In this space on Saturdays, I do a weekly round-up of sorts: Sifting through what I wrote that you might have missed during the week, what I’ve been reading and watching myself, and some other fun things that have been going on.

Here are the things I wrote or podcasted about during the previous week, sorted in descending order by quality, popularity and/or current relevance.

🏀 Victor Wembanyama Is Crashing the NBA Playoff Picture Already – With my 🏀 2025-26 NBA Elo Forecast and Player Ratings 📈 in full swing, I looked at the non-playoff teams from ‘24-25 with the best chance of making it this year, as well as the playoff teams most likely to drop out. And leading the former group, get excited for the idea of Wemby in the NBA playoffs for the first time!

🏁 Who has the edge in the Championship 4 at Phoenix? – For

, I broke down the championship pros and cons for each of the Final Four drivers — Kyle Larson, Denny Hamlin, Chase Briscoe and William Byron — heading into the final race of the 2025 Cup Series season on Sunday.

🏁 Is Connor Zilisch NASCAR’s greatest prospect ever? – More NASCAR! This time, I was tasked with measuring where Zilisch — the 19-year-old phenom I introduced you to here — ranked among all-time young drivers with his dominant 2025 Xfinity Series season, which could end in a championship on Saturday.

🏁🎙️ And Then There Were Four – In this week’s Podracing,

Lauletta and I broke down Byron’s masterclass at Martinsville, where he put together one of the clutchest performances in playoff history to seal a Championship 4 spot. Then we previewed the season finale at Phoenix, and discussed what makes each driver’s storyline compelling (or tragic) depending on what happens Sunday. Finally, we made our last betting and one-and-done picks of the year, with the championship on the line both for the drivers… and for us.

🏁▶️ NASCAR Live with Neil Paine! – I got to join my buddies

and of for another Substack Live — talking about the Cup finale, Zilisch’s bid for an Xfinity crown, the Truck Series’ similar case of a dominant season’s fate being on the line (with Corey Heim), and what we’ll miss when Phoenix is on hiatus as the title site next year.

🏈 Which NFL Contenders Can You Actually Trust This Season? – It’s been kind of a weird NFL season thus far, so I looked for indicators of teams who might be more or less trustworthy than their performance indicates. That includes teams who may be playing over their heads or underachieving, and especially teams who are the most and least wildly inconsistent from week to week.

🏒 These Up-and-Coming NHL Teams Are Finally Breaking the Ice – It’s never too early to check in on teams who are improving or otherwise trying to break out, so I did that for a handful of the NHL teams showing the most early promise this season.

⚾️ Can the Dodgers Still Save Their Superteam Season? – Ahead of Game 6 of the World Series, I wrote about what the Dodgers needed to change their shocking trajectory from heavy favorite to sudden series underdog.

🏈🎙️ Football Bytes: The Art of Knowing When to Take a Bye Week – This week’s Football Bytes saw

and I feel better coming off an improved week — would have been hard to be much worse! — and we debate our picks with renewed conviction. Well, one of us does; the other taps out and uses the bye week in the contest, deciding to not make any picks at all!

⚾️ What We’ve Learned So Far From the 2025 World Series – What feels like an eternity ago, I wrote about lessons to take away from the opening two games of the Fall Classic. Then the teams played two full games in one — an 18-inning Game 3 epic — and the Jays improbably took control from there in L.A., but I think things held up fairly well in the analysis anyway.

A collection of articles (with a heavy focus on my fellow Substackers), videos and other media that I enjoyed and/or found thought-provoking over the past week. I don’t always 100% agree with or endorse what’s linked here… but that’s also sort of the point.

🏈 How We Forgot About CTE by

🏈 This Mailbag is Too Complicated for a Headline. Just Read It. by

🏈 This isn’t sustainable // College football’s buyout industrial complex has reached new heights this season, with 10 head coaches owed a collective $169 million so far. by

🏈 The NFL Media Needs to CALM DOWN by

(Note: He makes a good point. But you gotta feed the content beast somehow… and besides, getting excited is fun)

⚾️ Blame Canada // Strange Brew, the Blue Jays, and how America learned to stop worrying and annex Canada. by

⚾️ Eric Lauer won the Blue Jays Game 4 without throwing a pitch by

⚾️ Fernandomania versus Shotime by

⚾️ Tarik Skubal, Squandered by

⚾️ Batting Average Bounce-Backs // Fourteen candidates for big-time batting average bounce-back seasons in 2026 by

⚾️🏀 Wemby, Shohei, and the Art of the Impossible by

🏀 Bet on Bennett: The Straw that Stirtz Iowa’s Drink by

🏀 The Magic, Tricked // Why the Magic are so much worse with Paolo Banchero, and so much better with Franz Wagner by

🏀 Where best-laid plans actually do come to fruition by

🏀 In today’s NBA? Size matters like never before by

🏀 Victor Wembanyama and Chet Holmgren Are Warping The Center Position by

🏀 Kyshawn George is the towel by

🏀 Can the NBA protect the game’s integrity? by

🏀 Cedric Coward needs to play A LOT by

🏀 Hidden NBA Gems: Non-Power Conference Players to Track by

and

🏀▶️ The Most Insane NBA Expansion Team Ever – The 1988 Miami Heat by

🏒 Makeshift Wings by

🏒 Cayden Primeau Must Go by

🏒 A Couple Thoughts On The Red Wings Improved Penalty Kill by

🏒 Early Returns: JJ Peterka by

🏁 From enemies to teammates by

⚽ No, Pep Guardiola’s ideology is not “dead”. But things are changing. by

🧠 DEEP DIVE: AI progress continues, as IQ scores rise linearly by

📈 16 charts that explain the AI boom by

🎵 101 Things I Learned Listening to Every Number One Hit: Part 1 by

🎮▶️ Werewolf: The Last Warrior – Angry Video Game Nerd by Cinemassacre

🎮▶️ The Counter-Strike Skin Market Just Imploded by Big A

MLB Classics – 2001 World Series Game 7 (NYY vs AZ)

TV On The Radio – “Wolf Like Me”

Filed under: Weekly Round-up