Time for your weekly edition of the Defector Funbag. Got something on your mind? Email the Funbag. And buy Drew’s book, The Night The Lights Went Out, while you’re at it. Today, we're talking about flossing at your desk, Aaron Rodgers, college football QBs, and more.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Before we get to all the fun stuff, I have a quick recipe if you need ideas for sides on Thursday. For medical reasons, my wife is on a low-histamine, zero-gluten diet (if you ever wanna lose weight, try being allergic to 70 percent of the nation’s food supply), which means that she eats a lot of sweet potatoes. This means that the rest of us in the family eat a lot of sweet potatoes, too. To liven up the proceedings one night, I decided to mash them up and bake them, with some (OK, a lot of) brown sugar sprinkled on top.
In doing so, I accidentally torched the sugar in the oven, which created a crackly layer atop the casserole. A brûlée. And holy balls, was that brulee delicious … so much so that my wife and kids asked me to make it this week to go with the turkey. I will now gift this recipe to you. There are other sweet potato brûlée recipes out there, but mine is the best because I am cool. Let’s go.
INGREDIENTS:
-5-6 lbs. sweet potatoes (I prefer the small, organic ones; I can’t believe I just typed that)
-1 tsp cinnamon
-Sprinkle of ground nutmeg
-Sprinkle of ground cloves
-1/2 stick butter, softened
-1/2 cup brown sugar
-Salt & pepper to taste
DIRECTIONS:
Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Rinse the potatoes and prick them with a fork. Line a cookie sheet with foil and dump the taters onto it. Roast the potatoes in the oven until soft (call it 30 minutes, longer if the potatoes are larger). Take the potatoes out of the oven. Once they’re cooled down, the skin should come off with no problem. Dump the skinned potatoes into a mixing bowl with the spices and butter, plus a pinch of salt and pepper. Grab a hand mixer and whip the potatoes up until they have no lumps. (I don’t add any extra sugar to the mix because my wife can’t eat too much sugar; by all means, dump as much brown sugar and/or mini marshmallows into the mix as you like here.)
Using a rubber spatula, transfer all of the mashed potatoes into a baking dish. Sprinkle the brown sugar on top of the casserole and then stick it in the oven for 20-30 minutes. Switch the oven setting from Bake to Broil, and then stand by and watch the sugar topping turn dark brown. This shouldn’t take long, so don’t abandon your post. Take the brulee out of the oven and let cool for just a few minutes. Serves five to six.
Got all that? Groovy. Time for your letters:
Ben:
Mel Kiper made the news saying there is no such thing as developing a college QB for the NFL anymore. I guess this is a reference to so many college offenses being run entirely from the pistol/shotgun, while the NFL requires QBs to know how to operate from under center. If this is in fact the case, why haven't college offenses moved towards the NFL in terms of having the QB under center instead of running the shotgun every play?
Compared to the 1990s, college offenses have actually moved toward more pro-style schemes. I wish you could still rack up national titles by running the option 50 times per game, a la the Tommie Frazier Cornhuskers, but those days are long over. To get my option fix, I have to watch Army-Navy this time of year for 15 minutes before I get bored.
But college football teams have become only so NFL-ized. These remain vastly different sports, and only a very small number of college QBs in any given year will go onto the pros. For the rest of them, college football is the final stop, which renders NFL preparation unnecessary. Furthermore, no college coach is obligated to groom their players for the NFL if it’s at the expense of winning games. You gotta win first, otherwise you’ll be fired. You’ll get an obscene buyout for your trouble, but you’ll still be fired. If you’re a powerhouse like Nick Saban’s Alabama, you can have it both ways by incorporating NFL concepts into your attack, because many of your players will end up in the NFL. That was actually a big recruiting pitch when Saban was still active. Even if Saban didn’t get your boy to the NFL, he gave your boy the best chance that any program could give him. Few other programs can make that pitch and, thanks to NIL money, they don’t have to.
Because why should any college program be obligated to train college QBs for the next level? That’s the job of an NFL team, as it should be. If your team drafts a QB in the first round and then says, Oh well we can’t win with this young man because his coaches at Oklahoma State didn’t train him right! you should want everyone in charge of that team fired. No college QB comes into the league a finished product, not even insta-stars like Jayden Daniels. It’s on NFL coaches to assess that QB, identify elements of the pro game that QB needs to learn, and then teach their QB all of those things. You can’t leave that task to Ryan fucking Day, of all people. Come on. If an NFL coach doesn’t want to do the job of properly grooming a young QB, or they don’t know how to, then they belong on the dole. That means you, Matt Eberflus. You suck at your job, and your QB is paying for it.
