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In honor of Monday night's Vikings debacle, some members of the Defector staff share their memories of terrible quarterbacking. Dan Pastorini, Oakland Raiders vs. Houston Oilers, Oct. 9, 1972 Dan Pastorini was a highly regarded but still inexperienced Houston Oiler in 1972, before any of your parents were born, and 30 years before the franchise stopped being either Houston or Oilers. But Pastorini had the bad luck of being drafted by a team that was bad and about to become much worse. He won one of his first 22 starts across his second and third seasons, to give you an idea of how horrendous the Oilers were.

Here is a thing that Republicans do not do when they sweep into power: They do not bother brainstorming ways that they can signal a values match with the people who oppose them, and whom they have just defeated. They do not look around, blinking, from the hilltop they have just won, and fret about appealing to the vanquished foes lying half-dead at their feet. When Republicans win, they set about changing the laws, or using the existing laws to their advantage. That is the job. Republican lawmakers express their values through the laws that they make and enforce. They do not get sidetracked by the idea that they can make friends with progressives, and not only because they know that their voters do not want them to do that. They perceive an authentic mismatch of values, and their solution to that is to make progressives eat shit. You will say that this is a weakness of their politics. You will point to their long-dwindling popularity and last week's electoral bloodbath, and say that their reflexive and idiotic tribalism is a terminal illness, and that Democrats should learn from it only that it is self-defeating. You fool. Here you have done them the favor of flattening the actual, substantive, qualitative differences between the goals of the right and the left. You shouldn't do that, because those differences are important. People on the left want things—actual tangible things: laws and institutions and structures—that make sense, that arise from active, curious, engaged minds thinking deeply about how to run a community of any size or complexity. Those things are aimed at the goal of making society more equitable and less brutal, and making life more dignified and less degrading.

Harrison Butker is having the worst season of his NFL career. And if that weren't good enough news, his financial foray into politics is basically dead. Butker, placekicker for the Kansas City Chiefs, has hit only 63.2 percent of his field goals this season. He's missed at least one field goal in six of his eight games, and his accuracy from long range has escaped him: He's 2-for-8 on field goals attempted from 50 or more yards. In Sunday's 35-12 win over the New York Jets, Butker made all five of his extra point attempts, but whiffed on a 51-yarder right before halftime. That doesn't matter much against the Jets, but against a more competitive opponent, in a game that might be decided by only three points, Butker isn't as reliable as he once was. Instead of trying to restore masculine values, he should worry more about trying to restore his mechanics. Andy Reid remained vague on whether Butker would keep kicking for Kansas City this coming weekend. "I'll address that as we go throughout the week," the head coach said after Sunday's win. If the Chiefs were to make a change, they would likely look to the practice squad and elevate Justin Tucker, who hasn't seen NFL action since the 2024 season, and was cut by the Baltimore Ravens in 2025 after numerous massage therapists in the area accused him of sexual misconduct. K.C.'s special teams has the roster depth and moral fiber of the White House press secretary pool.

This week on Nothing But Respect, we talked about fashion. Whose style is good? Whose is bad? What exactly does a professional stylist do? Has Tyler Kolek been to Dimes Square, or is he just pretending? We got into all this and more with Lawrence Schlossman of Throwing Fits. Lawrence knows ball and also knows clothing, so he was the ideal guy to chat with about all this stuff. You can find Nothing But Respect in Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast app you use. Follow the show on Instagram, and contact the Broke Jumper Tip Line at (347) 380-6426. Thanks for listening!

The best players make basketball look simple. The effect is mostly illusory, a byproduct of their size and skill warping a complex game, though there's something to the idea. In essence what a star does is make the game easier for their team and more difficult for the opponent. It's not rendering anything simple exactly, more like adding to or subtracting from the bevy of available options for, respectively, one's team or one's opponents. You can only do simple stuff if you have the best players. Cooper Flagg is one such player. Watching him dominate the Indiana Pacers Monday night, I was struck by how simple it all looked for the 19-year-old. With his Dallas Mavericks trailing by 10 coming out of halftime, Flagg made a point of taking and nailing three straight midrange jumpers, shots he can get to anytime he wants. Three times the cockroach (complimentary) Pacers dodged getting squished and made their way back into one-possession range; with the game on the line, Flagg calmly got the rock and went to work. Flagg wound up with 43 points on 25 shots in 39 minutes, 10 rebounds, six assists, and four stocks, all on the second night of a back-to-back. He played the entire fourth quarter and hit all eight of his free throws. He turns 20 next week, and is at most a few months older than the youngest draftees in the rookie class after his. He's taken to munching PB-and-Js at all times because he's still a young growing boy. Something interesting is happening in Dallas, somehow, which all comes down to Flagg's undeniable superstardom.

