Hitch Route

Get it? PUNTer Kaufman? hahahahhahahhahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! - Anish

Since I actually take our podcast seriously, let it be known that this is the episode where we make our predictions for Week 13. Also, this week honestly has to be the best of the season no doubt since it's impossible for the Packers to win. - Alex

Hey guys. This is the episode where we talk about games and stuff. Alex is good at fantasy, Anish isn't, and they're both bad at Survivor Pools. What else do we need to say? In all seriousness, though, (just kidding - it's physically impossible for us to be serious) this was a big week for Anish and the miscellaneous; it likely was a big week for all you listeners, too, because the trade deadline passed in many fantasy leagues. So that means if you didn't trade them or drop them, you're stuck with all your garbage players!!! Anish made a pretty big splash, actually, to try keeping his playoff hopes alive... Tune in to find out who he gave up and who he got in return. 

Alex is on a flight back to Duke from Chicago, so you get me again. Hi, it's Anish. Please leave a message after the tone (anyone who gets this reference I will personally give $1). This is a (kind of) shorter episode. Well, guess what? We're going to start breaking up our usually longer episodes into shorter episodes, so be on the look out for a couple more this week! It was a week of muffed punts, so Alex told me to title it "Witcher 3: The Wild Punt," which is a reference to some random video game. You gaming nerds will probably know what he's talking about. We talk about a lot of cool stuff, just recapping last week's fantastic matchups. I finally get to celebrate the Packers being the favorites to win it all after a convincing win against the Rams, and some other stuff happens that doesn't really matter because all that matters is the Packers. Go Pack Go!

For Thanksgiving, we wanted to show our thanks to all y'all who listen to the podcast by putting out a short special episode. Perhaps the best part of this episode? No Anish!!! All jokes aside, Anish is not in on this special episode; Alex is here, though, and so is Rob in his second appearance as a guest. We spend the whole episode highlighting the gameday experience that was Ravens-Bears this past Sunday, which was attended in person by both of our featured Bears and Ravens experts. Tune in as they ponder football past and future for the respective franchises while also considering what they are currently thankful for, both on and off the field. Fire Nagy.

Unless we're dealing with an absolute garbage matchup like Lions-Steelers, every game has a winner and a loser. And while this is always true, some matchups are more defined by Team A winning and some are more defined by Team B losing. Whether the winners didn't do enough or the losers had particularly glaring mishaps, this week feels like a lot of the games were honestly defined by the losing teams. But in that largely underwhelming landscape, the truly elite performances stand out that much more. Jalen Hurts with 3 rushing touchdowns, Justin Jefferson with 2 in the air and almost 200 yards, Austin Ekeler with 4 touchdowns. But the true hero, perhaps the dark horse MVP of both fantasy and even real-life - Jonathan Taylor (Somehow, Alex literally has *all* these players on his fantasy team besides Hurts). JT had been grinding the past few weeks, but his play on Sunday against the Bills was truly next-level. The man almost single-handedly took down a team seen as a Super Bowl contender and made them look like clowns in the process. It's impossible to praise him too much at this point; that game was legendary. The same cannot be said about many games this week, but we do our best to highlight those that were worth watching: one rather interesting game we left out, though, was Ravens-Bears because we're releasing a special episode just on that matchup. Tune in to hear more about the other great performances of the week; other than that, Anish and Alex wanna wish y'all an awesome Thanksgiving. Don't let the turkey make you slower than Big Ben.

Hi... It's Anish. Alex couldn't write the description this week 'cause he's busy writing a paper. So you get to have me. What is this episode? Who knows! What do we talk about? Hard to say! But I did have my first losing week in weekly predictions this week, and I lost in fantasy 'cause of fucking Matt Ryan. Fucking bitch. Never again. This week was full of upsets across the slate, and we're gonna take a closer look at some of them. But maybe my fantasy season is the biggest upset of them all. At least my AJ Dillon strategy finally worked out; in your face, Alex. Anyways, fuck Matt Ryan and leave a message after the tone. Beeeeeep.

P.S. Hey it's Alex now. I totally tricked Anish because I just wanted to see what crap he'd write up, but I honestly loved the energy so maybe he should do this more often. If you didn't get a chance to read his original description, though, I cut out like half of it and cleaned it up a bit too because it was agonizing to read. Almost as bad as watching Steelers-Lions. 