JJ:
I am a depressed Jets fan (redundant, I know). Is Rodgers shitty now mostly because of the Achilles injury, or was he always going to be shitty, and the injury just accelerated that? I know his end in Green Bay wasn’t exactly MVP-caliber, but he wasn’t *this* bad, was he? Also: fries or chips?
Fries. As for Rodgers, his stats from this year are actually pretty similar to those of his final season in Green Bay. Similar completion percentage, yards per game, adjusted yards per attempt, and QB rating. His QBR this year is actually better than it was in 2022, but he’s getting sacked at a much more frequent pace. The latter is happening because the Jets’ O-line sucks, but also because Rodgers’s mobility is clearly limited thanks to age and injury. So yes, he was always going to be this bad in New York, especially if he didn’t have a functional team around him. The Jets are not functional, which has made the result inevitable. Any hope for Rodgers’s Jets tenure was entirely premised on “It’s Aaron Rodgers,” but that doesn’t mean anything anymore.
Just don’t tell Rodgers that. The QB was clearly part of the decision process that created this mess. So we’re talking about a player who’s not only washed physically, but also has the managerial skills of Magic Johnson coaching the Lakers. The only reason Rodgers doesn’t get branded a locker room cancer is because he doesn’t play wideout and because he’s a white guy. But right now, he’s easily the most cancerous player in the NFL. Eagles-era Terrell Owens is in awe at what a fucking turd this guy is. When Woody Johnson is the voice of reason in the conference room, you know that everyone else in that room is woefully underqualified. That includes Rodgers, who sucks ass and is getting the kissoff he’s long deserved.
Jonathan:
As a known mayo hater, where do you stand on the appropriation by Big Mayo of the word “salad?”
It’s annoying. My beef with mayo is that it’s an unspoken ingredient in many things, salads foremost among them. I’m not against unhealthy salads; it’s usually the type of salad I prefer. But a wad of boiled potatoes mix with a cup of Hellman’s isn’t a salad at all. I don’t even know it is. I could be in prison and I still wouldn’t eat that shit.
So all I ask—indeed, all I’ve ever asked—is that people in this dumbshit country not just blindly assume that mayo is a welcome ingredient in all dishes. I shouldn’t have to ask that no mayo be included on my Italian sub, and yet many delis force the issue. Just give me a fucking chance to eat what I want before you ruin my food.
Max:
Sometimes, when I go pee during the day, I get a few drops on the toilet seat. Rather than bend over and clean it up with toilet paper, I just use my foot to wipe it up with my sock. It's only like two or three drops. Is this gross?
Oh I’ve done that. Shit, I’ve even used my hand to wipe my piss drops off of the seat (I wash my hands afterward). That’s standard-issue guy laziness. This is also the case if I spill a few drops of milk on the kitchen floor. That’s when the ol’ sock mop comes in handy. Please don’t tell my wife I do this. It’d ruin Thanksgiving.
Jon:
Why in God's name does Netflix keep trying to get me to play games on its mobile app? Are there really people who wanted to game through the Netflix app?
Apparently, otherwise Netflix wouldn’t offer it. A lot of Americans have an extremely low barrier for entry to video games, myself included. Give me a PC from 1995 and the first thing I’ll do is play Minesweeper on it. And when the WiFi goes out in this house, my kids instantly shift over to playing the dinosaur game on a borked Google browser. I’ve played that game. I also played Snake on my flip phone, Datnoids on an '80s PC, and Snail Maze, the last of which was the default game on my old Sega Master System. If the TV in my airplane seat has a games menu, I’ll even check that out, just in case I wanna play a dogshit version of Snood for 10 minutes before I go back to looking at my phone.
This is why companies will sneak video games into every product they possibly can. You can probably play Angry Birds on the door of a fucking smart fridge if you like. It’s not an optimal gaming situation, but we as a species clearly prefer games to reality. So of course Netflix will offer trash games on its stream. Whatever keeps you using their product, they'll offer it.
All that said, I have never checked out Netflix’ game menu and never will. I have episodes of Black Summer to catch up on.
Chris:
You can get an infinite amount of money for the rest of your life. But, it's delivered through a tap in your house that spits out pennies. Have a mortgage payment due? You have to deliver a kiddie pool full of pennies to the bank. Getting groceries? Buckets of pennies for the cashier to count out. Going on vacation? Hope there's an airline and hotel that accepts your pennies. Is it worth it?
