1. By now, you’ve seen the absurd roughing-the-passer call on the Chiefs’ Chris Jones late in the second quarter of Kansas City’s 30–29 win over Las Vegas on Monday night.
There is A LOT here, so let me go to bullet points.
• People making a connection between what happened to Tua Tagovailoa and the refs being extra sensitive about making roughing-the-passer calls are clueless. One has nothing to do with the other. Tua couldn’t stand up on his own. Then he played again. Period. End of story. What happened in Kansas City on Monday was simply referee Carl Cheffers being bad at his job.
Cheffers proved he’s a bad referee not just because of his awful call, but also because he defended the awful call after the game.
• One benefit of the horrible call is that the Chiefs’ crowd became a huge story line, because they had the refs rattled after that call. Just listen to the fear in Cheffers’s voice after he picked up a flag against Kansas City later in the game.
• Another benefit was seeing this Chiefs fan lose it on national television.
• On a recent episode of the SI Media Podcast, I debated Andrew Marchand about the usefulness of “rules experts” in the TV booth. Personally, I think the use of rules experts is the most overrated thing in sports television. This was proven once again last night when ESPN’s rules expert John Parry refused to directly say the refs blew the roughing-the-passer call. He hemmed and hawed and gave us, “I can see why the Kansas City fans are not thrilled with it.”
Really? Ya think? Parry must have been so bummed that he even had to offer that minimal criticism. He later came on the air to fawn all over the refs, because they correctly called Raiders running back Josh Jacobs short on a two-point conversion.
The only time a rules expert should come onto a broadcast is when they are explaining a rule that viewers may not be familiar with. Having the rules expert come on to tell us what we’re seeing with our own eyes is unnecessary.
2. Travis Kelce scored four touchdowns in the Chiefs’ win against the Raiders on Monday, but he seemed just as happy to be compared on social media to Married with Children‘s Al Bundy.
3. Here is this week’s edition of “Bad Beats” for all my fellow degenerates out there.
4. Phillies relief pitcher David Robertson is the latest player to suffer a bizarre injury.
5. This was really good stuff from ESPN’s Alex Smith on Monday Night Countdown about Ron Rivera blaming quarterback Carson Wentz for the Commanders’ struggles. I actually don’t have a problem with what Rivera said, but I give Smith credit for being this blunt and honest on television.
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6. This week’s SI Media Podcast features an outstanding conversation with combat sports journalist Ariel Helwani.
The longtime MMA reporter, who also covers professional wrestling and boxing, explained how he’s carved out a successful sports media career after leaving ESPN, the challenges he faced covering MMA while working at Fox and ESPN, why he ended up leaving ESPN, his tumultuous relationship with Dana White, the art of interviewing WWE superstars, what he tries to get out of interviews and much more.
Following Helwani, Sal Licata from WFAN radio and SNY TV in New York joins me for the weekly “Traina Thoughts” segment. This week Sal talks about going viral after declaring that the Mets had the NL East wrapped up in June, I reveal my favorite story of the day, and we give out our weekly NFL best bet.
You can listen to the podcast below or download it on Apple, Spotify and Google.
You can also watch the SI Media Podcast on YouTube.
