Felger and Mazz - Creating False Naratives one day at a time
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Felger’s only concern is what’s best for his show. A 2-15 Patriots team would be horrible for the show. There’s nothing to talk about for four hours, five days a week when they’re that bad.
People tuning out a bad Patriots team is bad for business. He wants them right in that 7-11 win zone where they are good enough to care about, and bad enough to criticize.
People tuning out a bad Patriots team is bad for business. He wants them right in that 7-11 win zone where they are good enough to care about, and bad enough to criticize.
He said as much yesterday. Felger mentioned that all weekend he was nervous that the Pats would suck so bad this year that they'd essentially have nothing to talk about football team wise. He said that if the Pats were like 1-7 and they screwed up or made good on a goal line stance, what's the point in talking about it? It means absolutely nothing in the big picture. But if they get a couple of wins under their belt, then they can talk about the games themselves and which plays meant something, etc.
I think he has a point here, even though it's a little selfish.
And if they are better than last year he will likely squeeze quite a bit out of "Bill totally lost his fastball" juice.
I will admit that I was quasi-shocked that they were actually positive about the whole thing without any seemingly hidden agendas. And yes, I do wonder if Felger's stated concern about having nothing football-related to talk about all season if they stank was a big part of it.
Felger has always been about content, and that's one of the reasons that he has been so successful for so long. Last year the team sucked, but they had all the content they needed with Bill and Mac. This year...not so much.
He can be insufferable at times, but he understands the business of what he's doing extremely well.
Agreed the BB/Mac Jones thing was manna from heaven on a bad team. You can talk about that all day: palace intrigue, who screwed up Mac?, are the Krafts right to meddle? But if this year's Pats suck, then there's only one thing to talk about, when will Maye start? And after he starts, then what? The draft? Talk about dead end talk. Like you said, Felger is good at what he does and what he needs is for the Patriots to be competitive.
You're right he wants them to win but it's solely for his own self interest. He's scared s...less of their ratings going down the drain if the team has another 4-13 season. Dude is a complete fraud (the contrarian/villain character when he could bank on them going to the AFC title game every year with Brady, turned cheerleader once the team fell back to the pack and his relevance was at stake). Remember when this guy invented "The Path" to the playoffs in 2020?
Of course he wants the Pats to win. I'll go further than that, Felger wants all Boston teams to win because it makes his job easier. And he looks good if the teams do well because he has something to talk about.
If the last 20 years were like the 90s, there's no way that Boston could support two all-sports radio stations. Felger is dependent on the local teams doing well and he knows it--he admits it, and has many times. This shouldn't be a light-dawns-on-Marblehead moment here, I thought that we all understood this form of symbiotic relationship between the sports stations and the teams.
If the Pats suck, Felger's rating suck. The equation is that simple.
Jesus Christ, they should 86 that “5 questions not about sports” segment if it’s going to somehow lead to Mazz talking about his least favorite sexual position. It was all I could do to not Linda Blair all over the inside of the car.
They do that? It's a long time Murray/Gasper bit on Saturday ("five questions that have nothing to do with sports ") at the end of their show.
I had no idea they ripped them off (it's mildly entertaining on Murray and Gasper but it's just filler for the last 5 minutes )
Not sure if this is the first time F&M did it, but I’d be willing to bet that G&M never went down the road with it that Tony did today.
Nope. It's always "are you a pumpkin spice guy?" "what's your favorite will smith movie?" etc
Well, this one was kind of innocuous too: "What's something that you tried once and then said, 'it's not for me'"? Murray said snowboarding. Felger said giving blood. Mazz went there.
well i watched today show and does murray understand that his choice to replace bill Sean Payton would had been just as bad as bill last years plus u would had to give NO a first as well
what woif and mayo sees is what happ in denver right now nix has 1 rushing td and 4 INT and is getting hit on every 3rd play
when had denver had a jacoby or sam danold type vet QB denver is 2-0 right now denver def other than 1 of the first 8 q has been good 3rd q in seattle
nix to have a shot needs a running game when payton just wants to throw 3 yard passes every down we might laugh about this in 2026 but right now nix is daniel jones 2.0 mazz wanted nix in augest
bill had he stayed wouild had traded down to around 6-8 and got nix
what woif and mayo sees is what happ in denver right now nix has 1 rushing td and 4 INT and is getting hit on every 3rd play
when had denver had a jacoby or sam danold type vet QB denver is 2-0 right now denver def other than 1 of the first 8 q has been good 3rd q in seattle
nix to have a shot needs a running game when payton just wants to throw 3 yard passes every down we might laugh about this in 2026 but right now nix is daniel jones 2.0 mazz wanted nix in augest
bill had he stayed wouild had traded down to around 6-8 and got nix
I listen on my ride home some days when I don't have a podcast lined up.
