#Dan Quinn’s Post-Game Conference Call

[innuendostudios]

I was invited to give a talk on GamerGate over Zoom in early 2021. I've long been frustrated that there isn't a good timeline of GG and its origins on YouTube. When people ask "what the hell was GG anyway?" they often get referred to my or Dan Olson's videos on the subject, but both of them were made while GG was ongoing, and presumed a degree of familiarity on the part of the audience. There was just too much to say about what was already happening to spend time getting the audience up to speed, and it was safe to assume our audiences had enough context to follow along. But time moves fast on the internet, and many people who now care about such things weren't there while it was happening, and are lacking the necessary context to follow the better videos. For a long time, I've only been able to direct them to RationalWiki's timeline, which is excellent but so exhaustively comprehensive that it's likely to scare off first-timers.

I realize an hourlong lecture isn't necessarily helping matters, but the first 20-or-so minutes of this video are my attempt at streamlining the timeline such that people can be up to speed on the most important stuff fairly quickly. The rest is talking about what it all meant, how it prefigured the Alt-Right, and using it to better understand digital radicalization.

This video was made with the help of Magdalen Rose, who edited the slides to the audio while I was laid up with a back injury. Go sub to her channel! And please back me on Patreon.

Transcript below the cut.

FUCKING VIDEO GAMES? FUCKING VIDEO GAMES. THEY MADE DOZENS OF PEOPLE MISERABLE FOR YEARS OVER VIDEO GAMES! NOT EVEN FUCKING VIDEO GAMES, FUCKING ARTICLES ABOUT FUCKING VIDEO GAMES. THIS IS WHAT PASSES FOR LEGITIMATE GRIEVANCE. ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH THIS SHIT??

Hi! My name is Ian Danskin. I’m a video essayist and media artist. I run the YouTube channel Innuendo Studios, please like share and subscribe.

I’m here to talk to you about GamerGate, and I needed to get all that out of the way. I’m going to talk about what GamerGate was and how it prefigured The Alt-Right, and there are gonna be moments where you’re nodding along with me, going, “yeah, yeah I get it,” and then the sun’s gonna break through a crack in the wall and you’ll suddenly remember that all this is happening because some folks - mostly ladies - said some stuff - provably true stuff, I might add - about video games and a bunch of guys didn’t like it, and you’re gonna want to rip your hair out. By the end of this, you will have a better understanding of what happened, but it will never not be bullshit.

Also, oh my god, content warning. Racism, sexism, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia, rape threats, threats of violence, domestic abuse - I’m not going to depict or describe at length any of the worst stuff, but it’s all in the mix. So if at any point you need to switch me off or mute me, you have my blessing.

Brace yourselves.

Some quick prehistory:

In 2012, feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian ran a Kickstarter campaign for a YouTube series on sexist tropes in video games. And, partway through the campaign, 4chan found it and said “let’s ruin her life.” And a lot of the male general gaming public joined in. And by “ruin her life” I’m not talking 150 angry tweets including dozens of rape and death threats per week, though that was a thing. I’m talking bomb threats. I’m talking canceled speaking engagements because someone threatened to shoot up a school. I’m talking FBI investigation. The harassers faced no meaningful repercussions.

And in 2013, Zoe Quinn released Depression Quest, a free text game about living with depression. They received harassment off and on for the next year, most pointedly from an incel forum called Wizardchan that doxxed their phone number and made harassing phone calls telling them to kill themself. The harassers faced no meaningful repercussions.

(Also, quick note: Zoe Quinn is nonbinary and has come out since the events in question. When I call Zoe’s harassment misogynist, understand I am not calling Zoe a woman, but they were attacked by people who hate women because that’s how they were perceived. Had they been out at the time things probably would’ve gone down similarly, but on top of misogyny I’d be talking about nonbinary erasure and transphobia.)

Okay. Our story begins in August 2014. The August that never ended.

Depression Quest, after a prolonged period on Greenlight, finally releases on Steam as a free download with the option to pay what you want. In the days that follow, Zoe’s ex-boyfriend, Eron Gjoni, writes a nearly 10,000-word blog called The Zoe Post, in which he claims Quinn had been a shitty and unfaithful partner. (For reference, 10,000 words is long enough that the Hugos would consider it a novelette.) This is posted to forums on Penny Arcade and Something Awful, both of which immediately take it down, finding it, at best, a lot of toxic hearsay and, at worse, an invitation to harassment. So Gjoni workshops the post, adds a bunch of edgelord humor (and I am using the word “humor” very generously), and reposts it to three different subforums on 4chan.

We’re not going to litigate whether Zoe Quinn was a good partner. I don’t know or care. I don’t think anyone on this call is trying to date them so I’m not sure that’s our business. What is known is that the relationship lasted five months, and, after it ended, Gjoni began stalking Quinn. Gjoni has, in fact, laid out how he stalked Quinn in meticulous detail to interviewers and why he feels it was justified. It’s also been corroborated by a friend that Quinn briefly considered taking him back at a games conference in San Francisco, but he became violent during sex and Quinn left the apartment in the middle of the night with visible bruises.

Off of the abusive ex-boyfriend’s post, 4chan decides it’s going to make Zoe Quinn one of their next targets, and starts a private IRC channel to plan the campaign. The channel is called #BurgersAndFries, a reference to Gjoni claiming Quinn had cheated on him with five guys. A couple sentences in The Zoe Post - which Gjoni would later claim were a typo - imply that one of the five guys was games journalist Nathan Grayson and that Quinn had slept with him in exchange for a good review of Depression Quest. Given the anger that they’d seen drummed up against women in games with the previous Anita Sarkeesian hate mob, #BurgersAndFries decides to focus on this breach of “ethics in games journalism” as a cover story, many of them howling with laughter at the thought that male gamers would probably buy it. This way, destroying Quinn’s life and career and turning their community against them would appear an unfortunate byproduct of a legitimate consumer revolt; criticism of the harassment could even be framed as a distraction from the bigger issue. Gjoni himself is in the IRC channel telling them that this was the best hand to play.

The stated aim of many on #BurgersAndFries was to convince Quinn to commit suicide.

Two regulars in the IRC, YouTubers MundaneMatt and Internet Aristocrat, make videos about The Zoe Post. Incidentally, both these men had already made a lot of money off videos about Anita Sarkeesian. Matt’s is swiftly taken down with a DMCA claim, and he says that Quinn filed the claim themself. (For the record, in those days, YouTube didn’t tell you who filed DMCA claims against you.) Members of the IRC also reach out to YouTuber TotalBiscuit, who had been critical of Sarkeesian and dismissive of her harassment, and he tweets the story to his 350,000 followers, saying a game developer trading sex for a good review might not prove true, but was certainly plausible.

This is where GamerGate begins to get public traction.

Zoe Quinn is very swiftly doxxed, with their phone number, home address, nudes, and names and numbers of their family collected. Gjoni himself leaks their birth name. The Zoe Post, and the movement against Quinn - now dubbed “The Quinnspiracy” - make it to The Escapist and Reddit, which mods will have little luck removing. The Quinnspiracy declares war on any site that does take their threads down, most vehemently NeoGAF. People who defend Zoe against the harassment start getting doxxed themselves - Fez developer Phil Fish is doxxed so thoroughly, hackers get access to the root folder of his website.

In what I’m going to call This Should Have Been The End, Part 1, Stephen Totilo, Editor-in-Chief at Kotaku where Nathan Grayson worked, in response to pressure not just from The Quinnspiracy but an increasing number of angry gamers buying The Quinnspiracy’s narrative, publishes a story. In it he verifies that Quinn and Grayson did date for several months, and that not only is there no review of Depression Quest anywhere on Kotaku, not by Grayson nor anyone else, but that Grayson did not write a single word about Quinn the entire time they were dating.

In response, The Quinnspiracy declares war on Kotaku. r/KotakuinAction is formed, which will become the primary site of organization outside of chanboards. The fact that their entire “movement” is based on a review that does not exist changes next to nothing.

Some people start to see The Quinnspiracy as potentially profitable. The Fine Young Capitalists get involved, a group ostensibly working to get women into video games but who have a Byzantine plan to do so wherein they crowdfund the budget and the woman who wins a competition gets to storyboard a game, but another company will make and she will get 8% of the profits, the rest going to a charity chosen by the top donor. 4chan becomes the top donor. They like TFYC because the head of the company has a vendetta against Zoe Quinn, who had previously called them out for their transphobic submission policy, and he falsely accused Quinn of having once doxxed him. 4chan feels backing an ostensibly feminist effort will be good PR, but can’t resist selecting a colon cancer charity because, they say, feminism is cancer and they want to be the cure to butthurt. They also get to design a character for the game, and so they create Vivian James, who will become the GamerGate mascot.

Manosphere YouTubers Jordan Owen and Davis Aurini launch a Patreon campaign for their antifeminist documentary The Sarkeesian Effect and come to The Quinnspiracy looking for $15,000 a month for an indefinite period to make it, which they get.

In what will prove genuinely awful timing, Anita Sarkeesian releases the second episode of Tropes vs. Women in Video Games, and, despite not being a games journalist and having nothing to do with Quinn or Grayson, she is immediately roped into the narrative about how feminists are ruining games culture and becomes the second major target of harassment. Both she and Quinn soon have to leave their houses after having receiving dozens and dozens of death threats that include their home addresses.

After being courted by members of the IRC channel, Firefly star Adam Baldwin tweets a link to one of the Quinnspiracy videos and coins the hashtag #GamerGate. This is swiftly adopted by all involved.

In response to all this, Leigh Alexander writes a piece for Gamasutra arguing that the identity that these men are flocking to the “ethics in games journalism” narrative to defend no longer matters as a marketing demographic. Gaming and games culture is so large and so varied, and the “core gamer” audience of 18-34 white bros growing smaller and septic, that there was no reason, neither morally nor financially, to treat them as the primary audience anymore. Love of gaming is eternal, but, she declared, “gamers,” as an identity, “are over.” Eight more articles contextualizing GamerGate alongside misogyny and the gatekeeping of games culture come out across several websites in the following days. GamerGate frames these as a clear sign of [deep sigh] collusion to oppress gamers, proving that ethics in games journalism is, indeed, broken, and Leigh Alexander becomes the third major target of harassment. These become known as the “gamers are dead” articles - a phrase not one of them uses - and they make “get Leigh Alexander fired from Gamasutra” one of their primary goals.

Something I need you to understand is that it has, at this point, been two weeks.

Highlights from the next little bit: Alex Macris, a higher up at The Escapist’s parent company, expresses support for GamerGate; he will go on to write the first positive coverage at a major publication and cement The Escapist as GamerGate-friendly. Mike Cernovich, aka “Based Lawyer,” gets GamerGate’s attention by mocking Anita Sarkeesian; he will go on to hire a private investigator to stalk Zoe Quinn. GamerGate launches Operation Disrespectful Nod, an email campaign pressuring companies to pull advertising from websites that have criticized them. They leverage their POC members, getting them, any time someone points out the rampant racism and antisemitism among GamerGaters, to say “I am a person of color and I am #NotYourShield”; most of these “POC members” are fake accounts left over from a previous, racist disinformation campaign. Milo Yiannapoulos gets involved, writing positive coverage of GG despite having mocked gamers for precisely this behavior in the past, and gets so much traffic it pulls Breitbart News out of obscurity and makes it a significant player in modern conservative news media.

