The Week That Was (August 18-22, 2025)

A roundup of what I wrote, read, watched, etc. over the past week.

In this space on Saturdays, I do a weekly round-up of sorts: Sifting through what I wrote that you might have missed during the week, what I’ve been reading and watching myself, and some other fun things that have been going on.

What I did this week

Here are the things I wrote or podcasted about during the previous week, sorted in descending order by quality, popularity and/or current relevance.

• 🏇 Affirmed, Alydar and the Rivalry That Still Defines Horse Racing - On the anniversary of the last of their 10 head-to-head meetings, I wrote about the linked legacies of Affirmed and Alydar, the greatest rival horses in history. In particular, their 1978 Triple Crown rivalry produced some of the closest, most thrilling races ever, with Affirmed narrowly sweeping all three and Alydar finishing runner-up each time.

  

  (Stephen Green-Armytage/Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)

• ⚾️ Slumps Happen — To Kyle Tucker, and Everybody Else, Too - One of baseball’s biggest stories this week was the Cubs benching a slumping Tucker, one of their biggest stars. I was curious, though, how often other top hitters went through similar skids (or even worse). The answer was… surprisingly often.

• 🏀 Paige Bueckers Is Having an All-Time “Great Player on a Bad Team” Season - As if to summarize her rookie season in a nutshell, Bueckers scored a WNBA rookie-record 44 points on Wednesday — and her Dallas Wings lost on a last-second shot. By Estimated RAPTOR, Bueckers is having arguably the best performance ever by a player on a team as bad as Dallas has been.

• 🏈 Jayden Daniels' Rookie Year Was Probably His Career Year - The tough thing about historic rookie seasons is that you then have to try and follow it up with a season just as good (or better). So what are Daniels’ chances of doing that? And why might Washington be just fine even if he doesn’t?

• ⚾️ The Phillies Can Survive Without Zack Wheeler - After ace Zack Wheeler underwent surgery for a blood clot — and may miss the rest of the season — the Phillies’ title hopes might seem shaken. But with Cristopher Sanchez, Ranger Suárez and Jesús Luzardo anchoring one of MLB’s deepest rotations — plus recent improvements from the bats and bullpen — Philly still has plenty of pieces left to win with.

• ⚾️ Andrew Vaughn’s Midseason Move Sparked a Glow-Up Like No Other - Statistically, Vaughn was the worst player in baseball with the White Sox at the beginning of the season… but he’s transformed into one of MLB’s best since joining Milwaukee, boosting his OPS by nearly 500 points. It’s possibly the greatest midseason turnaround in league history — and a huge boost to the surging Brewers.

• 🏁 Who are the best superspeedway racers in NASCAR right now? - With playoff spots on the line at the World Center of Racing, I broke down which drivers excel on drafting tracks like Daytona. Veterans like Kyle Busch, Brad Keselowski, Chris Buescher and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. — plus dark horses like Erik Jones and Michael McDowell — loom as the biggest threats to steal a win and shake up the playoff picture.

  • 🏁🎧 Austin Powers - In this week’s episode of Podracing,

    Tyler
    and I broke down Austin Dillon’s actual playoff-clinching win at Richmond (unlike last year). Then we dug into the newly-released 2026 Cup Series schedule, including big upgrades to the In-Season Challenge track lineup next year. Plus, we talked about who the real superspeedway specialists are — and why the track’s “total chaos” reputation might be a little overstated. And finally, one-and-done and betting picks, where my best week of the year came riding with… Austin Dillon. Go figure.

• 🏀 Top 10 NBA players at 2025 EuroBasket: Where Jokic and Doncic stack up abroad - It’s not quite the Olympics, but with another international summer tournament set to begin, I ranked the best NBA talent suiting up for their countries in Europe. From Nikola Jokić, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Luka Dončić and Lauri Markkanen¹ to rising names like Franz Wagner, Alperen Şengün and Santi Aldama, EuroBasket will showcase how much today’s NBA is shaped by international stars.

  

🏈 Programming Note: I soft-launched my 📈2025 NFL Power Ratings and Projections🏈 on Friday with the initial set of ratings and projections. I may end up adding more Vegas-style sources to anchor the priors² before Week 1, and I definitely want to add a tab for classic Elo ratings (which are good for storytelling at the very least), but the basic bones of this year’s model are there now.

