Protect the quarterback, protect the border

Contemplations on an afternoon when college basketball and women’s lacrosse are all you can find on ESPN

Face it. Super Bowl 2022 was kind of a shit-show.

As a few bumbling stumbling coaches and front office people who run the Cincinnati Bengals learned, too late, if you can’t protect the franchise (quarterback Joe Burrow), you can’t go all the way. And you look stupid for overlooking the obvious.

The kid revolutionized the team with his play and his courage, but his offensive line couldn’t step up, so the Rams grabbed the title and the trophy. You could see the bad handwriting on the wall in the first quarter.

Ask anyone who knows: Playing the offensive line is really about technique. And coordination and schemes. It isn’t just giant blob-bodies plugging holes. The Bengal coaches haven’t taught enough technique. They haven’t implemented the right schemes. They should have figured that out two years ago—when everybody else recognized the need because Joe suddenly showed up and there was a reason to hope.

The southern border of the US is in a similar situation—except there the lack of technique and coordination and scheme is intentional. All the bullshit moral prescriptions about giving us your huddled masses are cynical cover stories designed to disguise true facts, starting with: