Welcome to the latest episode of Hot Takedown, FiveThirtyEight’s sports podcast. The New York Giants’ season is off to a disappointing 0-2 start, and quarterback Eli Manning is getting much of the blame. On this week’s episode (Sept. 19, 2017), we take a deeper look at Manning’s stats, discuss whether he’s a Hall of Famer and ponder where the Giants go from here. Next, after a second week of blowouts in the NFL, some are complaining that the quality of play has decreased significantly. We discuss a piece by our ESPN colleague Bill Barnwell that pushes back against that idea. Plus, a significant digit on baseball.
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Here are links to what we discussed this week:
- Eli Manning is profoundly mediocre, writes Ty Schalter for FiveThirtyEight.
- A 2015 analysis from Nate Silver found that Eli Manning is the most clutch postseason quarterback of all time.
- ESPN’s Bill Barnwell says NFL quality of play isn’t worse (but Colin Kaepernick might make it better).
- Significant Digit: 1 in 65,566, the odds that a generic, contending-quality MLB team would be able to pull off the Cleveland Indians’ streak of 22 victories in a row. Cleveland’s streak finally came to an end Friday night, and while it wasn’t MLB’s longest, it was perhaps the most impressive, according to FiveThirtyEight’s Neil Paine.