[Hey! Ian from the future here. This talk mostly addresses how GamerGate prefigured the Alt-Right strategically and philosophically, but if you want a more explicit, material connection: Breitbart News took its newfound notoriety to become, as its Executive Chair phrased it in 2016, "a platform for the Alt-Right." That Executive Chair was Steve Bannon, who threw the website's weight behind The Future President Who Shall Not Be Named, and, upon getting his attention, would then go on to become his campaign strategist and work in his Administration. So, if you're wondering how one of the central figures of the Alt-Right ended up in the White House, the answer is literally "GamerGate." Back to you, Ian from the past!]

In what I’m calling This Should Have Been The End, Part 2, Zoe Quinn announces that they have been lurking the #BurgersAndFries IRC channel since the beginning and releases dozens of screenshots showing harassment being planned and the selection of “ethics in games journalism” as a cover. #BurgersAndFries has a meltdown, everyone turns on each other, and the channel is abandoned. And they then start another IRC and things proceed.

It goes on like this. I’m not gonna cover everything. This is just the first month. It should be clear by now that this thing is kind of unkillable. And I worry I haven’t made it obvious that this is not just a chanboard and an IRC. Thousands of regular, every day gamers were buying the story and joining in. They were angry, and no amount of evidence that their anger was unfounded was going to change that. You could not mention or even allude to GamerGate and not get flooded with dozens, even hundreds of furious replies. These replies always included the hashtag so everyone monitoring it could join in, so all attempts at real conversation devolved into a hundred forking threads where some people expected you to talk to them while others hurled insults and slurs. And always the possibility that, if any one of them didn’t like what you said, you’d be the next target.

To combat this, some progressives offered up the hashtag #GameEthics to the people getting swept up in GamerGate, saying, “look, we get that you’re angry, and if you want to talk about ethics in games journalism, we can totally do that, but using your hashtag is literally putting us in danger; they calling the police on people saying there’s a hostage situation at their home addresses so they get sent armed SWAT teams, and if you’ll just use this other hashtag we can have the conversation you say you want to have in safety.” And I will ever stop being salty about what happened.

They refused. They wouldn’t cede any ground to what they saw as their opposition. It was so important to have the conversation on their terms that not only did they refuse to use #GameEthics, they spammed it with furry porn so no one could use it.

A few major events on the timeline before we move on: Christina Hoff Sommers, the Republican Party’s resident “feminist,” comes out criticizing Anita Sarkeesian and becomes a major GG figurehead, earning the title Based Mom. Zoe Quinn gets a restraining order against Eron Gjoni, which he repeatedly violates, to no consequence; GG will later crowdfund his legal fees. There’s this listserv called GameJournoPros where game journalists would talk about their jobs, and many are discussing their concerns over GamerGate, so Milo Yiannopoulos leaks it and this is framed as further “proof of collusion.” 4chan finally starts enforcing its “no dox” rules and shuts GamerGate threads down, so they migrate to 8chan, a site famous for hosting like a lot of child porn. Indie game developer Brianna Wu makes a passing joke about GamerGate on Twitter and they decide, seemingly on a whim, to make her one of the biggest targets in the entire movement; she soon has to leave her home as well. GamerGate gets endorsements from WikiLeaks, Infowars, white nationalist sites Stormfront and The Daily Stormer, and professional rapist RooshV. And hundreds of people get doxxed; an 8chan subforum called Baphomet is created primarily to host dox of GamerGate’s critics.

But by November, GamerGate popularity was cresting, as more and more mainstream media covered it negatively. Their last, big spike in popularity came when Anita Sarkeesian went on The Colbert Report and Stephen made fun of the movement. Their numbers never recovered after that.

Which is not to say GamerGate ended. It slowed down. The period of confusion where the mainstream world couldn’t tell whether it was a legitimate movement or not passed. But, again, most harassers faced no meaningful repercussions. Gamers who bought the lie about “ethics in games journalism” stayed mad that no one had ever taken them seriously, and harassers continued to grief their targets for years. The full timeline of GamerGate is an constant cycle of lies, harassment, operations, grift, and doxxing. Dead-enders are to this day still using the hashtag. And remember how Anita had nothing to do with ethics in games journalism or Zoe Quinn, and they just roped her in because they’d enjoyed harassing her before so why not? Every one of GamerGate’s targets knows that they may get dragged into some future harassment campaign just because. It’s already happened to several of them. They’re marked.

(sigh) Let’s take a breath.

Now that we know what GamerGate was, let’s talk about why it worked.

In the thick of GamerGate, I started compiling a list of tactics I saw them using. I wanted to make a video essay that was one part discussion of antifeminist backlash, and one part list of techniques these people use so we can better recognize and anticipate their behavior. That first part became six parts and the second part went on a back burner. It would eventually become my series, The Alt-Right Playbook. GamerGate is illustrative because most of what would become The Alt-Right Playbook was in use.

Two foundational principles of The Alt-Right Playbook are Control the Conversation and Never Play Defense. Make sure people are talking about what you want them to talk about, and take an aggressive posture so you look dominant even when you’re not making sense. For instance: once Zoe leaked the IRC chatlogs, a reasonable person could tell the average gater, “the originators of GamerGate were planning harassment from the very beginning.” But the gater would say, “you’re cherry-picking; not everyone was a harasser.”

Now, this is a bad argument - that’s not how you use “cherry-picking” - and it’s being framed as an accusation - you’re not just wrong, you’re dishonest - which makes you wanna defend yourself. But, if you do - if you tell them why that argument is crap - you’ve let the conversation move from “did the IRC plan harassment?” - a question of fact - to “are the harassers representative of the movement?” - a question of ethics. Like, yes, they are, but only within a certain moral framework. An ethics question has no provable answer, especially if people are willing to make a lot of terrible arguments. It is their goal to move any question with a definitive answer to a question of philosophy, to turn an argument they can’t win into an argument nobody can win.

The trick is to treat the question you asked like it’s already been answered and bait you into addressing the next question. By arguing about whether you’re cherry-picking, you’re accepting the premise that whether you’re cherry-picking is even relevant. Any time this happens, it’s good to pause and ask, “what did we just skip over?” Because that will tell you a lot.

What you skipped over is their admission that, yes, the IRC did plan harassment, but that’s only on them if most of the movement was in on it. Which is a load of crap - the rest of the IRC saw it happening, let it happen, it’s not like anybody warned Zoe, and shit, I’m having the cherry-picking argument! They got me! You see how tempting it is? But presumably the reason you brought the harassment up is because you want them to do something about it. At the very least, leave the movement, but ideally try and stop it. They don’t, strictly speaking, need to feel personally responsible to do that. And you might be thinking, well, maybe if I can get them take responsibility then they’ll do something, but you’d be falling for a different technique I call I Hate Mondays.

This is where people will acknowledge a terrible thing is happening, maybe even agree it’s bad, but they don’t believe anything can be done about it. They also don’t believe you believe anything can be done about it. Mondays suck, but they come around every week. This is never stated outright, but it’s why you’re arguing past each other. To them, the only reason to talk about the bad thing is to assign blame. Whose turn is it to get shit on for the unsolvable problem? Their argument about cherry-picking amounts to “1-2-3 not it.” And they are furious with you for trying to make them responsible for harassment they didn’t participate in.

The unspoken argument is that harassment is part of being on the internet. Every public figure deals with it. This ignores any concept of scale - why does one person get harassed more than another? - but you can’t argue with someone who views it as a binary: harassment either happens or it doesn’t, and, if it does, it’s a fact of life, and, if it happens to everyone, it’s not gendered. And this is not a strongly-held belief they’ve come to after years of soul-searching - this is what they’ve just decided they believe. They want to participate in GamerGate despite knowing its purpose, and this is what would need to be true for that to be ok.

Or maybe they’re just fucking with you! Maybe you can’t tell. Maybe they can’t tell, either. I call this one The Card Says Moops, where people say whatever they feel will score points in an argument and are so irony-poisoned they have no idea whether they actually believe it. A very useful trick if the thing you appear to believe is unconscionable. You can’t take what people like that say at face value; you can only intuit their beliefs from their actions. They say they believe this one minute and that another, but their behavior is always in accordance with that, not this.

In the negative space, their belief is, “The harassment of these women is okay. My anger about video games is more important. I may not be harassing them myself, but they do kind of deserve it.” They will never say this out loud in a serious conversation, though many will say it in an anonymous or irreverent space where they can later deny they meant it. But, whatever they say they believe, this is the worldview they are operating under.

Obscuring this means flipping through a lot of contradictory arguments. The harassment is being faked, or it’s not being faked but it’s being exaggerated, or it’s not being exaggerated but the target is provoking it to get attention, which means GamerGate harassers simultaneously don’t exist, exist in small numbers, and exist in such large numbers someone can build a career out of relying on them! It can be kind of fun to take all these arguments made in isolation and try to string together an actual position. Like, GamerGate would argue that Nathan Grayson having previously mentioned Zoe Quinn in an article about a canceled reality show counts as positive coverage, and since Grayson reached out to Quinn for comment it’s reasonable to assume they started dating before the article was published (which is earlier than they claim), and positive coverage did lead to greater popularity for Depression Quest. But if you untangle that, it’s like… okay, you’re saying Zoe Quinn slept with a journalist in exchange for four nonconsecutive sentences that said no more than “Zoe Quinn exists and made a game,” and the price of those four sentences was to date the journalist for months, all to get rich off a game that didn’t cost any money. That’s your movement?

And some, if cornered, would say, “yes, we believe women are just that shitty, that one would fuck a guy for months if it made them the tiniest bit more famous.” But they won’t lead with that. Because they know it won’t convince the normies, even the ones who want to be convinced. So they use a process I call The Ship of Theseus to, piece by piece, turn that sentence into “slept with a journalist in exchange for a good review” and argue that each part of the sentence is technically accurate. It���s trying to lie without lying. And, provided all the pieces of this sentence are discussed separately, and only in the context of how they justify this sentence, you can trick yourself into believing this sentence is mostly true.

So, like, why? This is clearly motivated reasoning; what’s the motivation? What was this going to accomplish?

The answer is nothing. Nothing, by design. GamerGate’s “official” channels - the subreddit and the handful of forums that didn’t shut them down - were rigidly opposed to any action more organized than an email campaign. They had a tiny handful of tangible demands - they wanted gaming websites to post public ethics policies and had a list of people they wanted fired - but their larger aim was the sea change in how games journalism operated, which nothing they were asking for could possibly give them. The kind of anger that convinces you this is a true statement is not going to be addressed by a few paragraphs about ethics and Leigh Alexander getting a new job. They wanted gaming sites to stop catering to women and “SJWs” - who were a sizable and growing source of traffic - and to get out of the pockets of companies that advertised on their websites - which was their primary source of income. So all Kotaku had to do to make them happy was solve capitalism!

Meanwhile, the unofficial channels, like 8chan and Baphomet, were planning op after op to get private information, spread lies with fake accounts, get disinformation trending, make people quit jobs, cancel gigs, and flee their homes. Concrete goals with clear results. All you had to do to feel productive was go rogue. In my video,

How to Radicalize a Normie, I describe how the Alt-Right encourages lone wolf behavior by whipping people up into a rage and then refusing to give them anything to do, while surrounding them with examples of people taking matters into their own hands. The same mechanism is in play here: the public-facing channels don’t condone harassment but also refuse to fight it, the private channels commit it under cover of anonymity, and there is a free flow of traffic between them for when the official channels’ impotence becomes unbearable.

What I hope I’m illustrating is how these techniques play off of each other, how they create a closed ecosystem that rational thought cannot enter. There’s a phrase we use on the internet that got thrown around a lot at the time:

you can’t logic someone out of a position they didn’t logic themselves into.

Now, there are a few other big topics I think are relevant here, so I want to go through them one by one.

MEMEIFICATION

So a lot of interactions with GamerGate would involve a very insular knowledge base.

Like, you’d say something benign but progressive on Twitter.

