Google autocomplete describes the NFC East

Continuing the silly little series I began on Thursday, today I’m letting Google autocomplete help us describe the key fantasy football players (and coaches and teams) in the NFC East. Does it matter? Nope. But it’s fun!

Reminder of what I do:

• Opened Google up in a private Chrome browser.

• Typed a name, then each letter in succession. Chrome gave 10 results for each letter (sometimes fewer for the rare letters), and I picked the most interesting one or ones. (“Most interesting” is key, because otherwise it would all be “stats” and “fantasy” and “draft” and such.)

• Some players have boring results! These aren’t the first results, necessarily, just the most interesting ones.

Pretty simple, really. Here’s the NFC East

Dallas Cowboys

Team name

• Cheerleaders salary

• Last playoff win

I made the point in the Dolphins section of Thursday’s piece that “last playoff win” popping up in these things is a bad sign, because nobody is looking up the most recent win of, like, the Patriots or the Chiefs. This kinda flies in the face of that. Cowboys won a playoff game like 16 months ago, friends. Also, um, the cheerleaders don’t make much.

Head coach Mike McCarthy

• Easter dog

• Jerry Jones sleepover

“Easter dog” has nothing to do with the Cowboys coach, but it’s a very cool video. As for the sleepover, I still wish we could get a more in-depth accounting of McCarthy’s night at Jones’ house before getting hired. Like, I’m sure they just had dinner and a drink or two and grinded some tape before McCarthy went to bed in Jones’ guest room, completely boringly, but I want to imagine so much more fun than that.

Quarterback Dak Prescott

• Beard

• Cut

I love how freaked out everybody was that the arrival of Andy Dalton in Dallas might herald the departure of Dak. Like, y’all realize Dalton just get released by the Bengals, right? Sure, if something happens to Dak, Dalton is one of the league’s better backups, but “backups” is the key word there. (Dallas players and “beard” are a common combo for some reason. You’ll see.)

Quarterback Andy Dalton

• Beard

• New Zealand rugby

Andy Dalton was a player for the All Blacks in the ‘70s and ‘80s. He’s 68 now and has no connection to this Andy Dalton. But you only get so many opportunities to bring up the All Blacks. (There’s beards again.)

Running back Ezekiel Elliott

• Ewok

Apparently someone on Twitter said Zeke looked like an ewok a couple years ago. That’s mean. The tweet’s private now.

Running back Tony Pollard

• Isandlwana

So Tony Pollard is a professor of conflict history and archaeology at the University of Glasgow, and this word is a reference to an 1879 Zulu victory and not an elaborate typo as I had assumed.

Wide receiver Amari Cooper

• Beard

• Or Tre’Quan Smith

There’s beard again! I haven’t seen other teams connected to the term nearly as much as the Cowboys, and I’m not really sure what it means.

And man, imagine someone questioning whether to use Tre’Quan Smith or Amari Cooper in fantasy. Like, even at Cooper’s worst and Smith’s best, I couldn’t advocate that question.

Wide receiver CeeDee Lamb

• Dragon Ball Z

Back in the 2018 season, Lamb and Marquise Brown got penalized for a choreographed Dragon Ball Z celebration after Lamb caught a touchdown pass from Kyler Murray. That’s interesting enough. Also interesting: How many NFL offenses would kill for a QB/WR/WR combo like those three right now?

Wide receiver Michael Gallup

• Eye care leaders

In addition to being a receiver on maybe the league’s best offense. Michael Gallup is also the CEO of Eye Care Leaders. Accomplished dude.

Tight end Blake Jarwin

• Mom

Reportedly, Jarwin’s mom was always a die-hard Cowboys fan, so he responded by … becoming an Eagles fan growing up. What a rebel.

New York Giants

Team name

• In New Jersey

Shouldn’t this be fixed by now? They don’t play in New York. I know I’m not treading on any new territory here, but … that’s silly, right?

Head coach Joe Judge

• Joe Jonas judge The Voice

• On MasterChef

“Joe Judge” is the least googleable name of all-time. Imagine that all you knew was that there was a semi-famous guy named Joe Judge and you wanted to learn more about him. It would be hard! It’s like that period in the 2000s when every TV show was named something absolutely unsearchable like House or Community or The Office. Shouldn’t y’all be naming your stuff something findable?

Quarterback Daniel Jones

• Jediism

There are some interesting “Daniel Jones” searches, owing to that being a very neutral name, but I want to focus on this one for a second. “Daniel Jones” is the founder of The Church of Jediism, which … I don’t mean to yuck anybody’s yum here, but I will never understand the people whose fandom of anything is that passionate. Like, I love Die Hard, but I ain’t out here startin’ no Church of McClane. I just can’t wrap my mind around that.

Running back Saquon Barkley

• Quad challenge

I’m familiar with Saquon’s quads. Thought I was in just hell on earth with a “quad challenge.” And, listen, I’m an overweight 36-year-old. I’m not about to just rip off his minute straight of quadness myself. But … I was expecting harder.

Wide receiver Golden Tate

• Donuts

I hope we never forget the Golden Tate donuts story, and I hope we never forget the delicious tidbit that the place was literally called “Top Pot.”

Wide receiver Sterling Shepard

• Marcus Stroman

Figured this would be just something about a couple of athletes in New York maybe interacting or something, but nope, it’s them looking alike. We love our lookalikes, man.

Wide receiver Darius Slayton

• And Darius Slay

Not that interesting, really, but it does make me think of my wonderful tweet that should get more publicity.

