Input Volatility, Week 11
Game-by-game thoughts
Busy week in the Gretch household this week, and I’ve been pretty detached from the NFL world since about Wednesday, due to my wife having surgery. Things went great, and she’s insanely strong, but of course I’ve been more involved in family matters, including obviously with the kids. It’s been a nerve-wracking but ultimately refreshing week, honestly. It’s good to be engaged with the things that matter.
I don’t have a big intro this week, but I did want to pass along to anyone who might care that I’m going to be spending more time on Bluesky for social stuff. I will likely still be on Twitter, but the decision here is just a practical one, for me. I’ve sent several posts on Bluesky about it, but this thread offers the cleanest reasons.
This is another of those screenshots, and Bluesky doesn’t have the embed functionality yet. But that was just a symptom of a larger shift for Twitter — or X, as it is now known, and the name change helps delineate what it was from what it currently is — which is that the site no longer became a place where I could share thoughts and attract users to my work, which is what led me to build a following there in the first place.
There are other good notes, like third-party apps, which Joe Dolan of Fantasy Points noted in a post I added to. But I’m sharing this second and final screenshot of a post I had over there because I do think it best sums up my feeling: Bluesky is to me more like what Twitter set out to be than Twitter became. At least right now.
I’ll still be over on Twitter, but where I post is going to be dictated by the experience. I think social media is basically horrendous for all of us — there’s a great Netflix documentary about this — and my goal for a long time has been to use it less, which I’ve pretty successfully accomplished. It was a not insignificant reason I was happy to shift to the new Sunday viewing experience, because while in the past I certainly would have felt I was missing something by not being tied into Twitter while the games were happening to help me catch the broad reactions to the biggest storylines in real time, in the present that felt less necessary, and like my Sunday experience of sharing observations instead just invited engagement from the worst types of people and left me feeling pretty worn down each week.
I continue to absolutely love what I’ve shifted to on Sundays, and for the first couple weeks I felt a few huge moments of regret where I really wanted to post something about some key moment but realized I couldn’t, because that moment had happened hours earlier (because how I now watch the games leaves me always catching up to things that already happened). And yet, after just a couple of those moments, I was over it. I couldn’t get the dopamine hit I obviously wanted for some observation I thought would work well on social, but I didn’t need it. We don’t need any of that shit. I’ve written about how I quit tobacco nearly two years ago now, and every little thing like this I overcome in my life just feels so much better. I’m probably kind of a late bloomer, but here in my late 30s, I’m fucking loving figuring out how to be an adult and live a better life than I was allowing myself to.
Anyway, this gets back to me spending more time on Bluesky lately. I’m still going to Twitter. I’ve had some people I communicate with via Twitter DMs ask if we should shift those discussions somewhere else — based on my Bluesky posts above — and I told them I wasn’t in a rush. I’ll still be checking Twitter those DMs and that stuff; this isn’t some idealistic thing for me. But I’ll tell you: I have left that open, and I am way happier when I’m on Bluesky right now, and I’m shifting my attention there quicker than I thought I would.
And there are a ton of people over there. I’ve mentioned before that a few of my absolute favorite “real” NFL analysts include Mina Kimes, Bill Barnwell, Robert Mays, Benjamin Solak — all of these people have accounts over there and have actually been posting. It’s not some barren landscape.
I mentioned in Discord this week I’d be shifting some stuff over there, and I got some replies that basically said, “I don’t want to start from scratch at a new social site.” I fully get that. But my biggest retort would be that Twitter here at the end of 2024 is not what it used to be. Just like I talk about with the NFL, things always evolve. The nature of evolution is that you quite literally can’t go back. You can cling to shit that’s passed but that’s the worst way to live your life. What you think you’re getting from your Twitter experience is probably not what you’re actually getting.