A gater would show up in your mentions and say something aggressive and false.

You’d correct them. But then they’d come back and hit you with -

ah shit, sorry, this is a Loss meme.

If I were in front of a classroom I’d ask, show of hands, how many of you got that? I had to ask Twitter recently, does Gen Z know about Loss?!

If you don’t know what Loss is I’m not sure I can explain it to you. It’s this old, bad webcomic that was parodied so, so, so many times

that it was reduced to its barest essentials, to the point where any four panels with shapes in this arrangement is a Loss meme. For those of you in the know, you will recognize this anywhere, but have you ever tried to explain to someone who wasn’t in the know why this is really fuckin’ funny?

So, now… by the same process that this is a comics joke,

this is a rape joke.

I’m not gonna show the original image, but, once upon a time, someone made an animated GIF of the character Piccolo from Dragon Ball Z graphically raping Vegeta. 4chan loved it so much that it got posted daily, became known as the “daily dose,” until mods started deleting every incident of it. So they uploaded slightly edited version of it. Then they started uploading other images that had been edited with Piccolo’s color scheme. It got so abstracted that eventually any collection of purple and green pixels would be recognized as Piccolo Dick.

Apropos of nothing, GamerGate is a movement that insists it is not sexist in nature and it does not condone threats of rape against the women they don’t like. And this is their logo. This is their mascot.

If you’re familiar with the Daily Dose, the idea that GamerGate would never support Eron Gjoni if they believed he was a sexual abuser is so blatantly insincere it’s insulting… but imagine trying to explain to someone who’s not on 4chan how this sweater is a rape joke. Imagine having to explain it to a journalist. Imagine having to explain it to the judge enforcing your abuser’s restraining order.

Reactionaries use meme culture not just because they’re terminally online but also because it makes their behavior seem either benign or just confusing to outsiders. They find it hilarious that they can be really explicit and still fly under the radar. The Alt-Right did this with Pepe the Frog, the OK sign, even the milk glass emoji for a hot minute. The more inexplicable the meme, the better. You get the point where Stephen Miller is flashing Nazi signs from the White House and the Presidential re-eletion campaign is releasing 88 ads of exactly 14 words and there’s still a debate about whether the administration is racist. Because journalists aren’t going to get their heads around that. You tell them “1488 is a Nazi number,” it’s gonna seem a lot more plausible that you’re making shit up.

MOVE FAST AND BREAK THINGS

Online movements like GamerGate move at a speed and mutation rate too high for the mainstream world to keep up. And not just that they don’t understand the memes - they don’t understand the infrastructure.

In an attempt to cover GamerGate evenhandedly, George Wiedman of Super Bunnyhop interviewed a lawyer who specializes in journalistic ethics. He meant well; I really wish he hadn’t. You can see him trying to fit something like GamerGate into terms this silver-haired man who works in copyright law can understand. At one point he asks if it’s okay to fund the creative project of a potential journalistic source, to which the guy understandably says “no.”

What he’s alluding to here is the harassment of Jenn Frank. A few weeks into GamerGate, Jenn Frank writes a piece in The Guardian about sexism in tech that mentions Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn. In another case of “here’s a strongly-held belief I just decided I have,” GamerGate says this is a breach of journalistic ethics because Frank backs Quinn on Patreon. They harass her so intensely she not only has to quit her job at The Guardian, for several months she quits journalism entirely.

Off the bat, calling a public figure central to a major event in the field a “journalistic source” is flatly wrong-headed. Quinn was not interviewed or even contacted for the article, they were in no way a “source”; they were a subject. But I want to talk about this phrase, “fund a creative project.” Patreon is functionally a subscription; it’s a way of buying things. It’s technically accurate that Frank is funding Quinn’s creative project, but only in the sense that you are funding Bob Dylan’s creative project if you listen to his music. And saying Frank therefore can’t write about Quinn is like saying a music journalist can’t cover a Bob Dylan concert if they’ve ever bought his albums.

And we could talk about the ways that Patreon, as compared with other funding models, can create a greater sense of intimacy, and we also could comment that, well, that’s how an increasing number of people consume media now, so that perspective should be present in journalism. But maybe it means we should cover that perspective differently? I don’t know. It’s an interesting subject. But none of that’s going on in this conversation because this guy doesn’t know what Patreon is. It was only a year old at this point. Patreon’s been a primary source of my income for 5 years and my parents still don’t know what it is. (I think they think I’m a freelancer?) This guy hears “funding a creative project” and he’s thinking an investor, someone who makes a profit off the source’s success.

The language of straight society hasn’t caught up with what’s happening, and that works in GamerGate’s favor.

In the years since GamerGate we have dozens of stories of people trying to explain Twitter harassment to a legal system that’s never heard of Twitter. People trying to explain death threats to cops whose only relationship to the internet is checking email, confusedly asking, “Why don’t you just not go online?” Like, yeah, release your text game about depression at GameStop for the PS3 and get it reviewed in the Boston Globe, problem solved.

You see this in the slowness of mainstream journalists to condemn the harassment - hell, even games journalists at first. Because what if it is a legitimate movement? What if the harassers are just a fringe element? What if there was misconduct? The people in a position to stop GamerGate don’t have to be convinced of their legitimacy, they just have to hesitate. They just have to be unsure. Remember how much happened in just the first two weeks, how it took only a month to become unkillable.

It’s the same hesitance that makes mainstream media, online platforms, and law enforcement underestimate The Alt-Right. They’re terrified of condemning a group as white nationalist terrorists because they’re confused, and what if they’re wrong? Or, in most cases, not even afraid they’re wrong, but afraid of the PR disaster if too much of the world thinks they’re wrong.

ACCOUNTABILITY AND CONTROL

A thing I’ve talked about in The Alt-Right Playbook is how these decentralized, ostensibly leaderless movements insulate themselves from responsibility. Harassment is never the movement’s fault because they never told anyone to harass and you can’t prove the harassers are legitimate members of the movement. The Alt-Right does this too - one of their catchphrases is “I disavow.” Since there are no formalized rules for membership, they can redraw boundaries on the fly; they can take credit for any successes and deny responsibility for any wrongdoing. Public membership is granted or revoked based on a person’s moment-to-moment utility.

It’s almost like… they’re cherry-picking.

The flipside of this is a lack of control. Since they never officially tell anyone to do anything but write emails, they have no means of stopping anyone from behaving counterproductively. The harassment of Jenn Frank was the first time GamerGate’s originators thought, “maybe we should ease off just to avoid bad publicity,” and they found they couldn’t. GamerGate had gotten too big, and too many people were clearly there for precisely this reason.

They also couldn’t control the infighting. When your goal is to harass women and you have all these contradictory justifications for why, you end up with a lot of competing beliefs. And, you know what? Angry white men who like harassing people don’t form healthy relationships! Several prominent members of GamerGate - including Internet Aristocrat - got driven out by factionalism; they were doxxed by their own people! Jordan Owen and Davis Aurini parted ways hating each other, with Aurini releasing chatlogs of him gaslighting Owen about accepting an endorsement from Roosh, and they released two competing edits of The Sarkeesian Effect.

I say this because it’s useful to know that these are alliances of convenience. If you know where the sore spots are, you can apply pressure to them.

LEADERS WITHOUT LEADERSHIP

One way movements like GamerGate deflect responsibility is by declaring, “We are a leaderless movement! We have no means to stop harassment.”

Which… any anarchist will tell you collective action is entirely possible without leaders. But they’ll also tell you, absent a system of distributing power equitably, you’re gonna have leaders, just not ones you elected.

A few months into GamerGate, Randi Lee Harper created the ggautoblocker. Here’s what it did: it took five prominent GamerGate figures - Adam Baldwin, Mike Cernovich, Christina Hoff Sommers, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Nick Monroe, formerly known as [sigh] PressFartToContinue - and generated a block list of everyone who followed at least two of them on Twitter. Now, this became something of an arms race; once GamerGate found out about it they made secondary accounts that followed different people, and more and more prominent figures appeared and had to get added to the list. But, when it first launched, the list generated from just these five people comprised an estimated 90-95% of GamerGate.

Hate to break it to you, guys, but if 90+ percent of your movement is following at least two of the same five people, those are your leaders. The attention economy has produced them. Power pools when left on its own.

This is another case where you have to ignore what people claim and look at what they do. The Alt-Right loves to say “we disavow Richard Spencer” and “Andrew Anglin doesn’t speak for us.”

But no matter what they say, pay attention to whom they’re taking cues from.

AD CAMPAIGN

George Lakoff has observed that one way the Left fails in opposition to the Right is that most liberal politicians and campaigners have degrees in things like law and political science, where conservative campaigners more often have degrees in advertising and communications. Liberals and leftists may have a better product to sell, but conservatives know how to sell products.

GamerGate less resembles a boots-on-the-ground political movement than an ad campaign. First they decide what their messaging strategy is going to be. Then the media arm starts publicizing it. They seek out celebrity endorsements. They get their own hashtag and mascot. They donate to charity and literally call it “public relations.” You can even see the move from The Quinnspiracy to GamerGate as a rebranding effort - when one name got too closely associated with harassment, they started insisting GamerGate was an entirely separate movement from The Quinnspiracy. I learned that trick from Stringer Bell’s economics class.

Now, we could stand to learn a thing or two from this. But I also wouldn’t want us to adopt this strategy whole hog; you should view moves like these as red flags. If you’re hesitating to condemn a movement because what if it’s legitimate, take a look at whether they’re selling ideology like it’s Pepsi.

PERCEPTION IS EVERYTHING

One reason to insist you’re a consumer revolt rather than a harassment campaign is most people who want to harass need someone to give them permission, and need someone to tell them it’s normal.

Bob Altemeyer has this survey he uses to study authoritarianism. He divides respondents into people with low, average, and high authoritarian sentiments, and then tells them what the survey has measured and asks, “what score do you think is best to have: low, average, or high?”

People with low authoritarian sentiments say it’s best to be low. People with average authoritarian sentiments also say it’s best to be low. But people with high authoritarian sentiments? They say it’s best to be average. Altemeyer finds, across all his research, that reactionaries want to aggress, but only if it is socially acceptable. They want to know they are the in-group and be told who the out-group is. They don’t particularly care who the out-group is, Altemeyer finds they’ll aggress against any group an authority figure points to, even, if they don’t notice it, a group that contains them. They just have to believe the in-group is the norm.

This is why they have to believe games journalism is corrupt because of a handful of feminist media critics with outsized influence. Legitimate failures of journalism cannot be systemic problems rooted in how digital media is funded and consumed; there cannot be a legitimate market for social justice-y media. It has to be manipulation by the few. Because, if these things are common, then, even if you don’t like them, they’re normal. They’re part of the in-group. Reactionary politics is rebellion against things they dislike getting normalized, because they know, if they are normalized, they will have to accept them. Because the thing they care about most is being normal.

This is why the echo chamber, this is why Fox News, this is why the Far Right insists they are the “silent majority.” This is why they artificially inflate their numbers. This is why they insist facts are “biased.” They have to maintain the image that what are, in material terms, fringe beliefs are, in fact, held by the majority. This is why getting mocked by Stephen Colbert was such a blow to GamerGate. It makes it harder to believe the world at large agrees with them.

This is why, if you’re trying to change the world for the better, it’s pointless to ask their permission. Because, if you change the world around them, they will adapt even faster than you will.

THE ARGUMENT ISN’T SUPPOSED TO END

Casey Explosion has this really great Twitter thread comparing the Alt-Right to Scary Terry from Rick and Morty. His catchphrase is “you can run but you can’t hide, bitch.” And Rick and Morty finally escape him by hiding. And Morty’s all, “but he said we can’t hide,” and Rick is like, “why are we taking his word on this? if we could hide, he certainly wouldn’t tell us.”