Tight end Evan Engram

• Is Evan Engram injury

Yes. Yes, Evan Engram is injury

Philadelphia Eagles

Team name

• Male cheerleader

The Eagles hired a male cheerleader last year, which … why aren’t there more male NFL cheerleaders? I mean, I know the main reason for NFL cheerleaders is so guys can say “Ooh, pretty girls,” but wouldn’t there be some excitement for all the throwing and flipping and stuff that the male cheerleaders are typically better at? I hadn’t really thought about it, but it’s kinda weird, yeah?

Head coach Doug Pederson

• Häagen-Dazs

• Vanilla ice cream

Doug Pederson really likes ice cream.

Quarterback Carson Wentz

• Kingdom Crumb

“The Kingdom Crumb” is the name of a charitable organization that works with Carson Wentz’ AO1 Foundation, and that is officially the worst name for a charity I’ve ever heard.

Quarterback Jalen Hurts

• With dreads

In and of itself, the fact that Hurts cut his dreadlocks a couple years ago isn’t that remarkable. The reason is interesting enough, sure. But really, I just like the picture:

Running back Miles Sanders

• Mom age

There are a handful of these that just show how depraved our people are. Y’all can just let a mom be a mom, I promise.

Running back Boston Scott

• Robot dance

A lot of the players have common enough names that their Google search results are interesting as a result; only Boston Scott has a name so common it makes his Google searches boring. There are all these random kids named Scott who live in Boston or go to a Boston university or work for a company with Boston in its name. It was so tedious. But! His robot dance touchdown celebration was fun.

Wide receiver Alshon Jeffery

• And Josina Anderson

There were plenty of rumors that Alshon was Josina’s anonymous source in the Eagles locker room — rumors Josina denied. Who really knows, and honestly, who really cares. But this is an excuse for me to tell the story of why Josina Anderson blocked me on Twitter. Late in the 2015 season, she did a sideline report in the second half of a Broncos game where she speculated that Demaryius Thomas had had a bad second half of the game because his mom had gotten out of jail. Which was weird, because he had had a fine first half. I snarked that maybe it was more that he had a bad quarterback (which he did, whether it was end-of-the-line Peyton Manning or never-good Brock Osweiler). I didn’t tag her. But years later, I realized she had blocked me, and that was the only time I had ever mentioned her.

To be clear, I don’t care that she blocked me. Twitter’s a cesspool, doubly so if you’re a woman, triply so if you’re a minority. Josina having a hair trigger on the block button is fine. But man, being blocked by a breaking-news reporter when you monitor breaking news is tough sometimes.

Wide receiver Jalen Reagor

• Just bombs

I really thought Reagor would give me more to work with. But the best we got is “dude makes big plays.” Which, to be fair, he does.

Wide receiver DeSean Jackson

• Is the man

• Silver Linings Playbook quote

Both of these reference the same thing, Bradley Cooper dropping a DeSean Jackson reference in a very good movie that (correct me if I’m wrong) doesn’t get remembered like it probably should.

Tight end Zach Ertz

• Burn the ships

As motivational speeches go, it’s better than “Eat a W!”

Tight end Dallas Goedert

• Unicycle

There can’t be many NFL players who are expert unicyclists. Props to Goedert.

Washington

Team name

• Election prediction

I’ve mentioned this before, but people freaking love to find patterns. The rule (in presidential years, if the team won its last home game before the election, the incumbent party won the presidency; if the team lost, the opposing party won) was ridiculously convoluted to begin with, even if it held from 1940 to 2000. Then in 2004, people flipped it to include the popular vote, because otherwise the rule fell apart. Thankfully, it has now failed in the last two elections no matter how you argue, which I hope means we can shut up about that silly correlation once and for all.

Head coach Ron Rivera

• Vietnam

I was all set to make jokes about people being so bad about knowing ages that they thought Ron Rivera (born in 1962) could have served in Vietnam, but it turns out his dad did serve there and I’m just a jerk.

Quarterback Dwayne Haskins

• Dan Snyder son

Haskins and Snyder’s son went to high school together, which I hope so hard turns out to be why the Washington owner drafted him instead of anything to do with football.

Running back Derrius Guice

• Matthew Berry

ESPN’s Matthew Berry is an unabashed Guice lover. That’s rare in pundit circles, where most guys try to pretend they don’t have rooting interests. But I have absolutely no issue with it. People are going to know what team you root for, either because it bleeds into your analysis or because you’re a human who has a history and that history gets discovered. Don’t try to cover it up or ignore it; just admit your fandom and try to be objective anyway. Example: I’m a Colts fan. I think they’ll be good (but not great) in 2020. I think they’ll probably make the playoffs; I think they probably won’t contend for the Super Bowl. But instead of just saying that and hoping no one digs through my old tweets to find the fandom (not that they’d do that for me, just saying), I’ll just say what I think about them and concede my fandom and let y’all decide if it has influenced me or not (I don’t think it has).

Running back Adrian Peterson

• Orange peanut

I think the Bad Lip Reading things are largely silly. Funny to a point, but always overplayed and overhyped. The exception: “Orange Peanut” is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen, and I’ve watched it five more times just writing this.

Wide receiver Terry McLaurin

• F1

We’ve gotten so many nicknames for McLaurin in just a year in the league, and so much debate about those nicknames. There are “F1” proponents and “Scary Terry” proponents and everything else. Me? I like Scorin’ McLaurin. Let’s make that one go.

Tight end Jeremy Sprinkle

• Vs baby shower

I’m really stupid, because I say “vs baby shower” and started envisioning all these weird scenarios where a little-known tight end got in a fight with someone at a baby shower or something. But that was before I realized there is a thing called a “baby sprinkle,” which is a baby shower but when the baby is not the mom’s first. So (a) that’s more boring than I envisioned, and (b) that is the dumbest name for anything I’ve ever heard in my life. Seriously, it’s the absolute dumbest. You invite me to something called a “baby sprinkle,” I’m gonna be very annoyed.