The 2019 NFL Week 12 Roundup | Fun With Numbers!

IN our latest edition of Fun with Numbers! please affix your thinking caps tightly in place and imagine for yourself a $4 budget.

What can you harness with your meager spending power? How can you gleefully best maximize your GET? Are you thinking Target’s Bullseye Playpen and Dollar Spot? Or perhaps you’d prefer making a wish for a bigger budget at the closest fountain…400 times? Well if you’re anything like the Office of the Commissioner, naturally given this price point, you’d equate your cash in-hand to the immediate gratification of food. Certainly you’d be able to grab the fast food industry’s Holy Grail product of the moment, Popeye’s uber-popular fried chicken sandwich which at $3.99 will do well to extinguish those FOMO hunger pangs. Tax, fries and soda all lovingly EXTRA. Hypertension, free with purchase. Alternatively, maybe you’re thinking something to wash away the shamed guilt of waiting in line for a consumerist, commoditized, salt-laden crispy chicken sandwich? Thought you’d never ask. Well then you’d be held blameless in snagging two bottles of Trader Joe’s famed and award-winning Two Buck Chuck (short for brand Charles Shaw) in varietals as far as the eye can boozily see. Okay, pencils down! Time to take those thinking caps off because those of you in the DC Metroplex now have an enticing new option for those of you with a few $2 bills to burn. Literally. And that option now includes football tickets to endure see the Redskins on any given Sunday down in Landover. Redskins ticket prices have been plumbing ever-descending depths the past month or so and this past weekend punched through the one-unfathomable $5 price point. But there they were, like smoldering lumps of inky coal in Daniel Snyder’s mantel-hung stockings — $4 tickets aplenty on sites from StubHub to Seatgeek and beyond for this past Sunday’s stomach-churning matchup with the visiting Lions. That $4 would have afforded you entry into Fedex Field, gained you a seat so close to Heaven you’d be able to hear the pearly gates swing on their angelic hinges, and would have relegated you to a diminutive jury pool witnessing the death of a Franchise in real time. Literal BANG for your Buck.

Surely you’d think that at $4 a pop, Daniel Snyder would be losing his shirt in just keeping the stadium metal halide lights on. And you’d probably be among the throngs of participants who during the game boisterously demand-chanted, ever-hopeful Sell The Team, Sell The Team! And to the former and latter, a quick peek behind the financial curtain reveals that ticket prices no matter the level barely enshroud the lucrative minting press underpinning the entire enterprise. Purchased for $750M in 1999, the Washington Redskins have seen their fair share of peaks and (mostly) valleys throughout the intervening 20 years. And They’ve been supremely profitable in each. Take last year’s 7–9 losing Season, for instance. $493M in revenue, $120M in operating income. Only 6 Teams in the NFL earned more. And paradoxically, the Franchise value increased 10%. Perverse, yes? Unusual, no. You see it all begins with how NFL broadcast rights are administered. Contracts are negotiated with all networks and streaming outlets and divvied up among all teams equally. In 2018, that pool was $8.1B which nets each Team $255M annually. Again Just for broadcast rights. Takeaway each Team’s $200M payroll ($188.2M salary cap plus benefits like insurance, pensions, etc) and you have an immediate windfall of $55M off of broadcast rights alone. Then you get to add in the gate from every game. Home Team’s keep 60% of ticket sales; 40% to the visiting opponent. Last year, the Skins brought in nearly $29M in gate revenue out of $43M in gross ticket sales. On top of this, the Skins keep to themselves 100% off ancillaries including egregious on-site parking fees, insultingly high-priced-for-middlebrow-fare concessions sales, in-stadium targeted advertising, the rake from apparel sales and so on. And this is to say nothing of The 205M/27 year FedEx naming rights deal that nets Daniel Snyder about $8 annually. That the Redskins call home to a stadium that draws from a metropolis of 6.3 million residents armed with prodigious spending power and it’s easy to see that the math really is quite simple. Much to the pouty chagrin of fans looking to finally clear that Daniel Snyder stench, Jeff Bezos (and his salivating, rumored interest in the beleaguered Team), and the Gods of Football, there simply will be no sale. Business Model of Business as Usual, one could surmise. So what if there were 20,000 empty seats this past Sunday? Ain’t Nobody Counting seems to be the dismissive refrain from Stan in Back Office Accounting. Nevertheless, each potential seat filler was no doubt at home guzzling bottles of Two Buck Chuck if for nothing else than to laugh away the shamed guilt of those who did indeed wait in line for a consumerist, commoditized, and salt-laden, crispy Washington Redskins football sandwich. Hypertension, STILL lovingly free with purchase!