It is refreshing to hear the legit criticism of the Patriots. They know it is not good if the team sucks because it will drive down the "buy in" from fans and listeners. I enjoy the conversations about what has gone wrong and why things are the way they are with the team. I like the segments with Bedard.
They now truly are the voice of the fan, as we are all pretty pissed off.
It is refreshing to hear the legit criticism of the Patriots. They know it is not good if the team sucks because it will drive down the "buy in" from fans and listeners. I enjoy the conversations about what has gone wrong and why things are the way they are with the team. I like the segments with Bedard.
They now truly are the voice of the fan, as we are all pretty pissed off.
The conversations about what has gone wrong are only good if/when they have someone on who has a pretty good idea of what they're talking about (e.g. Bedard). F&M (and Murray) alone know very little about football, and their contributions on the state of the Patriots are typically self-serving and uninformed. Other than that...
Didn't see this posted, but found it pretty interesting. A short doc on John Henry visiting the Sports Hub after Tito's firing in 2011.
View: https://youtu.be/VC80Vd_x3po?si=MZvkE-wcPPfSk7sE
View: https://youtu.be/VC80Vd_x3po?si=MZvkE-wcPPfSk7sE
Absolute master class today by the two wily veterans on how to spin the most negative takes possible.
"Doesn't get you closer to winning games." "My nipples weren't all the way erect." "You saw the ability but you also saw all the same crap." The whole game was kind of garbage time anyway so it was hard to judge.
Just hall of fame misery.
"Doesn't get you closer to winning games." "My nipples weren't all the way erect." "You saw the ability but you also saw all the same crap." The whole game was kind of garbage time anyway so it was hard to judge.
Just hall of fame misery.
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agreed. At times it even felt like felger was having trouble sticking to the bit
Hahaha, his heart wasn't all the way in it but he soldiered on like the pro's pro he is. You have to respect it.
The team is doomed and Drake Maye sucks, that is essentially the lesson from the show. Oh, you also gotta love last week being all "The Pats are so dumb to put Maye out there against Houston, they're such a great team!" and today its Bedard bringing up Houston's margins of victory to act as if the Pats played a tomato can. I suppose Felger truly wants to go the rest of the season with Brissett starting and them struggling to score 10 points a game.
The show has been at its worse this week. Should have been fairly predictable as well given the fact that we had a sliver of hope with the Drake Maye performance. Bedard was the icing on top today though. According to him, Maye had 17 negative plays this past weekend, the most in a single game since he starting tracking. He also placed the blame on the strip sack squarely on Maye for not moving around in the pocket correctly to give him extra time. Use to like Bedard, not sure what happened there. Just turned into a hot take machine i guess .
I still like Bedard because he can talk about the X’s and O’s in a technical way to explain player performance (which balances out the garbage coming from F&M), but when he said he was unbiased I guffawed and fell out of my chair. Drake Maye with 17 negative plays is an agenda looking for evidence. And his historical near-constant leg-humping of David Andrews and Lawrence Guy (just to name a couple) is more performance art than unbiased/objective analysis. He’s the king of overvaluing some circumstances if he has a personal bias against someone, and massively discounting circumstances for the players he has a crush on.
Mazz apologized today for using a racial slur on the show yesterday. They were talking about new analytics, Gen Z and he said “I've determined, incidentally, that the "Z" stands for Zipperhead”.
Ooph. I believe Mazz is being sincere in not knowing the historical connotation of that phrase/slur, but he is already on thin ice since that last dumb incident by him a couple years ago. I wonder if he gets any further heat?
He got lucky he used such an obscure slur. He was also referring to Millikan who is the furthest from a Z-head. But I’m sure it puts him on notice that one more slip of his Italian style casual racism means something severe
There are articles already out there about this. Reminds me a little of this John Mulaney bit.
https://youtube.com/shorts/yVhIo2VgRik?si=WxXv0dv3CdNwgbop
https://youtube.com/shorts/yVhIo2VgRik?si=WxXv0dv3CdNwgbop
Unfortunately they will have off nights shooting the 3 and those will be enough to keep the narrative rolling… *gun to head*
The YouTube thumbnail is peak clickbait F&M. Surprised they didn't thrown in some more question marks though.
