The 2022 NFL Week 14 Roundup | In The End

Own Goal

The tunnel leading from the soccer pitch at Al Thumama stadium in Doha is a colorful affair. Glossy mint green floors contrast sharply with walls splashed liberally in deep violet paint. Optic white World Cup decals decorate the wide, brightly lit corridor as throngs of media jostle for position to capture players on their way to the locker room. This past Saturday, the eye-catching tunnel witnessed capacity crowds as photographers and reporters brushed up against the purple walls to take in the unthinkable. The tall, slender forward slowly rendered into focus as he gently approached, silent. The corridor — now overflowing with media, FIFA, World Cup and Team officials — was hushed but for the crip snaps of an avalanche of flash photography. Cristiano Ronaldo like the world had never seen him before. He maintained a deliberate clip, alone, as he pinched tears from his eyes, his head down. Overcome with emotion both from Portugal’s shock-elimination just moments before AND his likely exit from world stage, Cristiano acquiesced to reality. And with it, a rare, raw, poignant exposition of a changing of the guard and the slipping of a generational talent into memory. As Cristiano pushed further into the reaches of the stadium, the noise and frenzy of the media left far behind, the grumbled clickety-clack of his cleats echoed within the hallway, now empty of people. He stood for a second to collect himself, wiped clear his reddened eyes and took a deep breath. Amidst the painful melancholy moment, Cristiano managed to steal a small smile as he shook his head. The grin reflected humbled acknowledgement of the inevitable: that at 37, Cristiano had not only aged out of the Sport that propelled him to superstardom but would soon grapple with life after that same Sport that famously defined his life and all the bright and shiny things within it. Soccer IS his purpose and his validation. Cristiano’s journey forward defiantly carries on without either.

Now, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. WE won’t be shedding any tears (crocodile tears, perhaps) for Cristiano whose career earnings exceed $1B, the first active team-sport athlete to achieve the tony distinction. So an embarrassment of riches for a player with a net worth of $500M is not the sort of ordeal that will be keeping anyone up at night. But just for a moment, slake in the superlatives. A quintet of Ballon d’Or awards and a quartet of European Golden shoes. Cristiano hoists proudly aloft 32 career trophies including seven league titles, five UEFA Champions Leagues and the UEFA European Championship. Over his two decade career, he’s made over 1,100 professional career appearances and has amazingly scored 813 goals for club and country. He remains the only male athlete to score in five World Cup tournaments. Endorsement deals worth hundreds of millions with the likes of Nike, Armani and Unilever compliment Cristiano’s frothy and weighty bucket list. The most followed athlete on the Gram (with 500M followers), he trailblazed a 20-year thoroughfare of high decoration and worldwide admiration. Cristiano ascended to the absolute heights of stardom and began acclimating to the altitude. Tax evasion (he settled with Spain for $20M in lieu of a 23-month prison sentence) encrust scar tissue on his otherwise sunny resume. All made possible by a youthful, spellbinding forward blessed with a freewheeling attacking style both mesmerizing and meritorious for his ability to defy imaginations with a deft sleight of foot. The magic was unstoppable so long as the music kept playing. Then, seemingly, this year the tunes stopped as the brilliant lights faded to black.

Really the scribbling on the walls could be read in the twilight of 2021 when daylight could be seen between Manchester United and Cristiano. A worryingly sharp decline in performance and goalscoring spilled over into the dawn of 2022 compounded by a February hamstring injury and contentious relationships with his teammates and Team management. The rancor only mushroomed as the calendar year unfolded. The pricey star was punching well beneath his weight while accusations of his diva-like behavior echoed across the Internet. Missing the transfer window, Cristiano lost his place in the starting lineup as competing European Clubs balked at his exorbitant asking price. In a game of unsportsmanlike one-upmanship, he and the Team traded ugly, public barbs. Cristiano famously skipped the club’s pre-season tour while just this past October the Team knowingly failed to use him as a substitute in a loss to Manchester City. Cristiano retaliated further by refusing to be brought on as a substitute just 10 days later in a home game against Tottenham. He underlined his anger and insult by leaving stadium before the final game whistle. So nothing to see here besides unsightly recriminations between a Club with buyer’s remorse and an aging star player with misplaced ambition. So it was just as well that the mid-Season break for World Cup arrived to vent the unhappy pressure cooker at Old Trafford stadium. But wait, there’s more. An ill-advised tell-all November 14th interview with Piers Morgan aired all the dirty laundry and grievances Cristiano harbored and unsurprisingly had the soccer world achatter. A lit match to a forest of tinder-dry perceived outrage. And so it was no surprise that just before the World Cup, Cristiano and Manchester United mutually announced the termination of his contract. Unemployed and having exhausted three Clubs in little more than four years, Cristiano looked to the World Cup to reset and recalibrate with a hoped-for comeback tour. Things didn’t go quite as planned.

