Did Bills Actually Bench Mitch Morse?
Sean McDermott’s day-after-game Zoom conference calls with reporters don’t often produce many wow moments, but there was one that caught everyone’s attention Monday afternoon.
The Buffalo Bills coach said that center Mitch Morse did not play in the game against the Arizona Cardinals because it was a coach’s decision, and not because he was still feeling the lingering effects of the concussion he suffered early in the Patriots game on Nov. 1.
“He was healthy, coach’s decision right there,” McDermott said. “We know Mitch is a good player and just felt like for that week, meaning last week, we felt like we had at least some momentum with the group we had had in when Mitch went down and wanted to take a look at it one more week there.”
Pressed further and asked directly whether Morse was benched, McDermott said, “He was not benched. That lineup will be determined every week.”
Well, if Morse was healthy enough to make the trip to Arizona, and was healthy enough to take up one of the 48 active spots on the game day roster, yet joined backup quarterback Matt Barkley as the only players who didn’t play a single snap, that seems like a benching.
It was a somewhat stunning and confusing question and answer exchange because not only was Morse the Bills’ big-ticket free agent signing in 2019 and a key cog in the middle of their line, his play this season certainly hasn’t seemed bad enough to warrant not playing against a very good Cardinals team.
In fact it seems almost impossible to believe that McDermott and offensive coaches felt that their best option against Arizona wasn’t to get Morse back in at center, shift Jon Feliciano to left guard, and get Ike Boettger back on the bench.
When he was asked if perhaps Morse ran afoul of team rules or something like that, all McDermott would say is that, “It was strictly a football decision.”
Morse went down on the third play of the Patriots game so Feliciano moved to center and Boettger took over at left guard. That day, the Bills ran for 190 yards, a season high, and Josh Allen did not face much pass rush pressure. It was one of the best days of the season for the offensive line.
But against the Seahawks the offensive line was overwhelmed by Seattle’s blitzing tactics and surrendered seven sacks and the running game produced a season-low 34 yards on 19 attempts. And then Sunday in Arizona, the run game was again terrible, and Allen was flushed out of the pocket on numerous plays though he never took a sack.
Boettger and right guard Brian Winters being part of the five-man group the Bills thought was their best chance for success seemed like a curious case of player evaluation.
“It was early in the game against New England where we got to that rotation,” offensive coordinator Brian Daboll said of the five-man unit that has been in place while Morse was out. “They played a couple games together and that’s the direction we decided to go with last game. That doesn’t mean anything for next week or the week after that. Just had some continuity going with those guys, they’ve done a good job in there together, and we’ll see where we go with that.”
McDermott admitted that the ongoing problems in the run game will be a primary source of concern during the bye week as they try to figure out how to get it going. The Bills rank 29th in the NFL at 97.6 yards per game, and some of that success is not from traditional running but rather, Josh Allen scrambling.
“We’ve gotta do a deep dive this week and figure that part of our game out,” said McDermott. “It certainly hasn’t been good enough and for us to move forward as a football team and continue to evolve and grow and try to win the games that we have to win going forward here, we’ve got to make sure that we get that better.”
Washington Nationals Are New Parent Club
The Rochester Red Wings have a new parent club: the Washington Nationals.
Sen. Chuck Schumer announced the affiliation Thursday morning, saying he had spoken directly with Nationals owner Mark Lerner.
"For Spikes, Mittsy, Milo, and all members of the Red Wing’s world-class organization, especially Naomi Silver and Dan Mason, I’m excited we can add the next great chapter of Red Wings baseball to our 'things to be thankful for' list this Thanksgiving," he said.
The Red Wings had been affiliated with the Minnesota Twins since 2003. The Twins called off the relationship earlier this month and are expected to pair with the St. Paul Saints, until now an independent league team.
Naomi Silver, President, CEO & COO of the Rochester Red Wings thanked Schumer for his assistance in the process.
