📝 The Week That Was (October 7-11, 2024)

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

Oct 12, 2024

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. Let me know what you think about the format in the comments (or email me!1), and if there are running sections you’d like to see on a regular basis.

What I did this week

Stealing a bit from Will Leitch’s newsletter format, here are the things I wrote or podcasted about during the previous week, sorted in descending order by quality, popularity and/or current relevance.

🏈 QB U: Are Quarterbacks Losing Their Heisman Trophy Grip? - For an award that is almost always dominated by quarterbacks, this year’s Top 2 Heisman favorites are not QBs. Plus, I pay tribute to Navy’s suddenly lethal offense, led by stat machine Blake Horvath.
🏒 Who’s Ready to Dominate the NHL in 2024-25? - With the NHL season dropping the puck stateside this week, I broke down the Elo ratings and dove into some of the biggest questions of the new campaign.
🏁 Who’s in, who’s out? Breaking down odds for playoff drivers fighting to survive Roval, with eye on Logano versus everyone else - Back writing at NASCAR.com, I ran my usual Cup Series playoff forecast model and unpacked all of the scenarios for each driver headed into this weekend at the Charlotte Roval. (Hint: All eyes will be on Joey Logano as a potential spoiler for the drivers currently above the cutline.)
🏀 The Liberty Look Like New York’s Next Champ — And the Yankees or Mets Could Be Next - Ahead of Game 1 of the WNBA Finals (which New York promptly lost by blowing a massive lead at home, smh), I wrote about how the Liberty could give New York City its first major pro sports championship since 2011 — and why, between the WNBA, MLB, NBA, NHL or even the NFL, some NYC team is bound to end the drought soon.
🏈 Football Bytes: The 49ers *Are* Fine, but Will They *Be* Fine? - Back when everyone was panicking about the 2-3 San Francisco 49ers (before they won at Seattle on Thursday night), I wrote that S.F. was a lot better than its record indicated — but that the team still had work to do to gain ground in the playoff odds.
⚾ Baseball Bytes: On the Razor’s Edge - After 2 games of each MLB Division Series, the matchups were all locked up at 1-1. So I went through my thoughts on the postseason to that point, then highlighted an impressive playoff performance by Fernando Tatis Jr.