🏈 Other Programming Note: Remember that, as the 2025 college football season gets underway this weekend, I ranked the 70 best returning QBs from last year who are back on (somebody’s) campus this season.

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Some interesting things I read/watched this week

A collection of articles (with a heavy focus on my fellow Substackers), videos and other media that I enjoyed and/or found thought-provoking over the past week. I don’t always 100% agree with or endorse what’s linked here… but that’s also sort of the point.

• 🏈 College Football Makes No Sense. But what Does Right Now? by

  Michael Weinreb

• 🏈 Simulating the 2025 College Football Regular Season 5000 Times by

  CFBNumbers
  and 2025 College Football Preview by
  Sean Beney

• 🏈 There Is Such a Thing as Too Much College Football by

  Michael Hendricks

• 🏈 College sports as the Iraq War by

  John Gasaway

• 🏈 Can Anthony Richardson be Saved? by

  Alex Katson

• 🏈 A 17-Year Old Prodigy Has Emerged in Miami by

  VP

• 🏈▶️ Barry Sanders: The MOST Elusive Man in NFL History! by NFL Throwback

• 🏈▶️ Eli Manning Gets Schooled by College Football Coaching Legends by Omaha Productions

• ⚾ The most dangerous part of velocity training for kids is that it works by

  Hannah Keyser
  and
  Zach Crizer

• ⚾ Do Short Hitters Own Top of the Zone? by

  Will Manzi

• ⚾ Could We See a Record Number of 50-Homer Seasons in 2025? by

  Matt Musico

• ⚾ JT Realmuto was supposed to be Steve Cohen's first 'big splash' by

  Almost A Met

• ⚾ I Live For This by

  Doug Glanville

• 🏀 Personnel News // thank you and goodbye by

  Owen Phillips
  (Note: Congrats to Owen and good for the Nuggets! Also, I’m sad to be losing one of my favorite reads on here.)

• 🏀 The Three Maxes // Paolo Banchero, Jalen Williams, and Chet Holmgren all landed max contracts, but they’re completely different by

  Above the Break

• 🏀 The 14 most and least consistent NBA stars of the 2025 season by

  Mike Shearer
  
  🏀 Orlando Magic Offseason Review: Solving The Offensive Maze

  Plus, why Banchero must never become Melo by

  Hardwood Paroxysm

• 🏀 Could the 2025 WNBA MVP Race Be Open? by

  Shane Jackson

• 🏀 When Paige Bueckers (Efficiently) Scored 44 and When John Wall Ended Baron Davis’ Career by

  Nam Tran

• 🏀 SLAM Magazine Review - October 1996 by

  Chris Shorts

• 🏀📚 Demon Copperhead // The worst people abuse sports by

  Henry Abbott

• 🏒 A 2025 Casual Fan's Guide to Advanced Stats and Hockey Analytics by

  David Castillo

• 🏒 NHL EDGE: Estimating Shot Speed by Shot Type by

  Aaron Knodell

• 🏒 Measuring Goalie Decisions by

  GabArr
  (Note: This was a weirdly good summer week for NHL research/analysis!)

• 🏒 How finishing (or lack thereof) denied the Sharks a Stanley Cup by

  Brendan Farrell

• 🏒 The Skinny: Brent Burns by

  Vinh Cao

• ⛳ Would Scottie Scheffler Have Been Inevitable Under the Old TOUR Championship Rules? by

  Edward Egros

• 🏇 Rachel Alexandra Vs Zenyatta: Who Would Win by Sketchy The Horse Guy

• 🍅 Is Rotten Tomatoes Still Reliable? A Statistical Analysis by

  Daniel Parris

• 🥒🎾 How Pickleball Explains American Culture by

  Derek Thompson

Old YouTube Game of the Week

1996 Pigskin Classic (Note: That’s what they used to call Week Zero)

Music to Play Us Out

“Baker Street” by Gerry Rafferty

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Filed under: Weekly Round-up

1. Who had a surprising number of fans that wrote in and complained when he wasn’t on the initial ranking because the NBA’s official entry list was awaiting confirmation.

2. I’m already using all of these.