The Atlanta Dream have never won a WNBA Finals, but are now a few wins away! After beating NY, last night they will be playing Golden State in the Finals. Game one is October 17th. If you haven’t been paying attention, now is a good time for us all to jump on the bandwagon. Let’s get our first WNBA Championship in Atlanta!
The 17-game era began in 2021. Here are the rates which teams make the playoffs in the past five seasons when they start off 2-0 or 0-2.
🔘30/41 (73%) made the playoffs
🔘Median final record 10-7
🔘Worst final record 3-14 AZ in 2025
Other Notes:
Only two of the five Super Bowl winners came from teams that started 2-0. The other three Super Bowl winners came from teams that started off 1-1.
The Saints started 2023 and 2024 with a 2-0 record and didn’t make the playoffs in either season.
Prior to this season, the only team to begin every season in the 17-game era with a 2-0 record are the Buccaneers. But in only two of those five season seasons did they end up with double digit wins for their final record.
2-0 teams this season: KC, MIN, BUF, SEA, CIN, PHI, LV, SF
🔘8/40 (20%) made the playoffs
🔘Median final record 7-10
🔘Best final records: CIN 12-4* (2022), BAL 12-5 (2024), HOU 12-5 (2025)
*CIN played only 16 games because the Damar Hamlin game was cancelled.
Other Notes:
Of the eight playoff teams, none made it to the Super Bowl. Cincinnati in 2022 made it the furthest, losing in the AFC Conference Championship.
In addition to their current 0-2 start, the Texans started off 2023 and 2025 with an 0-2 record, and made the playoffs both seasons. In fact, the Texans started 2025 with an 0-3 and made the playoffs (the only team to make the playoffs out of the 19 to start 0-3 in the 17-game era).
Before this year, the Panthers were on a four season streak of starting off 0-2 from 2022-25. The most 0-2 starts in the 17-game era.
0-2 teams this season: HOU, MIA, IND, WAS, LAC, TB, ATL, TEN
This time of year brings about some of my favorite things. Football, pumpkin spice things, spooky decorations, and…Joro sex.
If you are a Joro watcher, it’s likely you’ve seen all the spiders settle in with their mates. This time of year, each web usually has two Joros, the big colorful one (female) and the smaller less colorful one (male). On my front porch I have five sets of couples, and over the past few weeks the males have moved from the outer edges of the web, closer and closer toward the center to join the female. Now all my couples are within an inch of each other. It’s sex time.
The joros we all recognize as Joros are always the females. They are the big, 3-inch (with legs) spiders with the cool green and black bands on the back, and black, yellow and red patterns on the abdomen. The two pictures you see here are of one of the happy couples on my front porch. I identified some of the key differences in a male and female Joro for you. Other than the size and color, which are the most obvious difference (also called sexual dimorphism- when different sexes of the same species exhibit structurally difference bodies and characteristics unrelated to reproduction), I’ve gotten close enough to show you their privates. An adult male has what comically look like boxing gloves (palpal bulbs) which are “balls” that hold their sperm at the end of their pedipals (little arms). And what’s better than one vagina? Two vaginas of course! Well, it’s called an epigynum, and it’s the two holes the female has, one for each of the two palpal bulbs of the male.
In these two pics, I’ve identified all the sex parts, and share some of the key differences between a male and female Joro. I hope you either laughed or learned today. Happy fall!
Marvin Mims needs at least negative 97 yards on his next punt return to set the all-time NFL record for career punt return average. He’s one return away from the qualifying minimum, and as long as he doesn’t lose 98 yards on that return, the record is his.
The current "record-holder" is Marcus Jones, who has 40 fewer yards on 5 more returns.
Most impressive: Mims has done it with insane consistency. If you remove all his 50+ yard returns, he still averages 13.9 yards, which would still be the 2nd-highest mark of all time.
By way of comparison, if you remove all of Marcus Jones' 50+ yard returns his average falls to 10.4, which would rank 54th all-time.
Not saying you should remove those long returns! They count! Just showing how boom/bust the position usually is. (Mims is the outlier, Jones is the norm.)
ALSO WORTH POINTING OUT:
23 (soon to be 24) players have a career average of at least 11.3, and 7 (soon to be 8) of them got there with their returns from 2019-2025, so either 25% of the league has historically great punt returners right now, or we should... you know... (Era-adjust all the things.)