"It is clear the Senator has the best interest of our Minor League teams in New York State at heart, and we owe him a debt of gratitude,” Silver said in a statement.
The Red Wings will remain a member of the International League, which plays at the Triple A-level. That's the highest rung of the minor league ladder and the last stop for many players heading toward the big leagues.
It’s important to weigh the pros and cons of putting off a joint replacement procedure.
Some minor league teams have changed affiliations frequently, but the Red Wings have been remarkably stable. They partnered with the St. Louis Cardinals until 1960, then the Baltimore Orioles from 1961 to 2002. The Twins had been their parent club for the past 18 years.
Minor league baseball in general is in a state of great flux, as Major League Baseball is instituting an array of changes including the elimination of dozens of small-town teams across the country. The Batavia Muckdogs and Auburn Doubledays are expected to be among the casualties, and the Staten Island franchise has already lost its affiliation with the New York Yankees.
The Nationals won the World Series in 2019, but trades and free agency signings have depleted the number of prospects in their farm system.
Washington was paired with the Fresno Grizzlies of the Pacific Coast League in 2019. The team went 65-75, missing the playoffs. Before that Washington had been paired with Syracuse from 2008 to 2018.
The Nationals have never seen their Triple-A affiliate win a championship. The Ottawa Lynx won the Governor's Cup in 1995 when they were affiliated with the Montreal Expos, who moved to Washington and became the Nationals in 2005.
The Minnesota Timberwolves had the No. 1 overall pick in the NBA Draft Wednesday night and they used it to select Anthony Edwards, a 6-foot-5 guard who played one year of college ball at Georgia. Edwards led all freshmen in the country with a 19.1 scoring average and was named Freshman of the Year in the SEC. But one year was enough for him, and as the No. 1 pick, that probably turns into a very good choice.
There was a local tie to the draft as Isaiah Stewart was taken in the first round at No. 16 by the Pistons. Stewart played two full seasons at McQuaid Jesuit, missing a good chunk of his sophomore year due to an injury. He then transferred to La Lumiere School in Indiana for his senior year and was named the Naismith High School Player of the Year in 2019. He had forged a connection with former Syracuse assistant Mike Hopkins, and when Hopkins left the Orange to take the head coaching job at Washington, he managed to get Stewart to follow him. In his one college season he averaged 16.9 points and 8.5 reounds.
If Robinson Cano had any chance of breaking through what I believe is the borderline category for future induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame, he just officially blew it. The Mets second baseman tested positive for steroids for a second time, and this one doesn’t carry an 80-game suspension like the first in 2018. This one blows him out for the entire 2021 season. What the hell is this guy thinking? In 16 MLB seasons, he is a career .303 hitter with 334 homers, 1,302 RBIs and two Gold Gloves. And now two PED suspensions.
The NFL announced stricter COVID-19 protocols that will go into effect Saturday. Masks are now mandatory whenever players are at their facilities including during practice, and all meetings must now be conducted virtually. That’s a big, big change. "It has been said many times that our 2020 season cannot be 'normal' because nothing about this year is normal," NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said in a memo that all 32 teams received Wednesday. "Flexibility and adaptability have been critical to our success to date and we must continue with that approach."
Yankees Abandon Crumbling Stadium and Beat Angels at Shea
NEW YORK - After years of haggling with New York City officials about building a new stadium, George Steinbrenner now had quite a bargaining chip to wield around, some honest to goodness leverage in his back pocket.
A 350-pound bargaining chip, as it were.
Yankee Stadium, originally built in the early 1920s and opened in 1923, then remodeled in the mid-1970s, was literally crumbling.
Four hours before the scheduled first pitch of the Yankees April 13 game against the Angels, an 18-inch, 350-pound piece of concrete and steel broke loose from underneath the upper deck on the third-base side and crashed to the ground in the loge level of seats.
