I am very happy the preseason is finally behind us. With all teams getting 3 playtime games in their rotation with 2 teams (The Cardinals and Panthers) getting 4, I think maybe everyone is, to quote Ted Lasso "ready to put the pads on and play for real."
The NFL pre-week 3 produced very little in the way of excitement or surprise but at least for me, there was a couple moments of getting put back down to earth as far as my Panthers are concerned, even though I never really stray too far from the ground when it comes to them anyway.
Things like "Panthers are looking solid! Keep it up!" and "Well done on ending with a high note!" are common headlines when talking about the very lukewarm performance by a team that everyone knows is going to struggle this year just like they do every year.
But the wake up for me was watching Carolina utilized their backup QB's for the past 4 weeks and seeing that they don't have much of anything to field yet again this year. Bryce Young is the primary starting QB and he is going to remain that way. It's sad that I will admit that he is probably our best choice too.
Backup QB's Trask, Pickett, and Mills are just out of their element on the NFL field, and this was proven over the past 4 weeks where they just managed to not impress at all especially in this last game against the Texans. The Houston Texans have what many consider to be a "defensive game" in that this is their strongest attribute even though they are not fielding their best players for the most part yet either. The 3 backup QB's for Carolina were unable to throw for a single Touchdown but but but! They did manage to get sacked twice and throw two interceptions. This was against a team that isn't fielding their best players and also isn't trying as hard as they normally would.
I think that cornerbacks and safeties might still try as hard as they can during the preseason because the interceptions gained during these "friendlies" do actually count towards their overall individual statistics. I guess, I don't know. Carolina won that game by the way, but the snoozy way in which the offense was just grinding their way down the field a few yards here, a few yards there, was boring and is not a great sign when they haven't even played a real game yet. I suspect it is going to be another maddening season for my Panthers.
Their first 4 games are against the Bears (week 1), the Falcons (week 2), and the Browns (week 3). If they can get 2 wins out of those 3 I would be very surprised. At the moment Chicago is a 2.5 point favorite in that game and I think the bookies are just being nice. The Bears appear to be a much greater team and they are just coming off of a quality performance last year. Those poor Bears are an "almost" team and I think they are a lot more motivated.
On to UFC news and an event that for once, I believe the UFC realized that nobody outside of Asia was going to watch this past event that took place in Shanghai.
The main event was exciting, and it was the only fight that I watched. Song Yadong managed to get an impressive (although bizarre) KO victory - his first since 2023 - by downing Umar Nurmagomedov. I say it was bizarre because although Yadong got in some quality strikes throughout the bout, his final hit appeared to hit Umar in the neck and it was a very odd way to finish someone off. I'm not saying it was rigged, but given the punishment that was getting laid out all over that fight it doesn't seem like that one would have been the one that would have made the lights turn off.
The UFC events that take place in China, or really anywhere in Asia, are events that are stacked in favor of the home crowd because UFC would really like to get more fans over on that side of the planet and there is no way to accomplish that better than having some skin in the game. Unfortunately for China, even though the fights were heavily stacked in their favor, they still managed to lose quite a few of them. Song Yadong having what appeared to be a dominant victory is good for them though and I'd like to see him do well. I wouldn't count on it though because this isn't his first time being pushed to the top and he has been relatively destroyed by two top-tier fighters in Petr Yan and Sean O'Malley.
I'm happy for the dude and tend to like Korean, Chinese, and Japanese fighters a great deal anyway because they are polite and don't engage in the taking trash aspect of UFC that makes the sport feel more like WWE than MMA.
Song Yadong took advantage of the post-fight interview to attempt to put himself into title contention again at Bantamweight and i dunno. I just think he would get destroyed again.
I gotta hand it to China though, unlike Australia they refuse to bend the knee to USA and the fights would not be allowed to take place at a time that is meant to cater to the USA's television audience. They stand their ground and say "if you want to host an event here, it will be on our terms." They did so even though this means that very few people in USA are going to wake up at 4am to watch this.
It's a shame though, because although I didn't see any of the fights outside of the main event, almost all of them were KO or submission finishes. Out of 13 fights only 3 of them went to the judges scorecards so of course this happens on one of the only events I decided to almost completely ignore.
Unfortunately for UFC fans, there isn't much on the horizon to get excited about. The next Fight Night is an obvious desperate attempt to hand Dan Hooker a much-needed win and the next event is a "Noche" event, and those almost always suck by design. The continued downfall of UFC continues to downfall I guess.
Hopefully the start of college football and NFL "real" season will breathe some new life into my sporting world. At the moment I have to admit that I am kind of bored!