In 2006, Cristiano exploded onto the World Cup stage by surprisingly powering Portugal into the semi-finals (ultimately losing to Germany) and instantly branding his signature indelible mark into public consciousness. He was an integral — and starting — attacker for the following 3 World Cups. And then 2022 happened. Things started out decently enough where in Portugal’s opening game against Ghana, Cristiano scored a penalty kick. Then things went downhill. In the 65th minute of POR’s final group game with South Korea, Manager Fernando Santos substituted him out. Infuriated, Cristiano shot back a childish and disrespectful gesture; a gesture he later incredulously said was instead directed at a South Korean player. As if that were an elixir to the issues at hand. IN answer to his shenanigans, Cristiano was rewarded with a lowly yellow vest and a benching. He was embarrassingly dropped from the starting lineup from the Team’s subsequent Round of 16 and only substituted in deep into the squad’s 6–1 drubbing of Switzerland, as mere mortifying window dressing. Fernando also pointedly didn’t start him in this past Saturday’s crucial knockout quarterfinal game against Morocco. 51 scoreless minutes in (and down 0–1), Cristiano was put-in as an impact sub. Cristiano came close to a fairytale comeback as the game clock rounded the 90th minute but a clutch MOR save extinguished any such wishful thinking. As stoppage time evaporated, Morocco steamed ahead wondrously for the Arab nation as POR players collapsed in shock. Cristiano, tellingly, didn’t commiserate and console with any of his teammates with whom he reportedly didn’t get along with. Go figure. Instead, he soldiered alone off the pitch. Letting the gravity of the moment inescapably sink in, Cristiano dissolved into tears well before the entrance to the purple tunnel. It was quite the emotional scene for a superstar walking off the World Cup stage for perhaps the final time in his professional life; an untimely and unlikely exit bereft of success.

There was a time and a day when a sports legend graduated to emeritus status by way of an eloquent, frictionless exit ramp. A star-studded party would be thrown; a splashy sepia-toned magazine cover story published; the hero would be walked out the door to a deafening and unending applause line. Not so for Cristiano. And quite the comedown for an uber-athlete used to heightened expectations and requisite success. Cristiano’s fears could be seen in a violent word cloud suspended over his head as he headed off-field. Does the word irrelevance even exist when it cannot be comprehended nor acknowledged? While he insists he isn’t done with professional-caliber soccer, it’s likely the professional-caliber soccer is done with him. Sure he doesn’t play with the fluidity, immediacy, trickery, surprise and kinetics of his prime but a reputation only goes so far in a game populated with competitors a decade or more his junior. All at once the dulling of a knife’s blade, the cruel march of time, public indifference to yesterday’s Wikipedia headline and simultaneous breathless infatuation with what-have-you-done-for-me-lately, collect to belabor Cristiano’s plight. It’s likely that he’ll be headed to Saudi Arabia where club Al Nassr will carpet-bomb his checking account with a reported $200M. This is the caliber of deal Cristiano feels he’s earned and entitled to at this stage in his career. Problem is, credible and much more well-known clubs are neither of a similar mind nor inclination to even approach a tenth of that amount. And so Cristiano will disappear into the ether of Middle East soccer, trading invisibility for a commanding payday. At just 37, he wrestles with segueing into the role of elder statesman just as his attachment to the life he’s ever known gets in the way. The bright lights of white-hot stardom are oftentimes bewildering, blinding and searing. The cold chasm and vacuous emptiness that develops when those same bright lights are unplugged are just as bewildering, blinding and searing. Cristiano is well aware of his trepidatious transition from the former to the latter. NO amount of money can buy a roadmap to chart the course, any course. And that’s the uncertain and confusing conundrum that no doubt upwelled in Cristiano’s heart as he took in the enormity and reality of it all as it landed with a thud at his feet this past weekend. How to say goodbye when you’re not quite ready to leave. How to move onto the next THING when you’re not quite up to relinquishing the one you’re most famous for. How to smile when your heart sinks. How to resist and see clearly through bittersweet tears. For Cristiano, an own goal of his own making.