The reason to argue with a GamerGater is on the implied agreement that, if you can convince them they’re part of a hate mob, they will leave. But look at the incentives here: they want to be in GamerGate, and you want them not to be. But they’re already in GamerGate. They’re not waiting on the outcome of this argument to participate. They’ve already got what they want; they don’t need to convince you GamerGate isn’t a hate mob.

This is why all their logic and rationalizations are shit, because they don’t need to be good. They’re not trying to win an argument. They’re trying to keep the argument going.

This has been a precept of conservative political strategy for decades. “You haven’t convinced us climate change is real and man-made, you need to do more studies.” They’re not pausing the use of fossil fuels until the results come in. “You haven’t convinced us there are no WMDs in Iraq, you need to collect more evidence.” They’re not suspending the war until you get back to them. “You haven’t convinced us that Reaganomic tax policy causes recessions, let’s just do it for another forty years and see what happens.” And when the proof comes in, they send us out for more, and we keep going.

The biggest indicator you can’t win a debate with a reactionary is they keep telling you you can. The biggest indicator protest and deplatforming works is they keep telling you in plays into their hands. The biggest indicator that you shouldn’t compromise with Republicans is they keep saying doing otherwise is stooping to their level. They’re not going to walk into the room and say, “Hi, my one weakness is reasoned argument, let’s pick a time and place to hash this out.”

And we fall for it because we’re trying to be decent people. Because we want to believe the truth always wins. We want to bargain in good faith, and they are weaponizing our good faith against us. Always dangling the carrot that the reason they’re like this is no one’s given them the right argument not to be. It’s all just a misunderstanding, and, really, it’s on us for not trying hard enough.

But they have no motivation to agree with us. Most of the people asking for debates have staked their careers on disagreeing with us. Conceding any point to the Left could cost them their livelihood.

WHY GAMES?

Let’s close with the big question: why games? And, honestly, the short answer is:

why not games?

Games culture has always presented itself as a hobby for young, white, middle class boys. It’s always been bigger and more diverse than that, but that’s how it was marketed, and that’s who most felt they belonged. As gaming grows bigger, there is suddenly room for those marginal voices that have always been there to make themselves heard. And, as gaming becomes more mainstream, it’s having its first brushes with serious critical analysis.

This makes the people who have long felt gaming was theirs and theirs alone anxious and a little angry. They’ve invested a lot of their identity in it and they don’t want it to change.

And what the Far Right sees in a sizable collection of aggrieved young men is an untapped market. This is why sites like Stormfront and Breitbart flocked to them. These are not liberals they have to convert, these people are, up til now, not politically engaged. The Right can be their first entry to politics.

The world was changing. Nerd properties were exploding into popular culture in tandem with media representation diversifying. And we were living with the first Black President. Any time an out-group looks like it might join the in-group, there is a self-protective backlash from the existing in-group. This had been brewing for a while, and, honestly, if it hadn’t boiled over in games, it would have boiled over somewhere else.

And, in the years since GamerGate, it has. The Far Right has tapped the comics, Star Wars, and sci-fi fandoms; they tried to get in with the furry community but failed spectacularly. They’re all over YouTube and, frankly, the atheist community was already in their pocket. Basically, if you’re in community with a bunch of young white guys who think they own the place, you might wanna have some talks with them sooner than later.

Anyway, if you want to know more about any of this stuff, RationalWiki’s timeline on GamerGate is pretty thorough. You can also watch my or Dan Olson’s videos on the subject. I’ll be putting the audio of this talk on YouTube and will put as many resources as I can in the show notes. The channel, again, is Innuendo Studios.

Sorry this was such a bummer.

Thank you for your time.

[top10544-blog]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVwHMbV0RPc)Dan Quinn’s Post-Game Conference Call

[penstotheend]

For your fun post. Bennguin goes to Australia for an adventure trip. Keeping in mind Tyler has to hold Jamie’s fear of flying for 16+ hours from Dallas. Picturing horseback riding, long tourist train journey in the outback, etc.

have you been talking to my muse???  it’s not bennguin, per se, but i had started this a while ago for her... maybe i should finish it...

“If you could take the Cup anywhere in the world to promote hockey, where would you take it?”

Jamie sat back in the chair, thinking.  Where would he go?  

“You should come to Australia sometime, Mate.”

“Why?” Jamie questioned.

“They love hockey down under.  Our league is small, but the boys have a good time.  Really.  Can’t get enough of the NHL stuff.”

Jamie remembered the conversation well.  It had been six years ago when he’d done an NHL promotion with Nathan Walker.  Nathan had gone on and on about how much Australia loved hockey and how it was such a great place.  And, of course, how Jamie and Sid should come visit.

Jamie had done some research, mapping out a trip.  Unfortunately, they had not been able to make it there, yet.  It seemed like something always came up that prevented a trip to Australia.  Now, however, Jamie was being asked where he’d like to take the Cup.  Anywhere.  

“Australia.”

“What?  Why would you want to go there?”  Dan Freesman, the new NHL Commissioner, seemed completely surprised.

“Well,” Jamie leaned forward, his arms resting on the conference table.  “We’ve played exhibition games in China, South Korea, Sweden, and England.  And, let me see, only Sweden is really hockey country.  Australia has a league.  A pretty good league.  They’ve had a couple of players in our league.  Yet, we barely show any interest down there.”

“We have an annual Canada versus US showcase every year, featuring North American players.”

“Big names?  League stars?”  Jamie questioned.

“Well, no.  Not per se.  But big names for them.”  Freesman said.  “We can’t afford the liability risk to take, say, McDavid, or Matthews, or you.  If you got hurt in what was essentially a pick-up game.  Jesus. The teams would revolt from letting players do any promotions outside the season.”

“I’ll cover the liability insurance.”

“You couldn’t afford…” Freesman started.  He paused when Jamie gave him an ‘are you serious?’ look.

“I’d like to take the Cup there for the showcase.  Make a tour with it.  It’ll be my two days and then I was hoping I could snag another.  All in the name of promoting hockey around the world.” Jamie smiled.  “Of course.”

He had a trump card in his pocket.  Brian had agreed to use his day for the third day if needed.  Freesman didn’t need to know that at this point, however.

“I think it’s an excellent idea.”  Stewart Packard, the current head keeper of the Cup, chimed in.  “The Cups been there, but not with such a big entourage as would likely be with Jamie.”

Freesman looked confused.

“Oh, yeah.  Um, McDavid, Larkin, Matthews, Strome, Debrincat, Jack and Quinn Hughes, and some of the Pens would like to go with me. We’re gonna make it an all-star showcase this year.  Featuring Lord Stanley.”

That’s how it started.  

This improbable journey with the Stanley Cup.

The plane resonated with laughter.  There were about 60 people in this half of this entourage of Jamie’s.  Players, family, friends.  All taking the opportunity for a weeklong trip to Australia during the off-season.

Jamie hadn’t needed to cover all the liability on his own.  The guys had all gone to their teams ands pitched the idea of the all-star showcase.  All the teams had bought into it.  Because it was Jamie who asked.

Seems Sid wasn’t the only Crosby with clout.

So here they were, on one long-ass flight half-way around the world.  This was one of two charters needed to accommodate everyone once word of Jamie’s plan had spread around the league.  He’d expected only a few of the guys to come.  Friends.  The under 23 club.  Olympic teammates.  Penguins. But it had grown, and grown quickly.

The list was a who’s who of current NHL players, along with a few retired guys who’d wanted to come. It truly was going to be an all-star showcase.  If you’re gonna do something, do it right, they said.

“K”  Jame prompted.

“Kylie the kangaroo went out for a hop about.  On the way she stopped to see her friends.  Walla the Koala sat in the eucalyptus tree, munching on a twig.  The kookaburra laughed like it was the funniest thing.”  Kylie sang as she played.

“Y”

“Nellie the yellow-footed antechinus ran across her path, followed by Kylie’s distant cousin.  ‘Why Wilbur the rock wallaby, why are you chasing Nellie.  Cause she’s small, and wee, and yellow-footed just like me.”

Jamie chuckled.  By now, Kylie’s song had caught the attention of those sitting around them.  Everyone had stopped to listen.  

“Okay, L.”  Jamie said.

“Livia the Lyrebird sat on a log, watching this strange site.  Kylie shook her head when she mocked them all, mimicking the laughing kookaburra’s call.”

“I.”

“Kibus the ibis was looking mighty grand.  Kylie asked him what was up and he said he was playing with the band.  White and black and all decked out, the boys found their stage.  Kylie stayed and listened in as they began to play.”  Kylie sang.  

“E.”  Jamie smiled.

“Edison the Emu was the last friend Kylie saw.  He was playing catch with his friend, Edna the Echidna.  Kylie waved and keep on-going on her hop about.”

“Very nice.”  Jamie said, starting to applaud.

“Not done yet,” Kylie said, looking around at everyone.

“On her hop, Kylie thought of all the friends she’d missed.  The bandicoot, the bilby, and the crazy dingo.  Joanna the goanna, who was never at home.  Of course there’s that platypus, Polly is her name. Kylie’s sure that God had fun, coming up with her to name.  And that’s the end of my song.  I hope you have enjoyed, learning with me the names of some Aussie animals.”  

Kylie stood up and took a deep bow.  The plane broke out in applause and chorus’ of ‘bravo, bravo’.  Jamie beamed proudly.

“She came up with that all on her own?”  Sid asked.

“Yep.  Well, the words.  I helped with the music part.”

“She’s amazing.”  Sid said proudly.  

[flauntpage]

Your Wednesday Morning Roundup

With the Flyers off and the Sixers overseas in London, we might as well discuss more about the Eagles. This question was brought up earlier in the day while I was interning at WIP for Big Daddy Graham.

Other than Nick Foles, which Eagle will be most important for the team’s success?

Answers given out were Brandon Graham and Jay Ajayi, before Halapoulivaati Vaitai came up.

I agree with the latter of the choices.

It’s not good that Jason Peters is done for the season, but Big V has done an okay job at times protecting the left side. But when you replace Carson Wentz with Nick Foles, his role becomes much more vital to the success of the team.

He’s going to go up against some good defensive ends in Brooks Reed (4.0 sacks), Adrian Clayborn (9.5 sacks), and rookie Takkarist McKinley (6.0 sacks). Clayborn’s sack numbers are a career-high, but almost 2/3s of his season total came against Dallas, where he had six sacks against two of Dallas’ backup left tackles.

They weren’t good, and that scares me a little bit when the game is three days away. At least Stefen Wisniewski will be at or close to 100% come gametime, which stabilizes the line a little bit.

But if the Eagles win on Saturday, Big V might have to face either Danielle Hunter from Minnesota or Cameron Jordan of New Orleans. Give us some hope.

The Roundup:

Before we get started, TOMORROW. Live pod at Carlino’s Market in Ardmore! Damn good food! Damn good sports talk! Be there!

Plus, a new edition of the Crossing Broadcast is up. #LookAtChu!

—

Sticking with the Eagles, the team practiced yesterday without linebacker Dannell Ellerbe. But he should be fine for Saturday’s game.

Lane Johnson isn’t enjoying the negative press and how some have been counting the Eagles out when Wentz tore his ACL:

“I think everybody perceives us as being the weakest and that is fine. I think that is good. I think if teams want to overlook us, that is good. We’ll just see about Saturday. … We’re excited. We know what people are saying.”

The bandwagon had some jumpers when Wentz suffered a knee injury last month in a win over the Los Angeles Rams.