P.P.S. Still Alex. I'm not a huge fan of quote-unquote "trigger warnings" - that's right: I absolutely wanted you to hear "quote-unquote" in your head even though this is written: I am an absolute prodigy of rhetoric. Anyways, despite my opinion, I did think I should put out a quick disclaimer. My heart goes out to Ron Rivera. I just generally have a dark/edgy/cringy sense of humor at times; I lowkey feel like I might've crossed a line this time so I just wanted to be upfront before y'all blow up my DMs. Many of us have dealt with cancer affecting our loved ones, and that has certainly been a huge factor in my life. We all cope differently with trauma and I often do it with intense jokes. My sincerest apologies if you find discomfort with the grieving process when it takes that form.

As much as we love football, we also know it can go wrong very quickly. Whether it's injuries or simply chaos, we want to keep the game as clean and safe, and enjoyable as possible, which is why we need rules. In turn, we need officials to enforce those rules; even if we don't like the actions of referees - especially those that completely interrupt the flow of the game - regulation is a necessary evil. HOWEVER, the disgraceful reffing from this past MNF is unforgivable. Alex is obviously especially enraged as a Bears fan, but the entirety of social media has come to a consensus that the Bears-Steelers matchup was simply one of the worst, most biased games from an officiating standpoint in NFL history. Yet the league is seemingly going to do nothing about it. The refs stole the game from the Bears, and they're not even gonna get a slap on the wrist (just tune into the podcast if you wanna hear Alex's entire mental breakdown over this game). MNF was the worst, but penalties seemingly have over-plagued the league this week and also season more generally. Officiating is hard to get perfect; we get that mistakes happen. But too much unnecessary interference by the referees is ruining games and making them less fair despite refs only existing to ensure fairness. Whether things are fair or unfair, though, we have to accept the facts. The 2021 NFL season is now halfway over, so check out this episode to hear Anish and Alex break down all the important developments of the week as we're now deeper into the playoff hunt. The Bears most likely will not be one of those teams, but we'll have to wait to see if the Bears can blame that on the officials, too.

We're 8 weeks into the season, but we just experienced a very dramatic turn of events this week. Derrick Henry and Jameis Winston are out for the year, the Rams just added Von Miller, and Geno Smith finally got a win. The biggest story of all, though, might be the legendary emergence of Mike White. We don't know if he'll be the Jets quarterback moving forward, but he will start next week for sure. And even if he doesn't start again, he's certainly left his mark on the league and in our hearts. He's not the only backup doing everything he can to step up, though; besides him and Geno, Cooper Rush and Trevor Siemian also stepped in for injured starters and got the wins their franchises desperately needed. That's the beautiful thing about football: so many guys who get overlooked over their careers sometimes just need one chance to prove everyone wrong and leave their mark. We see it every year, and we've even already seen it time and time again this season, but this week, in particular, captured that principle so perfectly. It's why we love football. ANY. GIVEN. SUNDAY. Tune in to hear what else happened on Sunday, and you're in for a special treat this Halloween season as we feature Cary - a name that should sound familiar - as our second guest of the year!

Week 7 of the NFL is in the books, but it feels like we're only just now starting to tackle the core of the NFL season. It's taken almost 2 months, but now we can start to truly assess how good different teams and players are. Are the Chiefs even a playoff team now, let alone a championship contender? Are the Cardinals truly the best team in the league? Are the Lions truly the worst? Records don't mean everything, but they definitely say a lot; perhaps this is most telling when you look at them piece-by-piece like when the Panthers and Broncos both started 3-0 but have since gone 0-4. If teams want a shot at changing their identities, next week's trade deadline might be their last chance. As questions loom over the futures of Sam Darnold and Tua Tagovailoa, will either of their teams try winning the Deshaun Watson sweepstakes? Anish and Alex are idiots, so don't expect them to have the answers, but tune in to hear their stupid opinions/predictions and maybe laugh a few times along the way!

We're one-third of the way through the 2021 NFL season now, and we really have to start looking towards the playoff hunt. As some teams grow stronger and make their case, others are gonna derail and get killed off so to speak. Just like the animal kingdom, a hierarchy is forming and now teams have to decide whether they're predators or prey. Teams like the Rams, Cardinals, and Ravens have all asserted themselves as predators; individual players like Derrick Henry and T.J. Watt seem particularly out for blood. This all begs the question: which teams are the prey? Who's falling out of the playoff race only for the rest of the league to feed off them? And do any of these teams have what it takes to claw themselves back into the hunt? Tune in and find out who we think has a shot. 

P.S. To all you zoology nerds out there, don't you dare tell us that "Seahawks" aren't an actual species. It's a commonly used nickname for osprey, so checkmate. If you wanna talk about how buffalo is actually a misnomer for bison, though, feel free. We encourage intellectual debate here at Hitch Route even if Anish and Alex never show it.