The Week That Was (September 1-5, 2025)

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

Sep 06, 2025

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.

🏈 Circle Your Calendars: These Are the Most Important Games of the 2025 NFL Season - Which NFL games will swing the playoff and Super Bowl odds the most? I crunched the numbers ahead of Thursday’s season opener, and gave you a few searchable/sortable charts to find your favorite team’s most crucial contests.
🏈🎙️ Football Bytes: Let the Pigskin Picking Begin! - My buddy Tyler Lauletta and I launched a new podcast in which we each provide our 5 best NFL picks of the week against the spread — his using (mostly) gut instincts, mine using (mostly) data. Give it a listen!
⛳ Q&A: How Data Golf Became the Go-To Site for Modern Golf Analytics - I spoke with Matt Courchene, one of the two brothers who run my favorite golf website — Data Golf — about the site’s origins, what they’ve learned running the site and the state of golf analytics today.
🏁 Why NASCAR’s Road-Course Ace May Not Get to Use His Best Playoff Card - For a potential glide path to the penultimate round of the Cup Series playoffs that runs through a (quasi) road course, all Shane Van Gisbergen — the GOAT road-course driver — has to do is survive this current Round of 16. But according to my NASCAR playoff odds model, he’s only got a 39 percent chance to do that,1 potentially wasting the sport’s most overpowered ability.
🏁 After uncharacteristic Darlington stumble, is it time for Hendrick to panic? - It was a NASCAR double-feature this week!2 I also looked at how much trouble Hendrick Motorsports is in after turning in arguably the team’s worst performance ever at Darlington last week.
- 🏁🎙️ Fallout at Darlington - In this week’s episode of Podracing, Tyler and I unpacked the wild playoff opener at Darlington — including Chase Briscoe’s perfect 150.0 Driver Rating victory. We then updated the evolving championship odds after tough days for Josh Berry and the usually dominant Hendrick camp (especially Alex Bowman), while Toyota teams surged ahead and Joey Logano + Austin Dillon are lurking to steal SVG’s spot in Round 2.
⚾ Baseball Bytes: What’s Left to Be Settled in September - Heading into the final month of the 2025 regular season, I broke down the playoff races (division and wild-card) that were all but settled, and which were up in the air. Plus, I looked at the most improved batters and pitchers by category, and I wrote a poem — in true e.e. gammings style — about Trevor Story’s bizarre Pesky Pole HR.3
🏈 UNC’s GOAT Era Begins: Can Bill Belichick Wake a Sleeping Giant? - Ahead of Belichick’s first game coaching in college, I re-upped a post I wrote last December about why UNC ought to be a much stronger football school than it is. (They, uh, certainly didn’t look strong in the game itself, though.)

🏈 Programming Note: Check out my 📈2025 NFL Power Ratings and Projections, now with downloadable Elo and QB rating spreadsheets!

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.