It wasn’t long after that when Johnson took offense and declared a media boycott that ultimately didn’t last long.

“What bothered me was we were 12-2 [at the time] and treated like we were the Browns,” Johnson said. “It happens, but I think although we don’t like it, it’s a good motivator to have people not write good things. I think it’s the best motivator there is and you can go and change it.”

Nick Foles explains what Doug Pederson meant when he told him to “go be Nick”:

“It’s just going out there and playing and staying in the zone and trusting my instincts,” Foles said. “I’ve played this game a long time. There’s a reason I’ve been able to do what I’ve been able to do. …When I play my best and I’m most comfortable, I just go out there and play. That’s the big message.”

Foles had all of last week to reflect. He has this week to prepare.

Text messages and phone calls are going unreturned. He’s aware of the pessimism about how he’s played and the skepticism about the Eagles’ chances of reaching the Super Bowl with Foles at quarterback. He’s trying to remain unaffected by both.

Injured Eagles safety and special teams ace Chris Maragos understands Dan Quinn and what he brings to the table for the Falcons:

“Coach Quinn, the thing about him is, he’s just so personable. He’s got a lot of energy, a lot of excitement,” Maragos said Tuesday. “Really optimistic guy, really detail-oriented. Great person, great human being.”

This week’s referee: Bill Vinovich. He doesn’t call a ton of penalties, but with a different crew, that might change.

The Eagles signed center Jon Toth to a reserve/futures contract.

I love Dave Fipp even more:

Yes Dave Fipp. http://pic.twitter.com/sAhCE3WT3p

— Chris Jastrzembski (@CFJastrzembski) January 9, 2018

He’s jamming to “Black & Chinese” by HUNCHO JACK, Travis Scott, and Quavo.

—

With the team in London, it’s a great time for the team to build their brand internationally:

Dario Saric, Robert Covington, T.J. McConnell and Trevor Booker headed over to CitySport to teach basketball fundamentals to 60 kids at a Jr. NBA Clinic from 3:15 to 4 p.m. They were joined by players from the Crystal Palace soccer team, which Sixers owners Josh Harris and David Blitzer also own. Thirty minutes later, the four Sixers joined their teammates for a media availability, where for about a half-hour they talked about everything imaginable to reporters from all over Europe. Then after warming up, the Sixers had their closed practice.

Covington and Markelle Fultz also participated in a meet-and-greet with United Kingdom fans, sponsored by Tissot watches.

“We are going to treat this in a way that will produce a real enjoyable experience, with the bottom line we are coming here to win a game,” Brown said. “So somewhere out there, there’s a little bit of a juggling act.”

An interesting quote from Celtics point guard Terry Rozier:

“We have a great history and not knocking the 76ers because they’re a great team, but I think the fans are going to find out why they should support us over the 76ers come when we play them in London.”

Kevin writes how the turnover issue isn’t that bad.

Tim is thankful the Sixers didn’t draft Lonzo Ball, particularly because of LaVar Ball. And everybody is talking about LaVar, including The Athletic, even though they have a “no LaVar Ball” policy despite posting two previous stories before deleting them:

The Athletic pretended to have a "No LaVar Ball" policy bc SERIOUS JOURNALISM, got called out and then tried to delete their archives to cover their tracks

Links are cache'd versions of the deleted articles.

1) https://t.co/fde2IgrJPf

2) https://t.co/wTXB84mgfq http://pic.twitter.com/7UOXL2dApm

— Tyler Conway (@jtylerconway) January 9, 2018

—

The Phillies appear to still be in a war with blogs.

Carlos Santana was seen hitting balls in the Dominican Republic (h/t Mike Mullin):

Incredible experience getting to see newly minted Phillie Carlos Santana mash balls at BP in the Dominican Estadio Azteca @CSeidmanNBCS @CFJastrzembski http://pic.twitter.com/csw5FlNAd7

— Mike Mullin (@MULLINitover27) January 9, 2018

—

With the Flyers off until Saturday night against the Devils, Sam Donnellon caught up with goaltending prospect Carter Hart fresh off his gold medal in the World Junior Championships in Buffalo for Team Canada:

During a preliminary-round game against the U.S., played outdoors in the Bills’ stadium in a blizzard, the foam in the back of his helmet froze, icing the back of his head. No problem. Reaching for his water bottle after a series of saves, that too had frozen.

“There was so much snow, it was insane,” he said. “They were taking wheelbarrows of snow off the ice. It was crazy. But fun.”

And when it ended with another shootout loss to the U.S.? Hart shrugged it off, and ran off a string of stellar – and more meaningful — performances from there. “I’ve never seen a goalie that’s just so calm back there,” said Team Canada defenseman Cale Makar after the 3-1 gold-medal victory over Sweden. “Even when we’re down or have a few lapses, he’s able to pull us back together.”

—

Four local college hoops games tonight: St. Joe’s visits George Mason, and La Salle takes on UMass in A-10 conference matchups at 7 PM. Top-ranked Villanova hosts No. 10 Xavier at 8 PM at the Wells Fargo Center on FS1. And Temple looks to get back to .500 on the year with a road game against SMU at 9 PM on CBS Sports Network.

—

In other sports news, Jon Gruden was formally introduced as the next head coach of the Oakland Raiders. There were some crazy moments as well.

Cole Beasley released a rap single. Haven’t listened to it and it probably sucks, but Howard Eskin liked it (I guess) and suggests he continues to go that route:

So now @Bease11 is a rapper. Do have to admit Cole you are better rapper than receiver. That’s because not very good receiver any longer. New career is good idea. @SportsRadioWIP https://t.co/xOAd5O5mml

— Howard Eskin (@howardeskin) January 9, 2018

Over in Lithuania, LiAngelo and LaMelo Ball made their professional debuts in the Big Baller Brand Challenge Games for Vytautas in a 90-80 win. LiAngelo finished with 19 points and three rebounds, and LaMelo added 10 points and nine assists, but committed six turnovers.

More LaVar:

That spin tho. http://pic.twitter.com/6Mg3UWUEqS

— J.E. Skeets (@jeskeets) January 9, 2018

Former Cleveland Browns and North Penn head coach Mike Pettine is expected to replace Dom Capers as the Packers’ defensive coordinator.

Buffalo Bills GM Brandon Beane said there was a “misunderstanding” of what Richie Incognito said during Sunday’s loss to the Jaguars.

Georgia quarterback Jacob Eason, the guy that was replaced by Jake Fromm earlier this season, will probably transfer to Washington.

—

In the news, James Kauffman, the husband of former New Jersey radio host April Kauffman, was accused of having his wife killed in order to protect an alleged drug ring. Crazy.

Steve Bannon is leaving Breitbart News, again.

A magnitude 7.6 earthquake hit the sea north of Honduras. Not a lot of damage happened.

Kodak, which is somehow still a business, announced their own cryptocurrency called KodakCoin.

Your Wednesday Morning Roundup published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[mystlnewsonline]

New Post has been published on https://www.stl.news/patriots-are-rested-recharged-rankled/63214/

The Patriots are rested, recharged and rankled

/January 7, 2018 (AP)(STL.News) —

Recharged and rankled are the New England Patriots, who await a visit from the Tennessee Titans in the AFC divisional playoffs next weekend.

The Titans (10-7) are coming off their first playoff win in 14 seasons, a 22-21 thriller at Kansas City in the wild-card round Saturday that left the Chiefs winless at Arrowhead in the postseason since 1994.

The Patriots (13-3) are fresh off their eighth consecutive first-round bye as they seek their third title in four years.

They’re not only refreshed but fired up after a report suggesting a fractured relationship that could break up the franchise’s three most important pieces in QB Tom Brady, coach Bill Belichick and owner Robert Kraft.

Jacksonville (11-6), coming off its first playoff win in a decade, a 10-3 snoozer over Buffalo on Sunday, visits Pittsburgh (13-3) in the other AFC divisional playoff game (1:05 p.m. ET Sunday on CBS).

The Steelers are hoping the weekend off helps Antonio Brown return from a torn calf he sustained on Dec. 17 against New England.

The NFC’s top seed, Philadelphia (13-3), hosts the defending conference champion Atlanta Falcons (11-6) on Saturday (4:35 p.m. ET on NBC) and the Minnesota Vikings (13-3) host the New Orleans Saints (4:40 p.m. ET Sunday on FOX).

The Saints (12-5) edged Carolina 31-26 Sunday night in the wild-card weekend finale.

The Falcons throttled the upstart Los Angeles Rams 26-13 Saturday night, sending the league’s best comeback story of 2017 to a premature end.

The Patriots have won 11 of 12 after stumbling to a 2-2 start but the buzz around Boston isn’t about their usual dominance but whether that excellence could be coming to an end soon.

Brady, Belichick and Kraft released a joint statement this weekend dismissing as “flat-out inaccurate” an ESPN report detailing an array of tension in New England between the triumphant triumvirate responsible for decorating team headquarters with five championship trophies.

One of the many things the Patriots are good at is navigating negativity.

Last year they overcame the loss of tight end Rob Gronkowski to win it all and they’re trying to do the same this year without receiver Julian Edelman and linebacker Dont’a Hightower, two of their biggest stars.

The Titans came back from a 21-3 halftime deficit Saturday at Kansas City and in the process probably saved coach Mike Mularkey’s job .

Team owner Amy Adams Strunk on Sunday said her coach isn’t going anywhere after helping change the Titans’ culture and leading them to their first playoff victory in 14 years.

The Titans opened as 13-point underdogs to the Patriots (8:15 p.m. ET on CBS).

“This is a good test for our football team,” Mularkey said, “but these are the type of games you have to win.”

Or go home.

The Titans needed an amazing comeback to get their latest win, which tied for the second-largest rally by a road team in the playoffs. Dallas also overcame an 18-point deficit in 1972 in the divisional round to beat San Francisco.

Only Detroit’s rally from 20 points down in 1957 to beat the 49ers in the divisional round was bigger than Tennessee’s comeback.

The other AFC game is a rematch of Week 5, when the Jaguars beat Pittsburgh 30-9 . Ben Roethlisberger, who threw five interceptions in that game, has led Pittsburgh to 10 wins in 11 games since then with the lone loss coming against the Patriots, 24-21 last month when Brown got hurt and missed most of the showdown in Pittsburgh.

In Blake Bortles, the Steelers will face a quarterback who ran for more yards (88) than he threw for (87) Sunday and who put together one decent drive all day.

“We weren’t sharp, we made some bad plays and did some stupid stuff, but we found a way to win and that’s all that matters,” said Bortles, whose TD pass to backup tight end Ben Koyack late in the third quarter was his best throw of the game and a gutsy call on fourth-and-goal from the 1.

Although they’re the sixth seed, the Falcons are the only NFC team to make it back to the playoffs this year, and that edge in experience showed Saturday night in the Rams’ first playoff game at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum since 1979.

One year after advancing to the Super Bowl, the Falcons are “a battle-tested brotherhood,” suggested coach Dan Quinn, who added Sunday “That kind of experience I thought certainly showed up last night.”

After showing impressive poise against the Rams, it’s on to Philadelphia, which is the NFC’s top seed for the first time since 2004 but is led by backup quarterback Nick Foles following a season-ending knee injury to MVP hopeful Carson Wentz.

So, it’s no surprise the Falcons opened as 2-point favorites on the road.

The Vikings are coming off a first-round playoff bye for the first time since 2000 and they’ll face a Saints team that features Mark Ingram and rookie Alvin Kamara, who combined for 1,852 yards rushing and 26 touchdowns during the regular season but were quiet Sunday, managing just 45 yards on 19 carries but one of them was a 2-yard TD by Kamara.