One more minor thing is I used to really love the short-text nature of Twitter, and the wittiness of various messages shared there, and today when I go to Twitter — even when I’m on my “Following” tab and not “For You” so it’s supposed to be a more chronological experience of what the people I follow are sharing — I see almost none of those text-only posts. I can go scroll my feed, and apart from ads which also hamper the experience, two-of-every-three or three-of-every-four posts includes some kind of media, which asks me to stop scrolling and read or watch something. And I’m just not that interested in that. I’m a reader; I hardly even listen to podcasts. You guys are readers, too, obviously. You’re here on Substack.
When I scroll over on Bluesky, it’s just like what I remember Twitter being like. There are some links I can see, and those do include clickable images, etc. But there are a ton of inane observations from the people I follow, and then comments to those, and it’s a little more like that “town square” feel that Twitter always claimed it was.
Again, none of these social media places is fun or good for us. But for me, experiencing Bluesky has been illuminating in helping me understand why I don’t really care to be on Twitter anymore. I’m not missing anything, except maybe something that’s long gone, and where I don’t want to acknowledge the evolution that’s taken place. I wish Twitter was still Twitter, sure, but it’s a way different site now, and we live in the now. And in the now, it’s pretty cool there’s this other opportunity where people are actually out there posting and saying smart things and you can see those things, and it’s way more like what Twitter set out to be. Or maybe the way to say that is that it’s what Twitter was supposed to be, or what I liked about Twitter, or whatever. But it seems I’m not alone, and it’s not some principled thing, it’s just capitalism and people taking their business where the experience is what they want it to be.
It’s like, there’s this movie theater that you always go to, and you enjoy your experience. And you keep going there, but eventually, the popcorn actually tastes stale, and the other people in the theater with you are louder and more annoying, and they started putting ads up in the theater that distract you from the movie, and now when you leave the theater you notice you kind of feel like shit and also like you really wanted to punch that person that kept throwing popcorn at you and you knew you should ignore but you yelled at and then they only threw more popcorn at you.
And now there’s this other theater that opened down the street, and it feels almost exactly like the other place used to feel, and sure it’s not the exact same thing, but the popcorn does taste freshly-popped, and there are no ads and fewer annoyances in the theaters and you leave feeling like you now kind of better understand what you used to enjoy about that old theater that you didn’t even really realize you were no longer feeling, because it’s hard to admit something has changed and evolved and is different now. And sure, you had this punch card with thousands of movies watched over there and now your new account has no movies watched, but building more punches on a punch card at a place you hate seems less important than just enjoying the experience and maybe just getting started somewhere fresh (I keep hearing people worried about their follower counts, but if you’re honest with yourself you’ll realize if people actually want to follow you, they will, and if they don’t then they probably had you muted already).
Anyway, this is a way longer intro than I intended to write. I’ll be at both places, but the way it looks, expect me to spend more time over on Bluesky. I really don’t care about my 35,000 Twitter followers or whatever. I got you guys, here, and that’s my core. The rest of it is whatever.
Let’s jump into the games today. As always, I offer these considerations solely because you guys have asked, and because I might have a thought about a different part of a range of outcomes in some cases, relative to what you’re seeing elsewhere. I don’t offer these thoughts because I think they will be explicitly great predictions, and it’s basically just me going game-by-game and throwing out what hits me.
Today, the notes are going to be especially off the cuff. I’m not going to spend a bunch of time checking injury reports and those things.
Packers at Bears
The Packers are coming out of the bye and the way the WRs get used in the short term will be interesting, but I guess I suspect Dontayvion Wicks will be back buried. Maybe there’s some volatility there, but Christian Watson’s deep threat ability is pretty notable, and the other two WRs just get used a lot more consistently.
The MarShawn Lloyd appendicitis thing is pretty annoying, because he was a darkhorse to make some noise late.
Your guess is as good as mine on if an OC change in Chicago can get things going the right direction. Sometimes the whole playbook is the problem, and it’s not a quick fix. There’s volatility, yes.
Jaguars at Lions
I’m curious how much Travis Etienne will be used given Tank Bigsby has been ruled out. Mac Jones at QB is probably bad for everyone regardless.
Jameson Williams remains pretty interesting, and Sam LaPorta is out, which could concentrate things more.