Quick Slant: MNF - Take Nothing For Granted
Mat Irby’s Quick Slant * Giants * Patriots When the clock hit double zeroes in the Meadowlands on December 29, 2007, two things felt equally absolute: the Patriots, fresh off the first 16-0 regular season in NFL history, were an undeniable team of destiny; their opponent, the Giants, who had backed
Quick Slant: SNF - The Smiling Personification of the Inevitable
Mat Irby’s Quick Slant * Broncos * Commanders Steve Cox only managed a 34-yard punt. Out came Elway. Elway in Denver was like your five-year-old daughter and her friends had taken the accessories off of Summit Adventure Ken and put them on Beach Ken. Elway was a tow-headed Beach Boy with
Quick Slant: Black Friday - Us vs. Them
Mat Irby’s Quick Slant * Bears * Eagles This city began with an idea meeting ambition; that hit, and the Entrepreneur—one of ours—brought this community along to ride the coattails of their genius and ingenuity. Smokestacks rose over brick, filling cold skies with billows of ceaseless productivity. It meant
Quick Slant: MNF - All Shred, No Shed
Mat Irby’s Quick Slant * Panthers * 49ers When the Giants cut WR Ed McCaffrey after his third season, the 49ers came calling a week later. It wasn’t a chance to relish some homecoming in Northern California, where he’d played at Stanford; it was a job, and McCaffrey was
Quick Slant: TNF - The Football Gods are Nihilists
Mat Irby’s Quick Slant * Bills * Texans Sports lie in this fuzzy penumbra between the brutality, discipline, and operational calculus of a military campaign, and something as cold and unfeeling as a dice roll; it is clear which the public ignores, and which it identifies as cause. It is romantic
Quick Slant: MNF - But the Gift Shop Will Be Open
Mat Irby’s Quick Slant * Cowboys * Raiders Dallas was founded in 1850—a small town nestled in broad meadows under big skies with nary a water source in sight, which it remained for some 80 years. Then oil was discovered beneath it—lots of it. Wells and derricks plunged into
Quick Slant: 2025 NFL Madrid Game - De Madrid al Cielo
Mat Irby’s Quick Slant * Commanders * Dolphins Situated in Spain’s belly, high on a plateau where summer heat gathers like stored voltage, Madrid sometimes feels closer to the sun than the sea. The air is dry as a kiln, faintly metallic. Autumn weather is a silence occasionally broken by
Quick Slant: TNF - The Hate, As It Turns Out, Is More Fun
Mat Irby’s Quick Slant * Jets * Patriots Cambridge-born Vaudevillian Fred Allen fled New England’s stiff traditions, parsimony, and old workings for the vital organism of New York—vibrant, improper, unchaste—long ago. He lamented the difference on his radio show years later: “I have just returned from Boston. It