Jonez on Jonez: The NFL’s best performer is a kicker

Dragonfly Jonez is a full time tweeter, a part time podcaster and an aficionado of spicy Popeye’s drumsticks who will be offering NFL commentary this season.

DOINK. This is the way Sunday’s action on Week 12 ends. Not with a bang but with a DOINK. This was the sound of Kansas City banking in a game-winning field goal off the upright in the final seconds of overtime on Sunday Night Football. The hollow sound of leather ricocheting off aluminum reverberated through my soul and initiated some self-examination as I was laying on my couch and drinking beer and eating Cheez-Its off of my chest (a move I like to call the Drunk Otter™).

I’m a Washington fan who had no dog in this fight or any money riding on this game. I gained nothing nor lost anything dependent on the outcome. I don’t know how that game should have ended but it shouldn’t have ended with a DOINK. The NFL is a league that I used to fervently love but now I just kind of halfheartedly like. The natural highs that would regularly occur after watching a great NFL game are few and far between now. Underwhelming NFL games seem to be the norm now so those highs have been supplanted by a sense of disappointment. And DOINK is what it sounds like.

On to Week 12.

I’m so sorry to keep talking about kickers, but while we’re here we might as well discuss Baltimore’s Justin Tucker. Tucker has not missed a field goal or extra point all season. He has hit 27 of 27 field goals this season and has knocked down 34 straight dating back to last season. Versus Cincinnati, he hit field goals of 52, 54, and 57 yards. IN THE FIRST HALF. He set a NFL record for the longest field goal in a dome when he hit a 61-yard game-winner in 2013. He also is an accomplished opera singer. (Check the clip below. It’s fucking beautiful. Seriously.) Justin Tucker is the most interesting man in the NFL who nobody gives a shit about.

There’s a strong case to be made that this season no player has performed at a higher level at his position than Tucker has at kicker. But…………he’s a kicker. Nobody wants to hear that shit. Praise for kickers is usually followed by scrutiny of his team because if a kicker is having a season for the record books, then his team’s offense is usually horrid. Baltimore is no exception here. The Ravens are 24th in the league in points per game and 23rd in yards per game. Of Tucker’s 27 field goal attempts this season, 19 have been from 40 or more yards out. Baltimore just flat out can’t move the ball. However, they are 6-5 and in first place in their division because they have gone up against Jacksonville, Cleveland twice, and Andy Dalton running the two-minute drill.

Andy Dalton running the two-minute drill was just as bad as it sounds by the way. I’ve watched three Bengals games in their entirety in the last ten months and that’s enough for ten lifetimes.

I have stopped speculating on when, or even if, Marvin Lewis will get fired. This season seems as good a time as any to hand him his walking papers, but that week 11 loss to Buffalo turned into the opening scene from Saving Private Ryan for the Bengals’ roster so that might have brought him at least one more season after this one.

Speaking of perpetually employed underachieving coaches, on to Jeff Fisher.

I always knew I didn’t care for Jeff Fisher, but I just recently realized that I actively root against him. Maybe it’s his weak ass ‘Magnum P.I.’ mustache. Maybe it’s how he always goes 7-9 and then proclaims “That’s that 7-9 bullshit!” on ‘Hard Knocks’ like going 7-9 is such an unfathomable, foreign concept to him. Jeff Fisher’s entire career is some 7-9 bullshit. I rather enjoying watching him inch closer and closer to that all time loss record, however, that 49-21 shellacking at the hands of Sean Payton’s offense wasn’t necessarily for Fisher. That was a 555-yard subtweet for former Saints defensive coordinator Gregg Williams. Shit is definitely personal when we see a wide receiver throw a touchdown to a running back while being up by 21 late in the fourth quarter. That was rude, petty, and disrespectful. So needless to say, I absolutely loved it.

Sean Payton quarreling with his defensive coordinators isn’t news. It’s kind of what he does. I used to laugh my ass off at the heated exchanges he had with Rob Ryan mainly because anytime the camera is on Rob Ryan I usually laugh my ass off anyway. Rob Ryan looks like Rex Ryan trying not to look like Rex Ryan. He’s like the witness protection Rex Ryan. He looks like a medieval wizard who said “fuck it” and gave up on magic when he was 38 and decided to be a manager at a Five Guys in Hoboken. I don’t have my doubts about Rob Ryan’s true identity like I do with Ben McAdoo, however. I’m still waiting for the big reveal next season when we find out Ben McAdoo is actually a Korean War vet named Dick Whitman. Stay tuned.

Moving on to someone else who I’m sure isn’t a real person, we have RoboJerk himself Bill Romanowski weighing in on the toughness of today’s players. This is not surprising to anyone at all.

Was Bill Romanowski suggesting that a franchise quarterback and MVP candidate rip off a finger on his throwing hand just because it was jammed? Well I’m not one to jump to conclusions, but it’s Bill Romanowski so yeah….…probably. Retired players have a knack for questioning the toughness of today’s players. They regale us with tales of gutting out horses to sleep inside of during January games at Lambeau. Or how the Chicago Bears were a team that consisted of a roster of 53 actual bears in leather helmets who would eat their own helmets because the steel mill they worked at was shut down by Herbert Hoover. We hear these tall tales from offensive linemen who were the size of linebackers in today’s game. The game is definitely safer today, but it is by no means “softer.”

That’s why I love this tweet from Michael Irvin.

Irvin basically said, “Fuck all that tough guy shit you guys are talking about and how you persevered through all types of shit and blah blah blah. WHEN WE PLAYED IN THAT COLD WEATHER WE WAS COLD”.

Best football take I’ve ever read.

Until next week, internet friends. Let’s hope week 13 doesn’t go DOINK.