The Vikings beat the Saints 29-19 on opening weekend when Sam Bradford and not Case Keenum was under center for Minnesota.

___

AP Pro Football Writer Teresa M. Walker contributed.

By ARNIE STAPLETON, AP Pro Football Writer, By Associated Press – published on STL.News by St. Louis Media, LLC (ZS)

___

[giantsfootball0]

Lions gear up for battle of 2-0 teams

After going 2-0 to start the season, the Lions are set to face their toughest opponent yet: The also 2-0 Atlanta Falcons.

Despite starting strong, head coach Jim Caldwell is keeping his same businesslike approach.

“The good thing is, the great majority feel that way,” he said Thursday. “The young guys, you don’t quite know what to expect, but most of the guys who’ve been around here — most of them look at this situation like they do any other ball game.

“It’s the most important game because it’s the next one. Every single week you’re measured against who you play. Everybody’s got talent. I think they look at it like they should look at it.

“Do everything we can. One game at a time. Keep that focus.”

FIGURING OUT THE FALCONS So we know the Falcons are a formidable foe, but what exactly makes them so tough?

In addition to having a talented roster, the team also has resilience. After a devastating loss to the Patriots in Super Bowl LI, the Falcons have looked within themselves to move on, and move on effectively.

“We probably spent the time on it in the offseason,” Falcons head coach Dan Quinn said in a conference call this week. “Even in the break (before camp), I wanted to find out if there was much work to be done or not. I really got our answer about the second day of training camp, when I really felt the speed and intent of the guys going for it.”

For Mike O’Hara’s full scouting report on the Falcons, click here.

ANOTHER WEEK, ANOTHER SPECIAL TEAMS AWARD Rookie cornerback Jamal Agnew stole the show Monday night with an 88-yard punt return touchdown.

The league took notice too, and Agnew was named NFC special teams player of the week for his efforts.

“If I get the ball in my hands, I can do some things with it,” Agnew said. “You have to be smart back there, especially making good decisions. That’s the No. 1 goal about being a punt returner. You have to catch the ball first. Coach always says secure the ball and make good decisions.”

That’s two in a row now for the Lions, as kicker Matt Prater was the Week 1 winner.

FAMILIAR FACE The Lions brought a familiar face back when they signed defensive end George Johnson Wednesday.

Johnson, who had the best statistical season of his career with the Lions in 2014, is happy to be back in Detroit.

“They just want you to go,” he said of Detroit’s scheme. “They don’t care about anything else. They just want you to go. They don’t want you to think. They don’t want you to read. They just want you to attack.”

OTHER NOTEWORTHY ITEMS:

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[footballleague0]

10 takeaways from Austin & Cooter

Defensive coordinator Teryl Austin and offensive coordinator Jim Bob Cooter spoke to the media Thursday as they do every week during the regular season.

Here are 10 takeaways from those media sessions:

1. Graham Glasgow had one of the finest games of his young career in New York Monday night. He didn’t allow a sack, hurry or quarterback hit, and was good plowing the way for the run game. Cooter said Glasgow is certainly trending in the right direction, and continues to improve.

2. When asked about the early success we’ve seen from Ziggy Ansah, Austin said Ziggy’s always had the ability to impact a game, but his health has sometimes gotten in the way. He said Ansah is feeling good, and that’s why we’re seeing him play good early on this season.

3. Cooter explained why the play of Eric Ebron and the other tight ends on the roster is important to the overall success of his offense. The tight ends are connected to every facet of the offense in terms of catching the ball, and then being important blockers on the edge in the run game. Cooter said that position usually determines how versatile an offense can be.

4. The best defense Austin has had in his tenure as defensive coordinator with the Lions was in 2014. That year, the Lions led the NFL in rushing defense (69.3 yards per game). He reiterated Thursday that stopping the run is always goal No. 1 for him. Why is Detroit off to a good defensive start in 2017? They’re fourth in the NFL against the run (53.5)

5. Fast. Athletic. Aggressive. Those are the three words Cooter used to describe Atlanta’s defense.

6. It remains to be seen if MIKE linebacker Jarrad Davis (concussion) will be available on Sunday. If he’s not, one player the Lions could use to help fill the void is fellow rookie Jalen Reeves-Maybin. When asked about Reeves-Maybin, Austin was most impressed with his speed. He said he moves like a big defensive back.

7. Atlanta head coach Dan Quinn said Wednesday in a conference call that Detroit’s offense is hard to scheme against because they have a number of different weapons. Cooter admitted his offense can be hard on a defense that likes to utilize double teams because who do they double?

8. The Lions have received a lot of good play from a number of different players upfront the first two weeks of the season. Austin said he doesn’t have a bunch of big-name guys upfront, but he has a bunch of guys that work really hard and are good technicians. So far that’s a good formula for Detroit.

9. Cooter had a pretty good line when asked about some of the creative touchdown celebrations we’ve seen from Lions receivers thus far.

“You know what? I keep missing that meeting,” he said. “I don’t know when or where it occurs, I haven’t been invited.”

10. Austin thinks second-year safety Miles Killebrew is just scratching the surface of being a really good football player. Killebrew’s already shown to be a playmaker, so that’s obviously high praise from Austin to his young safety, who could have a bigger role this week if starting safety Tavon Wilson (shoulder) can’t go.

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[buddyrabrahams]

5 things Falcons need to get back to the Super Bowl

The Atlanta Falcons were minutes away from defeating the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LI to bring home the franchise’s very first Lombardi Trophy. They had it in the bag. But then, in what felt like the blink of an eye, the wheels came off and the Falcons were left in shattered pieces on the turf at NRG Stadium.

For the Patriots, it was a historic and legendary comeback. For the Falcons, it was an epic collapse that could potentially linger for many years.

So that begs the question: What do the Falcons need to do to overcome this historic collapse and get back to the Super Bowl? Here are five things the Falcons need to get back to where they were.

5. A short-term memory

The Atlanta Falcons are a well-built, well-coached and well-run franchise. That was evident during their playoff run and nearly three full quarters in Super Bowl LI. Needless to say, they’ll be in prime position to return to the big game with the addition of a few pieces, which we’ll address momentarily, and a short-term memory.

The historic Super Bowl LI collapse could have a lingering impact, but if Atlanta wants to rebound in 2017, they can’t allow it to fester. Instead, as much as it pains them, they’ll need to take a page from Patriots head coach Bill Belichick. After winning the Super Bowl, Belichick lamented that the Pats were already five weeks behind other teams in terms of preparation.

The key will be looking ahead and not backwards, which is a message quarterback Matt Ryan delivered to Falcons fans earlier this week.

We came up short last night and my heart hurts for you Atlanta. Hats off to New England they played a heck of a game. We will adapt, we will over come, we will #RiseUp again.

A photo posted by Matt Ryan (@ryan_matt02) on Feb 6, 2017 at 1:34pm PST

The Falcons will likely never get over their crushing loss, but the reality is, they can not let it define them. 2017 will be a new year and a new opportunity, which is something they’ll have to embrace.

4. Interior offensive line help

The Falcons are absolutely set at tackle with both Jake Matthews and Ryan Schraeder, but they could certainly use and upgrade or two in between them.

Chris Chester and Andy Levitre were adequate at guard, each earning Pro Football Focus grades in the mid-70s, but the same cannot be said for center Mike Person, who was graded out at 54.5. Additionally, despite the relatively solid grades for Chester and Levitre, they did struggle quite a bit in pass protection.

These issues were highlighted at times during Super Bowl LI with Matt Ryan being sacked on five separate occasions and quite a bit of pressure coming from the interior as his pocket collapsed. But even during the regular season, Levitre gave up 41 pressures, which was fourth-most in the NFL, and Chester gave up 34. Levitre also committed the second-most penalties by a guard in the entire league (9).

As great as Matt Ryan was, justifiably winning league MVP, you can imagine how much better he would have been without the constant pressure.

If Atlanta can shore up those issues and Steve Sarkisian’s addition fits well, watch out.

3. Marquand Manuel needs to stay true to Dan Quinn’s defensive philosophy

When Dan Quinn took over as Atlanta’s head coach after his stint with the Seattle Seahawks, he brought with him a similar scheme and philosophy to what was run in Seattle. By all accounts, it worked for Atlanta.

As the 2016 regular season progressed, the young Falcons defense got better and better on a weekly basis. They featured a solid pass rush and were strong in the secondary — an ideal combination for today’s NFL. And while there are still a few pieces needed, one of the larger issues facing them is a change at defensive coordinator.

After their crushing Super Bowl LI loss, the Falcons fired defensive coordinator Richard Smith and subsequently replaced him with Marquand Manuel, who had previously served as the team’s secondary coach/senior defensive assistant.

The good news is that Manuel has familiarity with the system, scheme and players, but like most coordinators, he’ll want to put his own fingerprint on things. And while there’s nothing wrong with that, it boils down to a “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” scenario.

Quinn’s style of defense works, so both he and the Falcons will need Manuel to continue along those line. But if Manuel opts to begin tinkering around too much, it very well could have a negative impact as players transition to a new coach, a new voice and an altered scheme.

2. A successful edge rusher

The Falcons made waves with a solid pass rush in 2016, which also showed up in the first half against New England in Super Bowl LI. Unfortunately, their lack of depth was evident and as players became exhausted, the pass rush fizzled out.

That’s not a knock on Vic Beasley, Dwight Freeney or anyone else on the Falcons roster, but a very real indictment of the sort of depth and balance today’s defenses require.

If the Falcons can add a talented edge rusher to go along with Beasley, who led the NFL in sacks this past season, it will help propel their constantly improving defense. It will also allow newly hired defensive coordinator Marquand Manuel a little more freedom with his game-planning.

Ideally, Atlanta’s defense would never again see the field for as long as they did in Super Bowl LI, but with an additional pair of fresh legs, it would help limit snaps counts and keep players fresh when they’re needed the most — in the fourth quarter.

1. A seamless transition for offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian

The Falcons offense was easily the best in football under former offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan, so there will be justified concern with his departure and the hire of Steve Sarkisian.

The biggest thing that made the Falcons so dangerous in 2016 was their high-powered offensive attack Now they face a potential change under Sarkisian, who considers himself an even more aggressive play caller than Shanahan.

“I’m an aggressive by nature play caller and that’s something Dan believes in,” Sarkisian said during his introductory conference call.

Whether Sarkisian is as aggressive as Shanahan or not, like Marquand Manuel on the defensive side of the ball, he will eventually want to put his own stamp on things. And how quickly Atlanta’s offense adjusts to that stamp will be important.

The last thing the Falcons want or need is an offensive overhaul, so as long as Sarkisian doesn’t get too far ahead of himself and at least emulates some of what Shanahan did, the Falcons should be in good shape.

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[giantsfootball0]

10 takeaways from Austin & Cooter

Defensive coordinator Teryl Austin and offensive coordinator Jim Bob Cooter spoke to the media Thursday as they do every week during the regular season.

Here are 10 takeaways from those media sessions:

1. Graham Glasgow had one of the finest games of his young career in New York Monday night. He didn’t allow a sack, hurry or quarterback hit, and was good plowing the way for the run game. Cooter said Glasgow is certainly trending in the right direction, and continues to improve.

2. When asked about the early success we’ve seen from Ziggy Ansah, Austin said Ziggy’s always had the ability to impact a game, but his health has sometimes gotten in the way. He said Ansah is feeling good, and that’s why we’re seeing him play good early on this season.

3. Cooter explained why the play of Eric Ebron and the other tight ends on the roster is important to the overall success of his offense. The tight ends are connected to every facet of the offense in terms of catching the ball, and then being important blockers on the edge in the run game. Cooter said that position usually determines how versatile an offense can be.