Turning now to the NFL in Week 12, we can see the regression to the Mean is well on course; fewer outliers and more data points within the expected range. Once of those data point was plainly visible out in Santa Clara where the 49ers thundered out a dominating victory over Green Bay, 37–8. San Francisco’s Jimmy G turned in another workman-like performance (14/20, 253 yards, 2 TDs) that matched nicely with the propulsive return of TE George Kittle. The 9ers exhibited an Offense as deep as their Defense was formidable. You play like that and it’s no wonder that even the famed Aaron Rogers was stifled and practically put on mute all game long and for all the trouble was rewarded still with 5 sacks to take home as keepsakes. You can file that in the Tough Toenails bucket. The Packers have their homework drawn out for them ahead of their next matchup with SF in the playoffs. But with each passing week, it seems that the 9ers authored the Answer Key that everyone else studies to such is the position of strength the Team in playing from. And at 10–1, the 9ers are tied for THE winningest Team in the NFL as we enter Week 13. Meanwhile, over in Foxborough the Pats squeaked past America’s Team, 13–9, in a game that contrasted NE’s woeful Offense with a wobbly Win. Tom Brady was restrained (17/37, 190 yards, 1 TD) as was Dak Prescott (19/33, 212 yards, 0 TDs) at the same time the Pats’ Defense soared and swooped in to the save the day. Also, DAL crowd favorite Amari Cooper picked a bad time to roll-up an unproductive and unhelpful game into his backpack. But at 6–5 on the Season, the Cowboys remain perched atop the NFC East albeit a messy stink-pot of broken toys of a Division. The Pats being the Pats march forward to the Playoffs who at 10–1 look to be unstoppable.

The Steelers took on the putrid Bengals (0–11) and were victors in a game that was closer that it had any right to be. Mason Rudolph in his first game after last week’s “incident” delivered disappointment in torrential abundance. He certainly didn’t resemble the Mason of even just a few weeks back which spells ill of Steel City’s chances come January. Luckily, backup backup PIT QB Devlin Hodges provided some spark and was efficient in his debut, made possible with Mason’s being hooked in the 2nd half for reasons of seeming job abandonment. AS to the Cinci? Well..yah…exactly. And on the other side of the “incident” token, The Brownies danced like no one was watching, as the saying goes. And they danced all over MIA, 41–24, in spectacular style. The triumvirate of CIN QB Baker Mayfield/WR Jarvis Landry/RB Nick Chubb quickly and succinctly forced the conversation back to BUSINESS and summarily dispelled any notion that the last week of reflective digestion could derail their sense of Purpose. Their conviction upheld and 3rd Ws in a row, there remains for CLE a slim shot at a Playoff berth; a thought unthinkable this time last year. At 5–6 on the Season, it’s is whisper-thin at best. The Bux took on the formerly hot-hot-hot Atlanta and forced the Falcons to an unscheduled landing, 35–22. This game might have been best remembered best by TB defensive lineman Vita Vea’s TD win in the 2nd quarter. And weighing in at a stealthy 347 pounds, that’s no mean feat. Via is just the 9th ever player to record a sack and a TD in the same game. Over in the City of Brotherly Love, the Eagles were outflanked by the Seahawks who came away with an ugly win. Ugly as in undisciplined, almost inexcusable and staggeringly inefficient. Not helping matters for PHL was an extremely UNSTABLE QB Carson Wentz who played hot/cold, high/low, energetic/lethargic, smart/dumb and everything in between. Carson know better and delivered worse.

And in our weekly Round Robin, don’t look know but it’s quite possible the Jets are the hottest team in football right now. YES, those Jets who of late are hammering pedal to the metal with their string of 3 victories in a row, each with 30 points and change. Their latest victim: OAK. NYJ’s QB Sam Darnold no longer sees “ghosts” and has firmly traded in his hospital gown for a superhero cape. Add in the irrepressible Le’Veon Bell and you have the makings of a mini-renaissance in a small pocket of New Jersey heard ‘round the League. But just don’t tell that to the Giants. The Raiders slink away and take with them a forgettable week that featured QB Derek Carr’s benching and a Mike Glennon start that began precisely where Derek left off. Fans of HBO’s Hard Kocks will see where things are headed. They see that OAK fans FEEL. Elsewhere, the Bills blockaded an attempted Broncos stampede but in the end needed little more than barbed threats to get the job done, 20–3. There are grumblings that at 8–3 on the Season, that BUF is the worst 8–3 team ever. For reasons we’ll explore in future newsletters, this an interestingly appropriate state of the state assessment as the Bills gallop to the Playoffs. NOLA predictably overtook the Panthers who continue to reel, stung with their 3rd loss in succession. Last night’s BAL-LAR matchup turned into a Charm City barn burner that featured what by now is a trademark Lamar Jackson artistically athletic performance. He was pulled yet again in football’s version of the Mercy Rule. All winded Jared Goff and his Rams could do was stop and stare. They were in good company with us all at home. And finally as mentioned in the Opening, the Lions visited the Skins and lost their hide, 16–19. In only their 2nd W of the season, QB Dwayne Haskins made headlines by celebrating by snapping selfies with fans WHILE the game was still playing out. He missed the final play of the game and pranced about as if all Washington prayers had been answered. They haven’t and won’t be for some time. And in fact his behavior begets more questions as to his seriousness and professionalism. Further still, their WIN wasn’t THAT great nor was his (exceedingly underwhelming) performance. But Dwayne along with his WAS fans celebrate their first win in nearly 2 months atop a 2–9 record and are mired in last place in NFC East. Say CHEEEEEESSSSE!