Quick Slant: SNF - As Perennial as Peonies
Mat Irby’s Quick Slant * Patriots * Ravens Where the Ravens under HC John Harbaugh stand is somewhat unfamiliar. They are a franchise that always seems to maintain their cool—a thoughtful, measured, and steady team that is almost always in the mix come playoff time. The Ravens blend toughness and
Quick Slant: Saturday Edition - Sentiment Gives Way to Modern Consequence
Mat Irby’s Quick Slant * Packers * Bears Stepping off the Northwestern Elevated Line at the Wilson station, your foot would clunk over wooden planks bolted to a riveted steel skeleton suspended some 16 feet above Wilson Avenue. You’d head south toward Broadway and the headhouse, utilitarian and cold, made
Quick Slant: Saturday Edition - To Reclaim Winning as Their Default Calibration
Mat Irby's Quick Slant * Eagles * Commanders In social cognitive psychology, a loss of confidence can often be traced to a decline in self-efficacy, a term coined by Albert Bandura in a 1977 article for Psychological Review. Simply put, self-efficacy is the belief that one can do what is
Quick Slant: TNF - Belief Is Provisional
Mat Irby’s Quick Slant * Rams * Seahawks For the Seahawks, there seemed to be no grand championship plan, just items going off the shelf and replacements shipping in, like retail. Geno Smith was out, DK Metcalf, Tyler Lockett, Dre’Mont Jones. Sam Darnold, Cooper Kupp, DeMarcus Lawrence, and Josh Jones
Quick Slant: MNF - This Dreadful, Often Painful Cause
Mat Irby’s Quick Slant * Dolphins * Steelers I’ve committed an unreasonable amount of my life to sports, and if you’re with me here, odds are you have as well (hell, getting through my intros alone requires the devotion of a Labrador). Still, it’s worth pausing now and
Quick Slant: SNF - A Ball Arcing Into Winter
Mat Irby’s Quick Slant * Vikings * Cowboys Gray mounds of shoveled-off snow were still bunched in the corners of Bloomington’s Metropolitan Stadium; it was 28 degrees. Brent McClanahan barreled over the thin, yellowing grass, barely blanketing a firmament of soft brown mud, and fell into the end zone, and
Quick Slant: TNF - The Anaconda
Mat Irby’s Quick Slant * Falcons * Buccaneers By the time your synapses have caught up with what’s happening, it’s already got you. You tell yourself there is a way to escape, so you flail with all your might; blood rushes to your extremities, filling your chest, your shoulders,
Quick Slant: MNF - A Wingnut and a Carriage Bolt
Mat Irby’s Quick Slant * Chargers * Eagles There will always be a rivalry between the East and West Coast. It’s more than Lakers/Celtics or Tupac/Biggie; it’s Heffner/Hoffa, Gehry/Lloyd Wright, and Disney/Sinatra. It’s the stiff pragmatism of the Ivy League versus the drop-out