Kanefabe Weekly: Cool podcast
Sometimes you really do find the perfect response.
Miami Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel is a strange man. I don't know him personally, but I think I'm OK to say that. I get the feeling that McDaniel would wear that like a badge of honor.
McDaniel certainly isn't an alpha male in an NFL culture that values that “tough guy” stuff. He rolls up his sweats and looks like he's in his pajamas even more than most NFL coaches. He wears tinted glasses befitting a musician playing an acoustic set at a coffee house. During his various mic'd up segments, he cracks jokes and busts out the occasional rap.
I'm not sure what I think about McDaniel. Sometimes I think he's funny. Sometimes I think he comes off as kind of sleazy, although those opinions are mostly clustered around how he handled things with Tua Tagovailoa's frightening concussions last season. I think he's a good coach, but the ups and downs for the Dolphins make it such that the jury is still out.
Whatever your feelings about McDaniel in these other areas, I think we can all agree on one thing: he had the perfect response for someone bashing him and his team on a podcast.
In today's Kanefabe Weekly
A vicious burn to anyone who has a podcast, the future of a washed-up quarterback and this year's class of Major League Baseball free agents, a farewell tour, and more.
It's been a week. Let's wrap it up and set ourselves up for a great weekend. We can try.
Soft
If you’re in the NFL, one of the biggest insults is to call someone soft.
I love the NFL. I watch it every week. I consume some form of NFL content daily. I constantly check my fantasy football lineups. But for all the ways that I enjoy football, I simply cannot relate to the "tough guy" part of that world.
By any measure that NFL players might cite, I am soft. I have never been in a fight. I'm not very strong. I don't know how to fix stuff. I'm not even sure where else I might fall short, but I know that I would qualify as "soft" by most of these traditional measures of masculinity.
To which I mostly shrug.
That appears to be something I have in common with Mike McDaniel. Recently, one of his former players leveled the “soft” accusation towards McDaniel and the Dolphins. DeShon Elliot went on the podcast hosted by Baltimore Ravens cornerback Marlon Humphreys -everyone has a podcast - and said the majority of the Dolphins are "soft as f---."
To which Mike McDaniel mostly shrugged.
Cool podcast
If you have a podcast, it’s impossible to narrow down the biggest insult. Every insult is equally horrifying and deeply personal.
That said, there is an even more effective way to hurt someone’s feelings when it comes to their podcast. More than any insult, the perfect way to disrespect that person is to dismiss their podcast entirely.
Show person that their podcast is a stupid thing that’s not even worth acknowledging. It merits nothing more than a wave of the hand. Worse than calling their podcast boring, for example, you show that it's not even worth the energy to call it boring.
For someone with a podcast - and everyone has a podcast - that is the cruelest response.
Here was McDaniel's response to Elliot's remarks (from ESPN):
"I am supremely only concerned with the 2024 Dolphins, for sure. Our team played a tough-fought game the past three weeks and ended up finding a way to win this past week. That's not the easiest thing to do.
"I just worry about this year's team. He said it on a podcast? Cool podcast."
I'm not sure about the double adverbs at the beginning of that quote. But I am sure that it ends with the perfect response to someone talking trash on a podcast.
Weekend tidbits
Aaron Rodgers went to his safe space after another poor performance last weekend to say that he will likely be back in 2025. As usual, nobody asked. I would say that we should be done with Rodgers soon because he looks cooked this season, but if we have learned anything from recent world events, sports sites will probably be aggregating his quotes from the Pat McAfee show in 2040.
Over at CBS Sports, R.J. Anderson took a look at potential contracts for this year's top MLB free agents. Juan Soto takes up most of the focus, and rightfully so, but I see a couple position players who would be headliners in a Soto-less free agent class. Alex Bregman and Willy Adames are both really good players.
John Cena is kicking off his retirement tour next year with the Royal Rumble. He confirmed that he will be in the Rumble this past week, which is great, and also keeps up the longstanding WWE tradition of complete inconsistency for how wrestlers enter that event. Some have to win matches. Others simply announce that they're entering the Rumble. I suppose it makes sense that Cena gets to just show up.
This wasn't on my radar, but apparently last night marked one of those occasions where boxing takes over mainstream sports sites. I would say that ESPN giving front page coverage to Mike Tyson boxing an internet celebrity feels like something made up, but if we have learned anything from recent world events, those standards have really shifted.
Saquon Barkley has been ridiculously good this season. At Defector, Ray Ratto wrote about Barkley after his dominant game on Thursday night. Along with some of his fellow backs, Barkley is defying the NFL-wise-guy analysis that "running backs don't matter." I'm not really interested in trying to enter the hot take arguments about this subject. I just think it's been fun to watch those running backs this year.
It wouldn't be a true Kanefabe entry if I didn't acknowledge the return of Shinsuke Nakamura, a favorite on the original podcast bearing this site's name (seriously, everyone has a podcast).
This week at Kanefabe: I wrote about the relief pitching in the World Series, a dumb letter from Bud Black, and fun stuff in wrestling.
Ricochet facing Dante Martin was at the top of the list of intriguing matches when the former joined AEW. It happened on Friday night's episode of Rampage. It was fun.
Happy weekend, all.
