon now” that must have been surreal haha.
(@YouTheReader: When Michael Jordan briefly retired from basketball in his prime to pursue his deceased father’s baseball dream, he played on the Chicago White Sox’s minor league team. Current Cleveland Guardians manager / former Red Sox manager who led the ‘04 Sox to their first World Series in 81 years, Terry Francona, coached MJ. In the clip above he was mic’d up for Jordan’s at-bat. If you watch, a very cool moment ensued.)
YouTube Rabbithole
Dawns (Full Unreleased Song) by Zach Bryan ft Maggie Rogers
This song is coming out tomorrow so I thought I’d give @YouTheReader a sneak peek. Zach Bryan & Maggie Rogers collaborating is a huge deal in my humble opinion for the next generation of music. You don’t even have to like country music to enjoy Zach Bryan, he is him. More on Maggie Rogers Sunday. Although many of their fans already know how big of a star they each are, there may be some @YouTheReaders who have just heard about the 2 upcoming stars of tomorrow. I’m planning to do their song on Saturday, I already have something written up for tomorrow’s Football Friday. Not that either Zach or Maggie need Week to Week Notes to promote their new song but all Ineed (is) one small victory of a possible repost so I figure it’s worth a shot. Hopefully, Instagram has its Music updated for Saturday.