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
Quick Slant: MNF - Empires Forged From Cold and Hunger
Mat Irby’s Quick Slant * Eagles * Packers Twenty-one is an age where the pragmatist inside you is in full-on fisticuffs with the dreamer. People like Curly Lambeau—square jaw, plump lips, full hair, handsome—like a member of One Direction seduced some time ago by the call of the barbell
Quick Slant: SNF - The Comings and Goings of Winning Culture
Mat Irby’s Quick Slant * Steelers * Chargers Los Angeles still glows after the Dodgers renewed their championship banner subscription last Saturday; not only so, they own the rights to the greatest baseball player who has ever lived, and they participate in a sport without a salary cap, where the richest
Quick Slant - 2025 Berlin Game: Better than a Corporate Retreat
Mat Irby’s Quick Slant * Falcons * Colts On May 9, 1945, the sun rose on Berlin. People woke to the sound of calm, turned the doorknob, and were met with a brisk spring morning—partly cloudy, 40 degrees Fahrenheit. They entered onto cobblestone streets, under a layer of ash, into
Quick Slant: TNF - You Survive, or You Don't
Mat Irby’s Quick Slant * Raiders * Broncos I once worked on a movie in Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Frankly, I loved it; I’m not from anywhere like the high desert, so it was a chance to experience an entirely different social and environmental context. In the middle of it
Quick Slant: MNF - Wind in an Empty Hall
Mat Irby's Quick Slant * Cardinals * Cowboys It’s hard to fathom now, but the Arizona Cardinals used to be part of the NFC East as recently as a quarter century ago. Before the Houston Texans existed, the NFL was in dire need of realignment; expansion and team migration
Quick Slant: SNF - The Convergence of Sports Hopium and Unfeeling Pragmatism
Mat Irby's Quick Slant * Seahawks * Commanders “You are what your record says you are.” Legendary HC Bill Parcells would toss out this line from time to time, and it would land like a fire blanket. One of the most familiar pastimes of sports fans worldwide is seeking an