Welcome to the Too Deep Zone
Mike Tanier here: mad prophet of the sports-media apocalypse; voice crying forth from the wilderness; sad clown Pagliacci (Good joke. Everybody laugh); NFL court jester, still with plenty of gibes and gambols left; a galley oarsman freed from the shackles of trending keywords and search-engine-optimization mandates. Oh sweet, terrifying freedom!
I have come to cover the NFL, chew bubblegum and reference Network, the Gospel of Matthew, Watchman, Hamlet, Ben-Hur, The Simpsons and They Live! in rapid-fire succession as regularly as possible. And I am fresh out of bubblegum.
This is the same blog/newsletter/plea for help that you came to know, love and (please) subscribe to on another platform. Nothing has changed, not even the first two paragraphs of the introductory post.
Too Deep Zone will still be our front porch, our corner tavern, our maker’s space, our place to share a passion for the NFL that goes beyond hot takes, fantasy/wagering advice and OMG reactions to highlights. I say “ours,” because you probably think of your favorite coffee shop as “yours.” When everyone feels invested – emotionally even more than financially – customers become collaborators, co-conspirators, a community.
In case you don’t know my story: I wrote for Football Outsiders for nearly 20 years before that trusted source of analytics got mismanaged into extinction by incompetent robber-barons. I wrote for the New York Times from 2008-11 and again from 2020-23, only to see their entire sports department outsourced to The Athletic under my feet. I wrote for The Messenger, which exploded upon launch as if it were built by Space X. In between, I spent six years at Bleacher Report until they abandoned the written word in favor of emojis, plus two NFL seasons at Sports on Earth, the baby that USA Today and MLB.com left on the steps of a convent in the early 2010s.
I launched Too Deep Zone in February of 2024, and the outpouring of support by longtime readers and colleagues not just restored my self-esteem but kept me from staggering back into the classroom to make ends meet. We're moving to Ghost in the spring of 2026 because we like the neighborhood better.
