Quick Slant
Mat Irby's Quick Slant
Quick Slant: TNF - A Significant Matchup with Little Fantasy Intrigue
Broncos @ Chargers, Thursday @ 8:15 PM Thomas Morstead skittered forward to launch it deep and start the second half, but at the last possible instant, his foot swiped sideways, the ball tumbling end-over-end like a stone skipping across water, catching Colts WR Hank Baskett flat-footed and thrusting 88,000 startled
Quick Slant: MNF - Strong at the Broken Places
Falcons @ Raiders, Monday @ 8:30 PM Antonio Pierce's journey began in Compton, California, where warmth from pink sunsets blankets earnest smiles at the baseball fields of Gonzales Park; people are still outside and no one is a stranger. But Compton is also a place of hardened corners and
Quick Slant: MNF - This Insufferably Long Winter
Bears @ Vikings, Monday @ 8:00 PM A team was born in the dim corners of a Chicago winter beneath the loud churn of whizzing machinery. The year was 1919, and George Halas, who had played college football at Illinois and had a cup of coffee with the New York Yankees
Quick Slant: SNF - All Could Still Be Lost
Packers @ Seahawks, Sunday @ 8:20 PM Seattle’s epicenter cozies down over Puget Sound in gray diffused light—soft and calm, not oppressive. Framed by evergreen trees, its towers loom like jagged teeth over the smell of salt and pine and the surprising echo of nothing for miles around. The
Quick Slant: TNF - Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better
Rams @ 49ers, Thursday @ 8:15 PM Sean McVay and Kyle Shanahan, two rivers flowing from the same spring, were once apprentices in the erudite playbook of Mike Shanahan, Kyle’s father, the architect of the zone-blocking scheme that reshaped the tenets of 100 years of offensive football. Soon after, Shanahan
Quick Slant: MNF - And Then, Darkness
Bengals @ Cowboys, Monday @ 8:15 PM It is appropriate that the calendar has flipped to December; Monday Night Football features teams skittering on paper-thin ice. The 4-8 Bengals and the 5-7 Cowboys entered the season with massive aspirations, but, by now, those aspirations have been proven unrealistic. Each team has
Quick Slant: SNF - Building a Winning Culture Out of Wins
Chargers @ Chiefs, Sunday @ 8:20 PM On the western edge of Missouri, the noises of GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium, the loudest outdoor venue in the world, hitch a ride on the wind over a small metropolis dolloped into the Midwestern plains. The roar of 70,000, huddled in the
Quick Slant: TNF - The Caiman and the Jaguar
Packers @ Lions, Thursday @ 8:15 PM Green Bay is the NFL’s Old Testament. The league’s roots grow from there – a lush maroon-brick stadium sprouts from a suburban neighborhood, its PA system inspiring the dreams of children sound asleep on school nights. The smell of brats augments sleepy, cold