Josh McDaniels is Bill Belichick’s youngest coach

It was completely predictable that the Raiders would blow the doors off the Giants in their first game, freed from the weight and burden that Josh McDaniels carried as coach.

First of all, the Giants suck, so putting them on the road was kind of a gimme. But second, any team that suddenly doesn’t have to play around an oblivious, paranoid guts will be reenacting the Shawshank escape scene, with the air without McDaniels being the falling rain in the river.

McDaniels believed he could be a bully, with no credibility whatsoever, which simply makes a coach an ass. Even his last, desperate trick His attempt to win over his players was ruined by his jealousy and pettiness, clinging to the only thing that got him to where he was while at the same time realizing it was all a scam .

As we separate from the Patriot dynasty and so each achieve our own version of freedom, it is a mystery how this even happened. Bill Belichick has presided over not only perhaps the worst coaching staff in the history of sports, but possibly the four greatest. Even Ditka had Buddy Ryan.

Look at it. McDaniels, Romeo Crennel, Charlie Weiss and Matt Patricia have all proven themselves to be first class idiots when taking their own reins elsewhere. These guys walked around with their Super Bowl rings while every player they coach outside of Foxboro wondered what they did with the mask and the gun that gave them it. But more than that, Belichick now continues to drive the Patriots right into the dirt, rising up just long enough for Mac Jones to try and kick someone in the balls.

The NFL is a strange place, we know that, and it really doesn’t take much for a team to be around .500 or better to then be a contender. And we’re apparently learning that if you give the Earth the right tilt for 15 years, any banded together group of idiots can trample on the rest of the league. Maybe it was fraud after all?

-Anyway, in today’s split, which few of us can even imagine, Luis Diaz came on as a substitute for Liverpool to score an injury-time equalizer, sparing them the utter embarrassment at Luton.

For those who may not know, Diaz’s parents were kidnapped in Colombia a week ago. His mother was quickly rescued, but his father remains missing. Diaz was given a choice by the team as to whether he wanted to start training again on Friday and whether or not he wanted to come to Luton with the team, let alone be in the squad at all. Sometimes work can be a healthy distraction, but this is certainly a far more gigantic situation than we normally use that term.

– And now to the silly side of sports, as the Vancouver Whitecaps were eliminated from the MLS playoffs and the referee hammered in the decisive nail. But not in the way you might think:

The goal was eventually disallowed, but only because the goalscorer Denis Bouanga was offside on the last pass. Kudos to the referee, whose defensive positioning was professional and who launched such a deadly counterattack that teams dream of. It’s not his fault that Bouanga couldn’t hold onto his ball and stay behind the ball.

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