The record since the merger was set by the 1971-1975 Saints when they went 50 consecutive games scoring 22 or fewer points (link). The Saints finally broke the streak against the Falcons by somehow scoring 23 points despite Archie Manning going 8/19 for 199, 1 TD, and 3 picks (58.8 rating) link
More recently, the longest streak since 2000 was by the Raiders from 2005-07 when they went 26 games without putting up anything more than a Brewer. (link). They finally broke the skid by scoring 26 against the Browns, with 14 of those points coming from the leg of Sebastian Janikowski. (link)
The Raiders are also in the midst of a 9-game streak with less than a Brewer, currently the longest active streak. https://www.sports-reference.com/stathead/tiny/HPOcF
Here are all of the streaks of 15 or more games in a row without getting more than 22 pts in a game . https://www.sports-reference.com/stathead/tiny/YkTVv
Oh, and here is the box score from the Brewers 22-0 win last night.
Pro football reference has been tracking competed air yards per completion since 2018. Last season, on average, when Aaron Rodgers completed a pass, the receiver was only 3.67 yards down field. No QB with a qualifying number of attempts has had a season that low, dating back to the tracking of this metric seven years ago. The NFL median is 59% further downfield at 5.91.
📊The first image shows the 15 lowest CAY/Cmp seasons.
Bottom three…
Aaron Rodgers (2025) 3.68
Alex Smith (2020) 3.74
Dwayne Haskins (2020) 3.86
📊The second image shows that Rodgers is also on a consistent and steep decline year by year since the stat began being tracked:
2018 6.20
2019 5.65
2020 5.51
2021 5.32
2022 5.19
2024 4.83
2025 3.68
📊The third image shows the 15 highest CAY/Cmp seasons.
Top three…
Ryan Fitzpatrick (2018) 9.10
Tua Tagovailoa (2022) 8.75
Matthew Stafford (2019) 8.60
A big rainstorm passed through, and this Joro (Lucy) and her new mate (Ricky) left the web for cover under some leaves. After a few minutes, they both decided to leave the cover and come back onto the web and get pelted with rain drops in mid-storm, it didn’t seem to bother them, otherwise they’d go back under the leaves. After the rain, this thirsty girl spent a considerable amount of time collecting water on her legs and directing the drops to her mouth. This video quality isn’t great, I just used my iPad, then slowed it down a little bit. I also have some cool pics and another video I’ll try to add in the comments.
I used to go every day in the mid-90s, sometimes all day along, watching the boys, girls, men, women, games. I saw some former college players, and up and coming young players. The tournament ended in 1997 at Eastside high school, it was its temporary and final home, after many years in the Greenville Memorial Auditorium. This program was from its last year sadly.
Here are some articles about the tournament.
This article inaccurately claims the final year was 1996, but it wasn’t (see my images), but otherwise it’s a good write up. https://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/life/2016/03/09/southern-textile-basketball-tournament/81523050/
Click on the decade links and there’s an incredibly amount of detail https://books.google.com/books/about/The\_Southern\_Textile\_Basketball\_Tourname.html?hl=es&id=jsUH\_MhKujYC
0W, 3D, 0L
7W, 1D, 0L
55% came after the 90th minute; 82% came after the 78th minute; the average was the 82nd minute; the median goal was the 92nd minute.
These are the in-game probabilities of the Knicks chances of winning the game. In the images I grabbed from ESPN’s Gamecast, I’m highlighting the point in the game where the Knicks had the lowest probability of winning that game. In three of their four wins, they came back from single-digit win probabilities.
The World Cup is in town, y’all! The city, the volunteers, and FIFA have done a spectacular job getting Atlanta ready for the World Cup.
The Fan Fest was amazing. There were people visiting from many countries enjoying our amazing city. They had food, shady areas, entertainment, merch, and plenty of people watching.
The best was the game watching. I was concerned about how the game viewing experience would be because I have shitty hearing, but the sound system was incredible, and the giant screen was excellent quality. There were multiple smaller screens around the venue as well. World Cup watching as a communal experience is always a good time.
Kudos to Atlanta. The World Cup is here, and it’s amazing!