Of course it is. I’m now a trillionaire. I can just buy a banking conglomerate, build their headquarters around my sink, and then hire a full staff to mine those pennies and convert them into more practical forms of currency. And then the US government would try to shut my operation down (as it should; old Gawker/GQ friend Caity Weaver laid out a full story on why the penny still exists even though it’s actively harmful to our economic interests), and then I’d buy Bluesky and turn it into my own propaganda machine to quash that effort. Then I’d buy the Minnesota Vikings, win five Super Bowls, and then retire to the Seychelles. Bingo bango.
Trust me. I know how to handle this kind of scenario. I already help run a multimillion-dollar business. So if I turn on a money fountain in my house one day, I’m not gonna pull a Jed Clampett and be like, “Hey ma! Git a bucket quick!” I’ll know just what to do. Don’t underestimate me and my penny empire.
HALFTIME!
Mike:
I was just reading your latest Funbag while sitting at my desk at work. My desk can be best described as a cubicle set up. Think Office Space, but maybe with even less privacy and definitely less desk space. While reading, I was also flossing my teeth. I had just eaten lunch, and I don’t want any cavities. Flossing is not the only hygienic practice I undertake at my cubicle. I have also been known to use Q-tips, right in my ear like a rebellious little savage. How big of a foul am I committing? And where is the line?
Flossing at your desk falls into the “If other people do it then it’s gross, but it’s fine if I do it because I’m special” bucket of human behavior. I don’t wanna see other people doing personal hygiene near me at work. Take that shit to the bathroom.
Meanwhile, I have a bag of flossers lying on top of my desk as I type this, because my dentist told me I had to start flossing twice daily instead of just once. I’m now at the age where I listen to my dentist, because I’ve already experienced the consequences of not doing so. You really DO have to floss only the teeth you wanna keep! I just had to get a root canal and a new crown put in, so I’ll floss 100 times a day (NOTE: exaggeration) to avoid going through, and paying for, that again.
I try to floss out of sight from others, but I’ve been married for 22 years so I’ve slacked on more than one occasion. This means I’d probably floss at my desk if I still worked at an office. Clipping my toenails, however, would remain a solitary affair. I have to draw a line.
As an aside, I had to sit in my dentist’s chair for three hours while they worked on my teeth. This is a dentist office that has TVs mounted on the ceiling, so that you have something to look at while they shoot Novocain into your hard palate. But my dentist doesn’t have normal cable, they just have the weird free TV package that comes with a Samsung model or whatever. These are the packages that have “channels,” only they’re all fake ones like “Kitchen Network” or whatever.
So I spent three hours watching Rachael Ray advertorial content. It looked like a cooking show. It even had a studio audience. But it was just Rachael saying to the camera, Now, my friend Epsom Ballman from Tefal is about to tell you three things you GOTTA have for your Thanksgiving dinner, and then she’d throw it to some rando shilling their Instagram feed. It was chumbox content, only televised. This isn’t the kind of TV I’d normally ever watch, since I have YouTube TV, Netflix, and all of the other familiar names. But a lot of people don't. Instead, they’re content to watch whatever slop a Fubo guide will offer them. I have no idea what kind of effect this programming has on the broader public, but I’d wager it’s not a positive one.
Paul:
Does anyone shower before getting in the pool? I have yet to see anyone actually follow this rule.
Never. Why would I get wet in a shower if I’m already about to get wet in a pool? That’s the kind of notice they post on the door because a lawyer told them to, just like EMPLOYEES MUST WASH HANDS, or PLEASE DON’T MAKE A DOODOO IN THE SALAD BAR. They know you’re gonna be a naughty little monkey, they just want to swear off any liability on their end before you do.
Drew (not me):
My 15-year-old is a shockingly successful underground hip hop producer. He recently turned down a contract that would have guaranteed him, over the next two years, more money than I made in my first two years out of school as a journalist. Instead, he signed with a manager who will help increase his exposure and take a percentage. His manager has another client with a Billboard #1 hit. This was my son’s choice. He’s a sophomore. My son is also a straight A honors student who will be a competitive applicant to elite schools, and a dream applicant elsewhere. National Merit possibility, based on standardized tests. Short of a scholarship, we would need to take significant loans or he would have to pay his own way to school. (See: journalist, then grad school).
How would you approach this? Being that my wife and I will be paying grad school debt into our late 50s (at least), my instinct is to support a, “college will be there when you want it” approach, and to encourage my son to pursue his art if it’s his career. He’s on a trajectory where he truly could be a star in the field, but he’s also at the very beginning stages. What do you think?