Luckily the comments are mostly about how the show is trash.
"Can you make 30 3's a game all season?" I am a very serious person.
Yep. Like last year, when they only managed to win less than 105% of their games.
It's like saying F&M suck because they don't get a 100% share.
I'm generally charitable towards Felger and Mazz because I approach the show as if it were wrestlers cutting promos, but after last year's title they really need to drop the whole faux concern over the sustainability of the Celtics' offensive approach and just stick to the "it's bad for the league/I don't like it/it's boring/not real basketball/these nerds are ruining the sport" angle. It's getting a little silly even for them.
u are right
feglar is mad because he is a diehard bucks fan and if they dont win a tittie by 25-26 giannis and dame are gone and the bucks will suck for a while
I don't normally do this but I'm going to concur with Michael felger today
I can do without seeing Robert Kraft after every single Patriots touchdown. It's a little much.
Obviously a first world problem I suppose but when your team is losing like practically 80% of its games, at some point the glazing of the ownership needs to be tempered.
I can do without seeing Robert Kraft after every single Patriots touchdown. It's a little much.
Obviously a first world problem I suppose but when your team is losing like practically 80% of its games, at some point the glazing of the ownership needs to be tempered.
So what's the deal with Felger and Murray not so subtly saying that Pastrnak is having some kind of subtstance abuse issue off the ice? They brought up about a month ago saying something along the lines of comparing him to Clay Bucholz and again today using the veiled phrase "out to lunch" and talking bout how he's "disheveled" Is there ANY evidence to back up this kind of narrative, because if not that's pretty disgusting - even for FM standards
There was an incident in 2019 where Pastrnak fell and sprained his thumb and was out for a few weeks. It happened after a team sponsorship dinner at around 11:30pm, and the official team report said something along the lines of "he fell while walking to his transportation", which is a bit of an odd phrase. People took that to mean he was drunk walking to a cab or Uber. No one knows if he was really drunk or not, but it was certainly unfortunate.
That was 5 years ago at this point and it seems like he has been a model citizen and teammate ever since. Again I don't know if that is what they are referencing, but it is pretty weak if they are. Maybe they want him to shave and run a comb through his hair?
This is also the same show where they made offhand comments about Jim Montgomery "going to rehab for panic juice" or whatever it was. They should not be getting the benefit of the doubt for saying this type of stuff.
That was 5 years ago at this point and it seems like he has been a model citizen and teammate ever since. Again I don't know if that is what they are referencing, but it is pretty weak if they are. Maybe they want him to shave and run a comb through his hair?
This is also the same show where they made offhand comments about Jim Montgomery "going to rehab for panic juice" or whatever it was. They should not be getting the benefit of the doubt for saying this type of stuff.
How come? I thought that there were writers who haven't covered a baseball game in literal decades who were still casting ballots.
I thought they did away with a lot of those old timers and that's why some of the steroid guys got a boost, percentage wise
https://bbwaa.com/voting-faq/#:~:text=The full membership requirements are,voting process in this video…&text=If playback doesn't begin shortly, try restarting your device.
How do you become a member of the BBWAA?
The full membership requirements are in the BBWAA constitution. Essentially, you must be a beat writer, backup writer, columnist or sports editor from a newspaper or wire service that covers Major League Baseball on a regular basis. Membership has been expanded to include web sites on a case-by-case basis. For information email membership@bbwaa.com.
How do you become a member of the BBWAA?
The full membership requirements are in the BBWAA constitution. Essentially, you must be a beat writer, backup writer, columnist or sports editor from a newspaper or wire service that covers Major League Baseball on a regular basis. Membership has been expanded to include web sites on a case-by-case basis. For information email membership@bbwaa.com.
Turned this show on for the first time in years yesterday at probably like 430 eastern because hey the Sox just swung a big ass trade, let's see what the local riffraff have to say about this.
25 minutes of nothing but Belichick to UNC talk.
Guess I'll check back in after another 2-3 years.
25 minutes of nothing but Belichick to UNC talk.
Guess I'll check back in after another 2-3 years.
Jimmy Stewart with some background about 98.5's start and WEEI's downfall. No mention of the campaign by Bob Murchison and Shirley Leung of the Boston Globe to destroy WEEI, specifically the Kirk & Callahan show, but he did a pretty good job: https://x.com/bostonmedia617/status/1866711258302763112
They talked a lot about it on Wednesday.
I hate to say it but the BB to UNC move is just a bigger story. Nationally and here.