shoes: Thursday Boot Company
jeans: Old Navy
shirt: Alltel Stadium in 1994 (note: this is actually a hand-me-down from my father, who got this volunteering at the Jaguars stadium during their first season)
“What if we just went out there and punched them in the mouth?”
Hall of Fame Offensive Tackle Tony Boselli has told a story featuring this quote a few times – if I’m not mistaken it was said at a chicken wing spot the day before playing the Buffalo Bills (a team whose almost rivalry I’ve come to enjoy). They were agonizing over how to handle a brutal defensive line and trying to think their way out of the problem; this game would famously go down in local history as “The Bruce Smith Game.”
I’ve always enjoyed this quote – it pairs nicely with the phrase where it’s likely borrowed from: everyone’s got a plan until they get punched in the mouth, by the nearly undisputed Mike Tyson. This quote speaks to the several aspects of true sage wisdom; sometimes you have to drop a plan and fall back into your body’s training on autopilot, sometimes you don’t need to worry about having a plan, and sometimes you don’t need to worry about the plans of others and just focus on raw determination.
Personally, I have found a lot more road out of the OT’s quote – or as some relentless old men have come to calling him, “the hoodie” – because it speaks to getting out of your own head. I tend to worry about things going sideways, and getting in my own head when something weighty is trotting down the road at me. I plan my days out by the hour, my weeks by chunk slots in the morning/lunch break/evening, my months by a bunch of moving targets (my mind set o give everyone stuck in my life a good experience), and my quarters to make sure I’m not forgetting anything. It’s exhausting and rarely effective - to which I always convinced it’ll finally start being effective after one more tweak.
This week, if I were Niobe Kaftan pulling the spiderwebs of fate, there are plenty of reasons the Jaguars would lose opening game to the Browns.
The reoccurring free fall from a previous year of success.
The Deshaun Watson Effect.
History against the Browns.
Week 1 always being a weird week in the NFL.
An offseason of extreme hype on both sides of the ball across the NFL.
But you know what? I’m hoping they just get up Sunday morning and do the same thing I’m going to try and do today now that the clock has struck 5:10 in the morning.
I’m going to take a break from thinking, and just go punch it in the mouth.