4. The best defense Austin has had in his tenure as defensive coordinator with the Lions was in 2014. That year, the Lions led the NFL in rushing defense (69.3 yards per game). He reiterated Thursday that stopping the run is always goal No. 1 for him. Why is Detroit off to a good defensive start in 2017? They’re fourth in the NFL against the run (53.5)

5. Fast. Athletic. Aggressive. Those are the three words Cooter used to describe Atlanta’s defense.

6. It remains to be seen if MIKE linebacker Jarrad Davis (concussion) will be available on Sunday. If he’s not, one player the Lions could use to help fill the void is fellow rookie Jalen Reeves-Maybin. When asked about Reeves-Maybin, Austin was most impressed with his speed. He said he moves like a big defensive back.

7. Atlanta head coach Dan Quinn said Wednesday in a conference call that Detroit’s offense is hard to scheme against because they have a number of different weapons. Cooter admitted his offense can be hard on a defense that likes to utilize double teams because who do they double?

8. The Lions have received a lot of good play from a number of different players upfront the first two weeks of the season. Austin said he doesn’t have a bunch of big-name guys upfront, but he has a bunch of guys that work really hard and are good technicians. So far that’s a good formula for Detroit.

9. Cooter had a pretty good line when asked about some of the creative touchdown celebrations we’ve seen from Lions receivers thus far.

“You know what? I keep missing that meeting,” he said. “I don’t know when or where it occurs, I haven’t been invited.”

10. Austin thinks second-year safety Miles Killebrew is just scratching the surface of being a really good football player. Killebrew’s already shown to be a playmaker, so that’s obviously high praise from Austin to his young safety, who could have a bigger role this week if starting safety Tavon Wilson (shoulder) can’t go.

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[footballleague0]

Questions about the Lions’ X-factors, Falcons fans and Takk’s possible coming out party

Good morning and welcome to Straight from the ’Beek! We’re just days away from the Falcons-Lions showdown in Motown – and you’ve got questions. Just remember that all opinions you see in this space are mine, unless otherwise noted.

So let’s have at ’em.

Kevin from Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, England

Hi. I came over the pond for the Packers game. Loved the stadium and experience but was frustrated as to how many people left early. I’d be there every minute of every game if I could. Why do people leave so early considering how quickly a game can change and that this could have a detrimental effect on the team’s performance on both sides of the ball? If your team is winning, stay and have a party!!

Matt: Thanks for writing, Kevin. Glad you had a great trip and experience at the new stadium – and that your Falcons won, too. When I got here, they told me that Falcons fans tend to arrive “later” to games. Why? I have no idea. Maybe it’s the traffic? Maybe it’s the tailgating? But you could use that excuse for any fan in any city rooting for any team. And to your question, why so many left early on Sunday night during the Packers game? Maybe they left, or maybe they were walking around the concourse. It’s tough to know for sure, but there definitely were more empty seats. Maybe they thought the game was in hand and wanted to get a jump on the traffic, I dunno. It was late Sunday/early Monday morning and most people have to work on Monday morning, but I get your point. They were there and loud when it counted, so there’s that. It was my first regular-season game here, so I’m withholding judgment.

Robert from Los Angeles, CA

Hey Beek! Love the column. Been reading since day 1. First time contributing. I would like to know who your X-factors, or players to watch, are on offense and defense for the game against the Detroit Lions. I personally think the defensive line can get pressure against a Detroit O-line that’s missing their left tackle from last year to injury. On offense, I think the RBs will have a good day in both the run and pass game. Thanks, Beek, keep doing what you’re doing. The app is my way of keeping up with my Falcons news from Los Angeles.

Matt: Appreciate it, Robert. I think we all know Matthew Stafford is pretty good and the Lions helped him out greatly by investing in the offensive line during the offseason. It’s helped the running game some as well as given him more protection, it appears. As far as X-factors go, I think you have to keep your eyes on receiver Golden Tate and defensive end Ziggy Ansah. Tate is a like a running back in the open field – he can extend plays because of he gets the tough yards after catches. If he doesn’t score, he moves the chains. And Ansah changes the complexion of that defense. He had 30 sacks in his first three years. He was hurt last year, but he looks like his old self – he had three sacks against the Giants on Monday night. If those two are quiet or non-factors Sunday, I really like the Falcons’ chances that much more.

Vince from Clarkston, GA

Beek, no question just a Big Thank You for this Q&A! You really hit the nail on the head for a lot of my thoughts and the questions that are sent in answers the ones I have. Also, thank you “Ryan from Lake in the Hills, IL” lol

Matt: Glad you’re enjoying it, Vince. I’m still waiting to hear back from Ryan.

Rutul from Mount Prospect, IL

Hi Beek. I would like to see Julio get his 1st touchdown of the season. Do you think he will be targeted more this week in red zone? This will be game 3 and Julio does not have a touchdown. I would like to see him leading the league in touchdowns for receivers.

Matt: I think you and most Falcons fans feel the same way, Rutul. I’m anticipating another big year from Julio Jones, so I think you’ll see him targeted plenty. I wouldn’t get caught up in the stats (unless you’re playing fantasy football and you have Jones on your team, of course). I think this team is focused on 2017 – and making that deep postseason run. Just my two cents.

Larry from Las Vegas, NV

Hey Beek, I love the column. My question is, why aren’t the tight ends used more in playmaking like they did with Tony Gonzalez? I think using the tight ends in short situations will free up big plays for our fantastic receivers.

Matt: I think Austin Hooper is a terrific tight end and is only going to get better, but to be fair, he’s no Tony Gonzalez. Not yet, anyway. That said, Larry, I think a lot of times offenses take what the defenses give them – and if Hooper is open, I’m pretty sure Matt Ryan will find him. (See Chicago in Week 1.) Thanks for reading!

John from Buies Creek, NC

What name for Sanu at QB? Just watch the video and let him tell y’all. AGENT 12!!

Matt: I think that name is as good as any for that formation and thanks for the video link, John. And in case some of you Falcons fans missed it, coach Dan Quinn is open to suggestions on what to call it. Check it out. Thanks for writing, John.

Brian from Clarkston, GA

What’s up Beek! Rise Up! Quick question, what does CMB stand for in defensive stats? Thank you, sir!

Matt: That would be combined tackles – tackles plus assists.

Kevin from Sierra Madre, CA

You are right about Dwight Freeney being 37 years of age. I would prefer JT Jones or Nordly Capi from the Giants. Fans only remember Freeney from his past. The present is we don’t need to pay Freeney’s salary. Let’s just hope Vic comes back soon. Let Mr. Freeney become a defensive coach for the Falcons instead.

Matt: To be fair, you have to trust the Falcons on this one, Kevin. They work out the players, do their due diligence and they’re the professional talent evaluators. I think it all depends on the extent of Vic Beasley’s injury and how long they anticipate him being out. All we know right now is that he’ll miss this week. If it’s a month, well, they might move to Plan B, whatever that is.

James from Decatur, GA

It’s been 40 years since I put on the pads, but if DQ needs an outside backer willing to suit up, please forward to right people that I have one good game left in me.

Matt: Sure thing, James.

Kit from Canton, GA

Matt, didn’t hear anything about Wes Schweitzer this week, which is a good thing for an offensive lineman. Must have been a huge improvement. Can you comment on him?

Matt: You’re right, Kit. When you’re an offensive lineman and they’re not talking about you after a game, it’s almost always a good sign.

Lisa from Flowery Branch, GA

What’s up Beek. My question is, is there a chance that a podcast could be in the fans’ future? I for one, really enjoyed them. Second, I wish that we could have an option to listen to DQ’s full press conference, instead of just clips. This girl from the Branch like to hear the full story from my favorite team. And my last subject, is this the week we see Takk Attack? I think he will get his first sack in Detroit. Do you agree?

Matt: Lisa, nothing is set in stone regarding a podcast, but it’s on our radar. We’re making a lot of great changes here and whatever we do, we want to do it right. So stay tuned on that front. As far as the full DQ presser goes, you can watch it in a number of places, including Twitter, Periscope and Facebook. Check out the team pages. And to your last question, I think this would be the perfect week for Takkarist McKinley’s coming out party, especially with Vic Beasley sidelined. We shall see.

Jim from Raleigh, NC

Beek, what happened to the injury report? In the past, it’s always been posted on Wed., Thurs., and Fri.

Matt: Check it out here, Jim. We’ve got you covered.

Justin from Waco, GA

Hey Matt, I know it’s early in the season, but do you think the Falcons are the best team in the NFC South? I believe they are even though Tampa Bay looks much improved. I actually believe the Falcons are still the best team in the NFC and until someone proves otherwise we all should believe it.

Matt: I think it’s early, Justin. And I say that because we’re still trying to figure out the identities of all 32 teams – you can only base so much off last year and each week we learn a little more. Obviously, injuries can change all of that in one play, too. That all said, I think the Falcons had one of the most complete rosters coming into the season and Sunday night against the Packers was a good sign to see that offense is clicking again. I do agree with you two games in. They play the 2-0 Lions on the road Sunday and a win in Motown would only reinforce what most analysts, columnists and so-called experts already think about the Falcons.

Joni from Panama City, FL

Hey Beek! My question pertains to Matt Ryan. Is it possible, we fans might see him fake an end-around run and score when close to the goal line? I don’t think defenses would be prepared for that. I’ve wanted to see that many a time throughout his career.

Matt: Joni, I think with this offense – with all of its personnel groups, motion and formations – you should expect to see anything, maybe even a fake end-around run by Matt Ryan. Why not.

Travis from Greenbelt, MD

Who do you HONESTLY think will come out victorious on Sunday? I personally think the Falcons will come out on top but it will be a close one.

Matt: I’m always honest here, Travis. And I think the Falcons will win. I think it’ll be close until the end – and then they’ll pull away.

Kellan from Dayton, OH

Hey Beek, do you believe Freeney is the best available DE and if so, do you see us bringing him back in?

Matt: Really good defensive ends are almost as valuable as quarterbacks in this league, Kellan. If they’re walking the streets, there’s usually a reason. It will all depend on the ling-term prognosis for Vic Beasley. I think the Falcons would like to see some production from the players they have now and if they can get to the bye week (Week 5), my guess is that they’ll make a determination then on what to do. In a perfect world Beasley comes back next week healthy. Stay tuned.

David from Newnan, GA

Hey, Matt. I really like and read this every week. I think you seem to answer the same questions every week and it would be nice if you’d answer some different questions. Like maybe the questions I have asked the last two weeks. Really does not matter because l will continue to read. I promise I will never write to you ever again. Thank you for your time, good luck and goodbye.

Matt: Hey, David. I try to get the best and most interesting questions in every day — but I do not answer every single question submitted. Thanks for the kind words, thanks for reading and keep asking those questions!

HAVE A QUESTION?

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[footballleague0]

O’HARA’S SCOUTING REPORT: Atlanta Falcons

Whatever hangover the Atlanta Falcons may have suffered from the historic collapse in their loss to the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLI, they seem to have the prescription for short-term relief.

Take two wins in the first two weeks of the season – as the Falcons have done in beating the Bears and Packers heading into Sunday’s game against the Lions at Ford Field — and forget about seeing the doctor.

Heal thyself on the playing field is the best medicine.

The emotional pain and suffering were real – and lasting — for the Falcons when a 28-3 lead late in the third quarter melted away and turned into a 34-28 loss to the Patriots.

It was such a shocking loss that MVP quarterback Matt Ryan wrote about the fallout in the Players Tribune before the start of the regular season.

“Under the headline “The Hangover,” Ryan revealed his emotions in his column with these words:

“It was the biggest game of our lives.   

“And we blew it.

