Achilles

There's a lot of season left.

Things will get better, but, you know, when a couple of your real Achilles' heels come back and bite you in the very first week, meaning the offensive line and the late game collapses in pretty significant ways, that is, uh, it- it's out- outside of a crazy injury to, like, somebody like Jordan Love or something like that, it's hard to imagine a worse start to the season than that.

I'll tell you, I think the 2024 opener against Philly, when, when Love went down, was worse for you guys than this.

Even though this is horrible, you're right, the inj- the injury is the, you know, that, that's the backbreaker on the season.

I know Packers fans are gonna hate me for saying this, but just going back to Ben Johnson for a minute.

I was, uh, mentioned I was talking to my Bears fan, uh, friend earlier.

I said if, if Caleb Williams gets a popped Achilles in week two against the Vikings, I think Tyson Bagent in that offense puts up a top 10 offense the rest of the year.

[laughs]

You go back to even that Cincinnati game last year, where they went right down the field and scored, and then they scored with no time on the clock.

There were so many of those instances that you just get worried that that could be their Achilles heel.

And number three, I have the Buffalo Bills.

Game of the week, I think the Texans and Bills was the game of the week, and it was a game that we thought, well, the Texans, uh, arguably have the best defense in the NFL, and Buffalo has Josh Allen.

So how effective is he after, at that four-week mark, right? When they take him off IR and everything like that, is he the same guy that he was before the season started? I don't know that.

Maybe he is, 'cause we've seen miraculous recoveries.

We saw Kittle out there, who tore his Achilles heel in January.

We saw Mahomes last night, you see-

Since, yeah

... with that partially torn Achilles.

Kicked 28 goals in 15 games, but you're not changing that tall forward mix after what we saw-

I agree

[laughs]

No, I've spoken to them all since.

The worst prelim story w- that I experienced was Michael Wilson doing his Achilles in 2007.

Ooh.

That, he said, must have been where the Greek fleet lay.

God, it's wonderful! Up on the slope towards Detat's battery the guns were busy, and now and then Asiatic Annie sent over a large shell from the region of Achilles' tomb, which burst ponderously in the sea off Cape Helles.

And there we sat on the rough edge of the cliff and talked of Achilles and Hector and Diomed and Patroclus and the far-sounding bolts of Jove.

I do not defend or exalt this action, but this is a truthful record of a man's personality, and I simply state what occurred.

And I confess that with the best wish in the world I was myself becoming a little bored with Troy, when in the middle of a sentence he suddenly became silent and gazed across the straits with a fixed pinched look in his face, like a man who was reminded of some far-off calamity he had forgotten.

God knows how long it will last, but I swear I won't be a failure.

I won't be the battalion dud.

And I'll have a damned good try to get a medal of some sort and be like, like Achilles or somebody.

Menelaus and his brother Agamemnon sent to the princes of Greece and said, Now you must keep your oath and help us to get back the fair Helen.

so they all came to a place called aulus with many ships and men others also who had not taken the oath came with them the greatest of these chiefs were these diomed son of tydus ajax the greater and ajax the less Antusa, the archer, who was brother of Ajax the greater, Nestor, who was the oldest man in the world, the wise Ulysses, Achilles, who was the bravest and strongest of all the Greeks, and with him his dear friend Petrolicus.

For nine years the Greeks besieged the city of Troy, but they could not break through the walls, and as they had been away from their homes for all this time, they came to be in great want of food and clothes and other things, So they left part of the army to watch the city, and with part they went about and spoiled other cities.

Thus came about the great quarrel of which I am now going to tell.

He came as night comes across the sky, and his arrows rattled terribly as he went.

Then he began to shoot, and his arrows carried death, first to the dogs and the mules, and then to the men.

For nine days the people died, and on the tenth day Achilles called an assembly.

When the Greeks were gathered together, he stood up in the middle and said, "'Surely it would be better to go home than to stay here and die.' Many are slain in battle, and still more are slain by the plague.

You may set Aeneas and the brave Virgilian in fighting with an easy mind.

It will hurt no one's feelings to hear how Achilles was slain, or how Hylus was searched for when he tumbled after his pitcher.

