Brady's bunch of passes pushes Patriot past Manning on all-time list

Credit to Author: Gord Kurenoff| Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2019 20:51:39 +0000

The prominent Patriot wearing No. 12 is 42 years of age and now second all-time in NFL career passing yardage, behind only Drew Brees of the New Orleans Saints.

Quarterback Tom Brady passed Peyton Manning with 334 yards in the air on Thursday Night Football, leading the 6-0-0 New England Patriots to a comfortable 35-14 win over the New York Giants.

Brady may not eclipse Brees in yardage when all is said and done — and who knows when that will be given the way his team is playing — but Brady is a safe bet to leapfrog over Manning for most passing touchdowns all-time (currently 12 behind at 527). The most bullish asset of the Patriots, however, is its defence. The reigning Super Bowl champions have allowed a scant 48 points or an average of eight per game.

In hockey, don’t look now but Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers are 4-0-0 with a new-found confidence and cohesive style of play under new GM Ken Holland and new head coach Dave Tippett. It’s early, but it’s promising for Edmonton — and for the NHL.

It’s also been a good week for the Houston Astros, New York Yankees and St. Louis Cardinals, all through to the championship series in Major League Baseball.

Yet there’s no franchise more bullish this week than the Washington Nationals. They won their first best-of-five playoff series in their 15 seasons in the District of Columbia and first since their predecessor franchise — the Montreal Expos — reached the NLCS in 1981. That’s 38 years of disappointment for the old fans of the Expos and new generation of fans in Washington.

It was only poetic that the Nationals first series win came against the heavily-favoured Los Angeles Dodgers, the team that scarred Expos fans for life when Rick Monday homered in the ninth inning to make it a very Blue Monday.

In terms of baseball business, it’s also ironic the Nats have tasted this elusive success the very next year after marquee superstar Bryce Harper chose the Philadelphia Phillies in free agency last fall.

Mark down Monday, Oct. 7, 2019 as the worst day ever for Adam Silver, or at least in his 5½ years on the job as NBA commissioner.

The NBA’s reaction to Chinese government outrage over a tweet by Houston Rockets’ GM Daryl Morey was so far off brand and so lame so as to be unfathomable. Silver and the NBA recovered their sense of strategy and principles the next day in a clarifying statement and media conference but the damage had been done.

Essentially censuring Morey and apologizing to China and Chinese sponsors of the NBA was a mistake that pleased no one and offended everyone.

That’s the worst kind of mistake in the game of coalition-building and global marketing, especially when up to 10 per cent of basketball-related revenues are generated by the league’s interests in China, a nation of 800 million basketball fans. Digital streaming rights alone — held by Tencent — are valued at US$300M.

The NBA will recover because there’s too much upside in China for either side to walk away from a relationship that’s been cultivated since 1987 when David Stern was commissioner.

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