“And honestly? It sucked. It still does. It probably always will.

“But now the question we’re facing is: How do you come back from that?”

The recovery started in the offseason, much to the satisfaction of head coach Dan Quinn with the spirit the team showed. It has continued in the regular season.

As Quinn said in a conference-call interview with the Detroit media Wednesday, the Falcons steeled themselves for the question they knew was coming but first looked within for the answers.

“We probably spent the time on it in the offseason,” Quinn said. “Even in the break (before camp), I wanted to find out if there was much work to be done or not. I really got our answer about the second day of training camp, when I really felt the speed and intent of the guys going for it.”

Here’s a look at how the Falcons shape up after two weeks:

How the Falcons got to 2-0: It’s been a mixed bag — a shaky performance in a 23-17 road win over the Chicago Bears in the opener, then a dominating effort most of the way in a 34-23 win over the Packers on Sunday Night TV in Week 2.

The opener was a survival test. The Bears had first and goal at the five with 21 seconds left. Three incomplete passes and a fourth-down sack preserved the win. 

The turnaround in Game 2 was dramatic, but it came with the help of a Packers lineup shredded by injuries. Two fourth-quarter touchdowns by the Packers made the score look closer than the game actually was.

Falcons offense: They have talent and depth. Ryan and wide receiver Julio Jones are a quarterback-receiver combination with star power and production. Add to that a two-back rotation – two-time Pro Bowler and 1,000-yard rusher Devonta Freeman and Tevin Coleman – and there’s a reason the Falcons are so potent.

It starts with Ryan. A four-time Pro Bowler, he was voted the league’s MVP in 2016 after setting career highs for passing yards (4,944), touchdown passes (38) and passer rating (117.1). 

Jones has gone over the 1,000-yard receiving mark four of the last five years, missing it only in 2013 when injuries limited him to five games. Jones has yet to break out. He has nine catches in the first two games, with an average of 19.3 yards per catch.

Freeman has been voted to the Pro Bowl the last two seasons, with rushing totals of 1,056 and 1,079 yards and 11 TDs both years. Coleman chipped in 520 yards and eight rushing TDs last year, and a 13.6-yard average on 31 catches.

Defense: It’s a unit built on speed and man coverage in the secondary.

However, the Falcons will have to play without linebacker Vic Beasley, who’s expected to miss a month because of a hamstring injury sustained against the Packers.

Beasley is an elite pass rusher. He had a league-high 15.5 sacks in 2016 and was on the way to another big season before the injury with a sack in each of the first two games.

Asked what the Falcons will miss with Beasley out, Quinn replied: “That speed. He can really get off the ball. We’re fortunate this year. We had some depth along the defensive line. We feel like we’ve got some rushers.”

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O’HARA’S SCOUTING REPORT: Atlanta Falcons

Whatever hangover the Atlanta Falcons may have suffered from the historic collapse in their loss to the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLI, they seem to have the prescription for short-term relief.

Take two wins in the first two weeks of the season – as the Falcons have done in beating the Bears and Packers heading into Sunday’s game against the Lions at Ford Field — and forget about seeing the doctor.

Heal thyself on the playing field is the best medicine.

The emotional pain and suffering were real – and lasting — for the Falcons when a 28-3 lead late in the third quarter melted away and turned into a 34-28 loss to the Patriots.

It was such a shocking loss that MVP quarterback Matt Ryan wrote about the fallout in the Players Tribune before the start of the regular season.

“Under the headline “The Hangover,” Ryan revealed his emotions in his column with these words:

“It was the biggest game of our lives.   

“And we blew it.

“And honestly? It sucked. It still does. It probably always will.

“But now the question we’re facing is: How do you come back from that?”

The recovery started in the offseason, much to the satisfaction of head coach Dan Quinn with the spirit the team showed. It has continued in the regular season.

As Quinn said in a conference-call interview with the Detroit media Wednesday, the Falcons steeled themselves for the question they knew was coming but first looked within for the answers.

“We probably spent the time on it in the offseason,” Quinn said. “Even in the break (before camp), I wanted to find out if there was much work to be done or not. I really got our answer about the second day of training camp, when I really felt the speed and intent of the guys going for it.”

Here’s a look at how the Falcons shape up after two weeks:

How the Falcons got to 2-0: It’s been a mixed bag — a shaky performance in a 23-17 road win over the Chicago Bears in the opener, then a dominating effort most of the way in a 34-23 win over the Packers on Sunday Night TV in Week 2.

The opener was a survival test. The Bears had first and goal at the five with 21 seconds left. Three incomplete passes and a fourth-down sack preserved the win. 

The turnaround in Game 2 was dramatic, but it came with the help of a Packers lineup shredded by injuries. Two fourth-quarter touchdowns by the Packers made the score look closer than the game actually was.

Falcons offense: They have talent and depth. Ryan and wide receiver Julio Jones are a quarterback-receiver combination with star power and production. Add to that a two-back rotation – two-time Pro Bowler and 1,000-yard rusher Devonta Freeman and Tevin Coleman – and there’s a reason the Falcons are so potent.

It starts with Ryan. A four-time Pro Bowler, he was voted the league’s MVP in 2016 after setting career highs for passing yards (4,944), touchdown passes (38) and passer rating (117.1). 

Jones has gone over the 1,000-yard receiving mark four of the last five years, missing it only in 2013 when injuries limited him to five games. Jones has yet to break out. He has nine catches in the first two games, with an average of 19.3 yards per catch.

Freeman has been voted to the Pro Bowl the last two seasons, with rushing totals of 1,056 and 1,079 yards and 11 TDs both years. Coleman chipped in 520 yards and eight rushing TDs last year, and a 13.6-yard average on 31 catches.

Defense: It’s a unit built on speed and man coverage in the secondary.

However, the Falcons will have to play without linebacker Vic Beasley, who’s expected to miss a month because of a hamstring injury sustained against the Packers.

Beasley is an elite pass rusher. He had a league-high 15.5 sacks in 2016 and was on the way to another big season before the injury with a sack in each of the first two games.

Asked what the Falcons will miss with Beasley out, Quinn replied: “That speed. He can really get off the ball. We’re fortunate this year. We had some depth along the defensive line. We feel like we’ve got some rushers.”

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What the Falcons are saying

Every week during the regular season, the opposing head coach and sometimes a player speak to the Detroit media via conference call. This week it was only Falcons head coach Dan Quinn on the conference call, but we perused atlantafalcons.com to see what else Falcons players were saying about Sunday’s showdown between undefeated teams.

So, what did they have to say about this week’s matchup?

1. When asked what stood out to him about the Lions’ defense on tape, Quinn said it was their ability to rush the passer with their defensive line, and then how fundamentally sharp they are tackling. Detroit has tackled very well these first two weeks, and are credited with a combined 32 quarterback hurries from Pro Football Focus.

2. Falcons cornerback Desmond Trufant said the biggest job for his secondary this week is limiting Detroit’s big plays and “cheap” deep balls. The Falcons have taken notice of Stafford’s ability to scramble in the pocket, keep plays alive and then take shots down the field.

3. Speaking of Stafford’s ability to extend plays, Quinn said that was one of the big differences between “The Matt’s” as he put it, meaning Stafford and his quarterback, Matt Ryan. He said both quarterbacks were talented, experienced and accurate, but that Stafford can probably make more plays with his legs than Ryan can. That’s a part of Stafford’s game that is obviously being noticed around the league.

4. Quinn said one of the difficulties in game planning against the Lions is that on any given week someone different can step up for them in the passing game. The Lions don’t have a true No. 1 receiver like Atlanta does with Julio Jones. We’ve already seen that play out in the first two weeks of the season. Week 1 it was Golden Tate and Kenny Golladay. Week 2 it was Marvin Jones Jr. and Eric Ebron.

5. Atlanta center Alex Mack is expecting a tough game in the trenches Sunday. He thinks Detroit’s defensive tackles do a good job of penetrating, and they “cause a lot of problems.” Watching tape of the Lions’ defense, Mack said Detroit’s linebackers also do a good job playing downhill, and the secondary does a good job covering behind it all.

6. Atlanta will be without talented pass rusher Vic Beasley on Sunday due to injury. Beasley had two sacks in two games, and Quinn says his defense will miss his speed more than anything. He did say, however, that they are more equipped to handle the loss than in years past because of the depth they have along their defensive line behind Beasley with Brooks Reed, Takk McKinley, Adrian Clayborn and Derrick Shelby

7. There aren’t any really big philosophical changes with Steve Sarkisian taking over as offensive coordinator in Atltanta this year. The Falcons had one of the top offenses in the NFL last season, so Quinn said they wanted to stay with what they were doing from a system standpoint. Quinn did say that Sarkisian brought some fresh eyes, and they’ve added some different packages to the offense this season.

8. Mack says the Falcons are planning for an extremely loud atmosphere Sunday at Ford Field.

“We’re certainly concerned about the crowd noise and we’re going to do what we need to do,” he said.

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[footballleague0]

What the Falcons are saying

Every week during the regular season, the opposing head coach and sometimes a player speak to the Detroit media via conference call. This week it was only Falcons head coach Dan Quinn on the conference call, but we perused atlantafalcons.com to see what else Falcons players were saying about Sunday’s showdown between undefeated teams.

So, what did they have to say about this week’s matchup?

1. When asked what stood out to him about the Lions’ defense on tape, Quinn said it was their ability to rush the passer with their defensive line, and then how fundamentally sharp they are tackling. Detroit has tackled very well these first two weeks, and are credited with a combined 32 quarterback hurries from Pro Football Focus.

2. Falcons cornerback Desmond Trufant said the biggest job for his secondary this week is limiting Detroit’s big plays and “cheap” deep balls. The Falcons have taken notice of Stafford’s ability to scramble in the pocket, keep plays alive and then take shots down the field.

3. Speaking of Stafford’s ability to extend plays, Quinn said that was one of the big differences between “The Matt’s” as he put it, meaning Stafford and his quarterback, Matt Ryan. He said both quarterbacks were talented, experienced and accurate, but that Stafford can probably make more plays with his legs than Ryan can. That’s a part of Stafford’s game that is obviously being noticed around the league.

4. Quinn said one of the difficulties in game planning against the Lions is that on any given week someone different can step up for them in the passing game. The Lions don’t have a true No. 1 receiver like Atlanta does with Julio Jones. We’ve already seen that play out in the first two weeks of the season. Week 1 it was Golden Tate and Kenny Golladay. Week 2 it was Marvin Jones Jr. and Eric Ebron.

5. Atlanta center Alex Mack is expecting a tough game in the trenches Sunday. He thinks Detroit’s defensive tackles do a good job of penetrating, and they “cause a lot of problems.” Watching tape of the Lions’ defense, Mack said Detroit’s linebackers also do a good job playing downhill, and the secondary does a good job covering behind it all.

6. Atlanta will be without talented pass rusher Vic Beasley on Sunday due to injury. Beasley had two sacks in two games, and Quinn says his defense will miss his speed more than anything. He did say, however, that they are more equipped to handle the loss than in years past because of the depth they have along their defensive line behind Beasley with Brooks Reed, Takk McKinley, Adrian Clayborn and Derrick Shelby

7. There aren’t any really big philosophical changes with Steve Sarkisian taking over as offensive coordinator in Atltanta this year. The Falcons had one of the top offenses in the NFL last season, so Quinn said they wanted to stay with what they were doing from a system standpoint. Quinn did say that Sarkisian brought some fresh eyes, and they’ve added some different packages to the offense this season.

8. Mack says the Falcons are planning for an extremely loud atmosphere Sunday at Ford Field.

“We’re certainly concerned about the crowd noise and we’re going to do what we need to do,” he said.

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