NO own goals as Week 14 in the NFL concludes but the next worst thing surfaced as battle-weary players grind toward January playoffs (or the Draft): injury. High profile players from high-flying Teams at the most inopportune moment, too. Case in point: Bucs at SF. Heading into the week, this matchup promised to be one of the more intriguing of the week considering Tom Brady’s awkward tepid predicament contrasted sharply with the 49ers now onto burning-through their untested, unknown 3rd string QB in Brock Purdy. Well SF fans needn’t have worried as Brock stepped UP into Jimmy G’s big shoes and did so capably; extra points for the athletic, fluid and balanced nature of his auspicious debut. The quiet understudy flexed and along with the traditional strength of the Teams secondary, Tampa Bay was quickly swept back out to sea, 35–7. The WIN came at a cost, however. All-star WR Deebo Samuel had to be carted off the field after his leg bent at an angle it shouldn’t. The official word is that it’s likely a high ankle sprain. Whatever the case, NOT good. UP in Mile High city, the Chiefs arrived to take on the Broncos and for the first half it looked like a gimme. KC was up 27–0 at a certain point. Then the remainder of the game unpacked and unfortunately for KC, saw steep offensive decline amid surprising Patrick Mahomes errors. We’ll just chalk it up to him being loosey goosey; he’s earned the right. KC’s Defense almost lost the game amid a DEN offensive tear. The Chiefs ultimately prevailed, 34–28. Not so lucky was Russell Wilson whose head hit the ground in Q4 and scarily looked weary and lost in the immediate aftermath. An all too familiar drama as Russell walked off the field into concussion protocol.

In Los Angeles, the Chargers hosted the Fins. Might the conducive MIA offensive machine be in need a lube job? Judging by the last two weeks, Jiffy Lube has reason to be happy. Suffering their second loss in a row, the early-Season rabblerousing Dolphins seem to have lost that special razzle dazzle. They’re not playing poorly, they’re just not playing well…enough. Against the Chargers, this spelled disappointment. And that’s just what they received in a 23–34 loss. Justin Herbert for his part is turning into the (not so) little offensive engine that could. Not that LAC fans ever had any doubt. Up the coast, Carolina at Hawks exposed a rare Geno Smith off-day. The Panthers Defense flustered SEA all day and change, to a 30–24 result. At 7–6, Seattle has precious little breathing room for games of this sort; not with SF chewing up the turf for breakfast before church. Out in Orchard Park, a glum, nasty, rainy snowflake-infused day made for a pretty listless game throughout. The weather being what it was, the offensive aerial fireworks show was cancelled. NO worries as the ground-and-pound show was quickly anointed in it place. In this regard Josh Allen and his Bills capitalized as the faltering and once-standout Jets wilted, 20–12. NYJ QB Mike White is day-to-day after having taken brutal shots to his ribs. Meanwhile, carnage in Steel City as the Ravens swept into town without phenom QB Lamar Jackson (due to a knee injury last week). PIT upstart QB Kenny Pickett entered concussion protocol in the first half, replaced by Mitchell Trubisky. As to BAL, backup QB Tyler Huntley, too, suffered a concussion in Q3, keeping medics busy backfield. Third-string QB Anthony Brown was put in and a stomach-churning BAL 16–14 “victory” transpired. Without Lamar, the Ravens are offensively crippled. Luckily for the Ravens, the Team’s secondary beat-back any semblance of a PIT response (helped tremendously by a VERY shaky Mitch Trubisky re-debut).

In our Round Robin, The scrappiest Team in the League — the Lions — took on the 10–3 Vikings and an incomprehensible 34–23 WIN resulted. MIN QB Kirk Cousins had a remarkable game (34/41 425yds 2TDs) as did DET QB Jared Goff (27/39 330yds 3TDs). The difference: the DET offense was a click stronger and tighter as the MIN Defense proved too feeble to halt the starry-eyed subjects of HBO’s Hard Knocks. The Cowboys took care of business with the Texans (27–23) in a dangerously close game that displayed worrying Defensive weakness with American’s Team. The Texans mope home with their rotten 1–11–1 record and their 8th loss in a row. Eeeeek. Trevor Lawrence and his Jags overturned their dinner table with the Titans, 36–22, despite the once-and-hopefully-still-reliable Ryan Tannehill-Derek Henry paring as dinner guests. Never any love lost between perennial AFC North enemies CLE and Cincy; same on Sunday. CIN QB Joe Burrow delivered his first win over CLE in sinewy style, 23–10. Add in WR Ja’Marr Chase and a Bengals Christmas has arrived. Deshaun Watson, for his part, suffered his first loss, likely the first of many. Finally, the 12–1 Eagles soared ever-higher via air and ground (at the expense of the Giants, 42–22) and back in LA, Baker Mayfield had a Hollywood moment. Just 36 hours old as a Ram, Baker miracle-of-miracles cobbled together a nail-biting final 90 second comeback in a 17–16 victory (over the Raiders) for the ages. The 4–9 Rams needed the ego boost while the Raiders could have used one their very own even more. Story of their lives.