Podcasts
This NFL running backs-PGA Tour caddies comparison is sort of brilliant
You'll have to forgive us, but it was a slow news week last week in golf. Podcast topics were hard to come by.
But we still managed, mostly thanks to a wild weekend of college football and NFL Week 1, culminating with a San Francisco 49ers 32-19 win over the New York Jets on Monday Night Football.
The star of MNF, surprisingly, was not 40-year-old Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers. Nor was it Garrett Wilson or Breece Hall or Brock Purdy or Nick Bosa. It was the Niners' backup running back Jordan Mason, the third-year man out of Georgia Tech who was filling in for reigning NFL Offensive Player of the Year Christian McCaffery, who missed the season-opener with a calf injury. The vaunted San Francisco offense did not miss a beat with Mason in the backfield, the 25-year-old rushing 28 times for 147 yards and a touchdown. A stat line McCaffery would have been thrilled with, and he makes an average of $19 million per year. Mason? He is on the final year of his rookie contract and is due to make just under $1 million in 2024.
It makes ya wonder, as many sharp football people have pointed out in recent years - do you even need a running back like McCaffery? It's an especially interesting question for a team like San Francisco, which continually trots out a top five offensive line in the league year after year and could make just about any running back in the league look like a superstar when healthy.
It's almost like they are ... wait for it ... interchangeable. Sort of like PGA Tour caddies. Alex Myers' words, not mine...
"This will be the first golf podcast where you'll hear this," Myers said on this week's episode of The Loop podcast. "Even before I got on the 'caddies are interchangeable' [narrative], now everybody knows that the running backs are, too -- PGA Tour caddies and NFL running backs are a dime a dozen. Overrated, over-valued."
Wow, shots fired. Reminder - these are Myers' words. You can find him on Twitter/X @AlexMyers3.
To hear more of Myers' narrative-pushing, please have a listen to the full episode below. We also welcomed back a golf folk hero, discussed our best bets for the Procore Championship and shared a story about a group of L.A. Angels ditching a top New Jersey golf course for a bigger and better New Jersey golf course last month.