From 2007 to 2009, Oklahoma City Thunder general manager Sam Presti selected future NBA MVPs Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, and James Harden in three consecutive drafts, securing the fledgling team an otherworldly core. The results were brilliant and tumultuous. The Thunder started out 3-29 in 2008, but within a couple of years rounded into a fearsome squad that gave the 2010 Lakers a scare, and eventually reached the 2012 NBA Finals, where they went toe to toe with LeBron James's Miami Heat and lost. Then Presti traded Harden, setting in motion a future that would scatter the trio around the league. As they broke apart, they'd help mold the league into its modern shape. Jonathan Abrams, a New York Times culture reporter who began his career covering the NBA and has written about it extensively at the Los Angeles Times, Grantland, and Bleacher Report's magazine, is out with a new book, When We Were Young and Fearless, about these players and their importance in modern NBA history. At Grantland, Abrams wrote longform profiles and oral histories, in which you could relive the Malice at the Palace, become familiar with the particulars of how an almost-dynasty fell apart, or learn that the Orlando Magic came disturbingly close to being called the "Juice." It's that style of dedicated reporting and patient storytelling that enlivens all three of the book's protagonists, whom Abrams refers to only by their first names. When We Were Young and Fearless leaves the reader with a fascinating image of what the 2010s Thunder could have been, but its greatest feat is perhaps the sympathy and complexity with which it imbues three of the greatest players of the 21st century.

Time for your weekly edition of the Defector Funbag. Got something on your mind? Email the Funbag. You can also read Drew over at SFGATE, and buy Drew’s books while you’re at it. Today, we're talking about forward progress, Queens of the Stone Age, grout, and more. I have to run a bit shorter than usual this week because I was summoned for jury duty yesterday. The juror lounge had no free coffee, and the vending machine was empty. RUDE. I was so agitated that if I had actually gotten called, I would have automatically voted to convict regardless of the evidence. Anyway, your letters:

There are times when a team can lose a primetime game and feel hard done-by. A good squad can have an off night, or run into a particularly bad matchup, and suddenly millions of Monday Night Football viewers have incorrectly concluded that those fellas are bad at football. The Minnesota Vikings, who came into Monday's game against the Buffalo Bills with a 6-1 record, offered no such misrepresentation. Anyone who watched that game came away with a precise understanding of who the Vikings are: a team that can't move the ball to save its life. I shudder to think of the hypothetical casual fan who was excited to tune into a game between two six-win teams, only to be treated to a game that, despite being close in a technical sense, never really offered any drama. The Vikings are to blame for that, as they managed to lose 23-6 while putting yet another inept offensive performance on tape. Minnesota finished the game with 178 total yards and nine first downs, and possessed the ball for 17:28, their lowest mark in franchise history. That was somehow all they could manage against the 30th-ranked pass defense in the league. The star of this horrible show was Carson Wentz, who was forced into starting quarterback duty thanks to Kyler Murray's hamstring injury. Wentz completed eight of his 25 passes for 81 yards, and threw two interceptions. It was a historically bad performance, one so vivid in its awful particulars that Joe Buck and Troy Aikman were able to set aside any hard feelings they might currently have for each other and join in channeling their disgust at the field:

Olivia Reingold might be the most notably embarrassing employee at the Free Press, but her coworkers won't let her take that title without a fight. Last Wednesday, following the midterm elections, the outlet posted a video by a different staffer who characterized Abdul El-Sayed's victory speech, which he gave almost entirely in English, as being delivered in Arabic. By Sunday, that video was deleted. The publication announced the decision, which apparently needed four days of deliberation, with the following note: We deleted an opinion video about the use of foreign languages in election night speeches. The post contained a factual error and its tone fell short of what we believe advances healthy public discourse. The rigorous editorial process that produces the work that appears on our website and in our newsletters must apply to everything we post on social media. We’ll be updating how we do things to achieve just that. We regret the error. The video in question was by reporter Maya Sulkin, whose accompanying caption was as follows: “Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed gave his victory speech in Arabic last night. Rep. Ilhan Omar addressed her victory party in Somali. And this morning, Iran’s supreme leader posted that America’s collapse ‘has accelerated.’ What should we make of these acceptance speeches?” The blue wave has resulted in some unlikely victories, but I didn't know that included the supreme leader of Iran.

Not all franchises are made equal. Some are widely understood by their peers to be operated by dullards. These imbalances are clear to everyone—fans, analysts, other executives—if not to the dullards themselves. Is it bullying whenever the Oklahoma City Thunder do business with, say, the Sacramento Kings? Maybe it is. During the 2025 NBA Draft, these two teams kicked off the first phase of this saga. The Kings sent a top-16 protected pick belonging to the San Antonio Spurs; the Thunder sent the No. 24 pick. The Kings then used that pick to select Nique Clifford, a versatile 6-foot-5 prospect. The knock on Clifford was his age—already 23 at draft night—but he was considered a good athlete with positional size, feel, and ball skills. After a solid rookie season, he was a modest source of hope on a Sacramento roster that badly needed any. Any evaluation of Clifford would also have to factor in that he was playing under full-time head coach Doug Christie, who is the NBA franchise equivalent of swapping on the donut tire on your car and then taking it on a cross-country road trip. Christie had poor Clifford playing point guard for stretches of the season, struggling to make plays out of isolation. But at least Clifford was in no rush to prove himself, having joined a play-in franchise on a clear downward trajectory which included conducting confusing trades for middling players. Alas, Clifford just couldn't keep up with the furious pace of innovation in Sacramento. Just 16 months after the Kings acquired him, Clifford had slipped out of the rotation. On Sunday, they traded him back to the Thunder, and in return received two-second round picks. Particularly strange is the timing of the trade. What was Sacramento's rush to move on from the sophomore? The 1-9 Kings are headed nowhere but hell. They have a lively point guard now in Darius Acuff Jr., who has been happily taking on galactic usage; their best wing, Keegan Murray, finally returned from an ankle injury yesterday. If anything, now is the time to properly test out all their rookie-scale players and assess their quality.