Oh great: More Ray Rice video … While We’re Waiting

Happy Monday? You guys tell me.

While penned before Week 1 of the NFL’s regular season, one of the previews over at FiveThirtyEight stated that the NFL North was “up for grabs.” While most AFC North previews completely discount anything that the Browns are doing (ESPN The Magazine says “under” 6.5 wins is one of the locks of the season), the folks at Nate Silver’s shop apparently think otherwise, placing just 1.4 wins between the top (the Steelers) and the bottom (the Browns). One note I found very interesting is an argument toward the notion that losing Josh Gordon may not be a big deal after all.

Using TRY (True Receving Yards), Gordon’s stats look much more mundane. He gained less than three-quarters of a true yard for every receiving yard in the box score during his two NFL seasons. That’s the lowest ratio for any receiver with at least 1,000 yards in the history of the NFL, which figures since Gordon caught his passes in the passing-friendly present.

Less than three-quarters of a yard still sounds better than nothing for a team that didn’t draft a receiver in May. But Gordon’s discounted production still might overstate his value to his club. […] So far, Gordon isn’t helping Cleveland QBs nearly as much as his raw stats suggest. His WoWY (With or Without You) score is essentially zero: His quarterbacks have just as high age-adjusted adjusted yards per attempt figures with him as without him.

No one in the North is given a higher Super Bowl percentage than four percent (Cincinnati), so if we can take anything away from this it’s that the entire division may just beat the crap out of one another for the entire season, netting the winner nothing more than an early playoff exit. And while it isn’t quite advance FiveThirtyEightian statistics, we at least we have this:

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While we’re on the AFC North, updated video of the Ray Rice elevator incident was released last night. I won’t watch it, but from what I gather on Twitter, it’s as terrifying as you would expect. There’s spit. There’s a punch. There’s his now-wife’s cranium slamming into the railing as she falls—unconscious—to the floor.

The fact that Rice gets to play football in two weeks gets more mind-blowing by the minute. This isn’t about Josh Gordon. It isn’t about HGH testing or the NFLPA or any of that haughty bullshit. It’s about decency.

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Craig touched on Joan Rivers in his Friday morning, the 81-year-old comedienne passing away on Thursday afternoon. Like Craig, I appreciated Joan for her longstanding refusal to apologize for any of her jokes—most of them having someone (including herself) as the punchline—especially in today’s age of demands in the wake of feigned offense.

When legends pass, it’s often met with a litany of response as many of the people who grew up with her are no longer here, and many who utilize the electronic venues we do today are entirely too young to understand the impact these individuals had during their run. But with Rivers, even if you only knew her from Fashion Police or some red carpet interview, it’s still tough to not appreciate her candor even if those events were a microcosm of what she was as a comedienne and media personality.

While the death of a celebrity (or anyone, for that matter) is never a good thing, the way that many have celebrated her life over the last 72 hours has been terrific. The first person I thought of when I heard the news of her coma was her longtime friend Howard Stern. I was incredibly pleased to see that he gave the eulogy at her funeral this weekend. And there is also this feature that was republished in New York Magazine, serving as a celebration of a trailblazer. In it, it’s revealed that she has a pillow embroidered on a leather couch in her study that reads: “DON’T EXPECT PRAISE WITHOUT ENVY UNTIL YOU ARE DEAD.”

Talk about a crystal ball.

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Speaking of comedy, this interview of Bill Hader by fellow comedian and actor Danny McBride is hysterical.

I really liked Monty Python and British comedy. Woody Allen, Mel Brooks—anything that was set in a city might as well have been from Mars. I’d never seen walls or mailboxes that looked like the ones in Monty Python sketches. I read a lot. I was into music, but there wasn’t a lot to do. In Tulsa, it was sports or nothing. My dad sent me to f— football camp.

It’s worth your time, even if you’re one of those anti-comedy people.

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Let’s lop the “op (ed).” After a one-week, design change-based hiatus, here’s this week’s edition of #ActualSportswriting

“Jerry Football” by Don Van Nata Jr. (ESPN The Magazine): “Standing 6 feet, ½-inch tall, Jones is, like his stadium, modernized by creative vision and formidable resources — his face lifted, his scalp fortified and his teeth capped to gleam. His blue eyes are still icicle-clear, full of mirth and the hint of trouble. It’s been nearly a half-century since he played college football, but he still moves with an athlete’s gait, as effortlessly as a man 20 years younger.”

“Dr. Marshawn and Mr. Lynch” by Kevin Fixler (SBNation): “The universal intrigue with Lynch, who so clearly maintains two starkly conflicting personas — Oakland hardass and selfless community steward — hasn’t been reserved solely for his criminal offenses. Since gaining initial fame in college for jouncing an injury cart around the home turf of Cal’s Memorial Stadium after a 2006 overtime win against Washington, his legend has only grown.”

“Baseball’s new parity: A myth” by Adam Felder (The Atlantic): “It’s a lot of fun rooting for an underdog, and the schadenfreude of the Red Sox first-to-worst 2014 probably is fun too. Yet 2014 is anomalous—baseball has notentered an age of parity, and in fact the gap between rich teams and poor teams has widened. […]From 1990 to 2014, the top 10 highest-paid teams increased their payroll well over 600 percent. The bottom 10 also increased, but only 399 percent.”

“The uniqueness of Serena Williams” by SL Price (Sports Illustrated): “Serena remains a unique case, even after accounting for her Hall of Fame sister, Venus, and the thought that a longtime “white” sport may still be coming to terms with the most dominant black player in history. Because while McEnroe, say, unspooled his neuroses before thousands, Williams’ soft side has never been as obvious as her hard. Reflex volleys like Wednesday’s quip, when asked what the number 18 means to her (“It means legal to do some things,” Williams said. “It also means legendary”), pass largely unnoticed.”

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Here’s to the next few days of Browns fans bickering, Ray Rice discussions and people having to be reminded that the Cleveland Indians are not just playing, but winning games. Happy Monday, you guys.