I’d have it both ways, because I’m a greedy man who tries to have everything both ways. I’d ask my son to keep up with school while still pursuing his producing career on the side. That’s a lot to put on his plate, but managing your workload is an acquired skill. So is knowing how to be rich. If you become rich and famous (especially famous) before you’re prepared to handle it, it’ll fuck your head permanently. So I’d endeavor to keep my EDM god of a son grounded in as normal of an existence as possible, for as long as possible. That way, he doesn’t grow up to be a voracious cocaine addict who collects animal skeletons.
If working both sides proves untenable, I’d err on the side of prioritizing his education. If your kid is as gifted as you say he is (and I have no reason to doubt you), then he’s likely primed for success regardless of whatever field he enters. You might be risking future tuition bills doing this, but it always pays to invest in your brainpower early on.
Paul:
Over the weekend I randomly stumbled onto your Reddit AMA and you responded to a question of what would you rather face 100 chicken-sized horses or one horse-sized chicken. You, insanely, replied you'd want to face one horse-sized chicken if you had a baseball bat. Now if we took the dimensions of a medium sized horse, they stand between 5-6 feet tall and between 8-9 feet long. Apply this to a chicken and you are talking about a literal dinosaur similar in size to a Dakotaraptor, minus the tail and with claws longer than a dang grizzly bear! This horse sized chicken would immediately disembowel you and begin feasting on your entrails before you could even feebly swing your baseball bat once. I don't really have a question, I just wanted to make you aware you should always fight the 100 chicken-sized horses rather than a giant ass dinosaur who WILL fuck you up.
Nah. I have a baseball bat, man. Plus, chickens are dumb as shit. One swing and that fucker would be Thanksgiving dinner. I can’t score a basket in an NBA game, or make contact if I ever faced a major league pitcher. But fighting off a megachicken? Fucking BRING IT. You’re going down, Foghorn Leghorn.
Michael:
I've recently just started seeing a girl and yesterday she stopped over at my place on our way to dinner. On our way out, I went to throw out my trash and a white opossum came sprinting out from under a bush. I've never seen an opossum here, it was dark out and this thing was big and white and came right at me. It scared the hell out of me. I jumped up and made a weird yelping sound. A second later, I kinda laughed it off, but then noticed she was looking at me like I was the biggest coward. I could just see it on her face. The dinner still went fine and I've already talked to her the following day, but did I just accidentally plant a terrible seed in her brain that could eventually come back to bite me in the ass?
Not if you mine it for comedy. Ignore the incident and you’ll always be the guy who jumped onto a chair with a broom when he saw a mouse in the kitchen. But swig a beer and say to the gal, “I cannot believe I got owned by a stupid opossum in front of a girl,” and maybe you get a laugh out of her. Now you’re bonding over it. Hot sex will surely ensue.
My wife has heard me yelp when confronting spider crickets, cockroaches, spilled whiskey, and mayonnaise on my takeout order. She’s also seen me do manly shit like fix a toilet, assemble furniture, and threaten drunk guys who tried fucking with her at a bar 25 years ago. She knows that I, Drew Magary, am a land of contrasts. Your new gal will come to the same realization if she sticks with you long enough. If she ditches you for a guy she knows can confront and kill an opossum, that’s her loss because that means she’s married Ted Nugent III.
Jonathan:
A dad of a football player at my son’s public high school complained: “This coach has no idea what he’s doing. If you ask a kid playing Madden against man-press, he’d know not to call this shit.” What level of competence should we expect from high school football coaches?
Unless I was living in Texas, I would never expect a high school football coach to be master playcaller. At that level of competition, I need the coaching basics. Can this asshole teach his players the proper technique, proper conditioning, how to evaluate and correct their mistakes, and how to execute the fundamentals of the playbook? Or will my kid arrive at North Football State not knowing his ass from his head? If it’s the latter, then the coach was dogshit. If my kid knows how to play the game, but his coach keeps running the ball when there are nine dudes in the box, well then call it a wash. The higher you go up in any sport, the higher the standard should be. I’m not expecting any Sean McVays at the high school level, although every coach at that level thinks he’s exactly that.
Email of the week!
Casey:
Assume it is the summer of 1988 in Washington, DC; and Manute Bol and Muggsy Bogues go out to various clubs together every single night of the summer. Also, let's just say they have the same wit, charm, humor, dance moves, etc. Which player gets hit on more that summer?
Muggsy. Being 11 feet tall is gonna turn away more than a few romantic prospects.