But when Lucilius roars and rages as if with sword in hand— The hero, whose soul was cold with crime, grows red.

He sweats with the secret consciousness of sin.

Grant, O gods, that the earth may lie soft and light upon the shades of our forefathers.

May the sweet-scented crocus and a perpetual springtime bloom over their ashes, who deemed that the teacher should hold the place of a revered parent.

Achilles trembled for fear of the rod, when already a full age, singing songs in his native hills.

nor would he then have dared to laugh at the tale of his musical instructor but rufus and the rest are cudgelled each by his own pupils that rufus whom they have so often styled the allobrojan cicero who pours into the lap of celadus or of the learned poleman as much as their grammatical labours deserve and yet small as the fee is and it is smaller than the redder's wage the pupil's unfeeling attendant nibbles off a bit of it for himself so too does the steward but never mind poleman suffer some diminution of your wage like the hawker who sells rags and white gallic blankets for winter wear if only it do not go for nothing that you have sat from early dawn in a hole which no blacksmith would put up with no workman who teaches how to card wool with slanting tool that it do not go for nothing to have snuffed up the odor of as many lamps as you had scholars in your class thumping a discolored horace or a begrimed virgil but it is seldom that the fee can be recovered without a judgment of the court and yet be sure ye parents to impose the strictest laws upon the teacher he must never be at fault in his grammar he must know all history and have all the authorities at his finger-tips if asked a chance question on his way to the baths or to the establishment of phoebus he must at once tell you who was the nurse of anchises what was the name and birthplace of an camolus stepmother to what age as cestus lived how many flagons of sicilian wine he presented to the trojans require of him that he shall mould the young minds as a man moulds a face out of wax with his thumb insist that he shall be a father to the whole brood so that they shall play no nasty game and do no nasty trick no easy matter to watch the handsome sparkling eyes of so many youngsters see to all this you say and then when the year comes round receive the golden piece which the mob demands for a winning jockey satire Section 9 of Satires.

But he will get in...

At some point, Kittle coming back from his Achilles injury that quickly is absolutely insane too.

They tried to get him involved early, but again, it's the blocking element of Kittle which is so important.

Who else? I mean, Trent Williams shut down Miles Garrett, but then Miles Garrett now has knee surgery.

But Ravens' offense was fantastic, and I loved Eric Henry.

Their defense also looked very good under Jesse Minter.

Again, they played Daniel Jones coming off an Achilles, and that was horrible.

But...

Figured out that Alexander the Great was gay, had a male lover named Epsteinian.

Figured out that Achilles had a male lover named Patroclus.

And I started changing the perspectives that I had around gay people because now it wasn't just the mainstream LGBTQ that I focused on, that I saw.

Now it was legends, conquerors.

You pick who you compare yourself to.

Social media has made this very easy.

Just as the perspective that I had of Alexander the Great and Achilles and what they were doing.

I compared myself to those.

It was not that he could so easily pass entirely from one manner of man to another, nor that he actually underwent in every case a change in his real character; but when he saw that his natural manners were likely to be annoying to his associates, he was quick to assume any counterfeit exterior which might in each case be suitable for them.

At all events in Sparta, so far as the outside was concerned, it was possible to say of him, "No child of Achilles he, but Achilles himself." Such a man as Lycurgus trained.

But, judging by what he actually felt and did, one might have cried with the poet: 'Tis the self-same woman still.

For while Agis the king was away on his campaigns, Alcibiades corrupted Timoca his wife, so that she was with child by him, and made no denial of it.

For he received his death wound not as Cleombrotus did at Leuctra, standing firm against the enemy's onsets, nor as Cyrus did, or Epaminondas, rallying his men and assuring the victory to them.

These all died the death of kings and generals.

But Lysander threw away his life ingloriously like a common targeteer or skirmisher, and bore witness to the wisdom of the ancient Spartans in avoiding assaults on walled cities, where not only an ordinary man, but even a child or a woman may chance to smite and slay the mightiest warrior, as Achilles, they say, was slain by Paris at the gates.

In Sulla's case, at any rate, it is no easy matter even to enumerate the pitched battles which he won and the myriads of enemies whom he slew.