It was an incredible and merciful stroke of luck that the incident occurred before the stadium turnstiles had been opened, a point made by Mayor Rudy Giuliani who said, “You could see that if someone were sitting there at the time that the beam came down, that person would now be dead. So, we can’t take a risk that something like that is going to happen.”
The day before this happened, the Yankees had put the finishing touches on a home-opening three-game weekend sweep of the A’s with a 7-5 afternoon victory. Joe Torre just shook his head in wonder and said, “It’s just fortunate that it happened here today instead of yesterday.”
The Yankees postponed two games against Anaheim because of the structural problem so that city engineers could inspect the entire ballpark and decide whether it was safe to re-open. Then, details were worked out to get one game of the series with Anaheim played as the Yankees asked for, and received, permission from the crosstown Mets to use Shea Stadium.
They played at 12:05 on April 15 and the Mets came in later in the evening to host their scheduled game against the Cubs, meaning this was the first time in the 20th century one ballpark had hosted a doubleheader featuring four different teams.
Prior to 1997 when interleague play came to the major leagues and the Yankees and Mets played games in each other’s stadium, the only time the Yankees had ever played in Shea during the regular season was in 1974 and 1975 when it was their home ballpark while Yankee Stadium underwent its renovation.
And now, there was this game against the Angels, which the Yankees won 6-3 to keep their sudden turnaround from the 1-4 start rolling. This was their sixth straight victory in what became an eight-game winning streak.
The weird day began with the Yankees dressing in their own clubhouse at Yankee Stadium, then getting on a bus at 7 a.m. that transported them over the Triborough Bridge and into Queens.
“I haven’t traveled on a bus with my uniform on since high school,” said Paul O’Neill.
The Angels had it worse. They had to leave their hotel at 6:30 a.m., bus to Yankee Stadium to dress, then continue on to Shea. “That’s not a good excuse for what happened,” said losing pitcher Ken Hill. “But it put us in the hole early.”
Actually, what put the Angels in the hole was Hill’s rough first inning. Chuck Knoblauch led off with a single, moved to second on Derek Jeter’s sacrifice, and came home on O’Neill’s single. After O’Neill stole second and Bernie Williams walked, Tino Martinez ripped an RBI double for a quick 2-0 lead which lit up the crowd of more than 40,000, many of whom using tickets from the originally scheduled game in the Bronx that were honored at the gate.
Martinez tacked on a second RBI double in the third, and the lead ballooned to 5-0 in the fourth when Jorge Posada led off with a double and later scored on a Hill wild pitch, and O’Neill plated Jeter with an RBI triple.
Finally, longtime Mets star Darryl Strawberry, back where he had enjoyed his greatest days, blasted a long solo home run in the fifth, part of a 3-for-4 day.
“Shea Stadium has always been a place where I’ve had a lot of success,” said Strawberry, who remains today as the Mets all-time home run leader.
“There’ve been a lot of times where I’ve trotted around those bases.”
Torre loved how his team rose above the strange situation. “Oh, yeah, they were very crisp,” Torre said. “But I sensed they would be, just the way we worked out the last couple of days. It was like they were taking this thing in stride.”
Sitting in the crowd just behind the Yankee dugout was none other than Steinbrenner, with noted Yankee fan Giuliani by his side. How much a new stadium was discussed is unknown, but the Boss was certainly in a good mood when the day was over.
“I couldn’t believe how much support we got,” said Steinbrenner, who probably chuckled the next day when he learned that only 16,000 had shown up for the Mets game. “We had 40,000 people for a noon game, a makeup game in there. I’m proud of the way our guys played.”
Ultimately, the April 17-19 series against the Tigers was moved to Detroit, and a week later, with the teams scheduled to play at Tiger Stadium, that series was moved to the Bronx as the stadium was re-opened on April 24.
As for the effect this had on the Yankees? By the time the April 26 game against Detroit was rained out, the Yankees had won 13 of 14 games since their 1-4 start and with a 14-5 record were just a half-game behind Boston in the AL East.