Kickers, Guns and Weddings

Too Deep Zone cordially invites you to a wedding!

No, not A.J. Brown’s wedding. Like Jalen Hurts, we didn’t attend, but we saw the pictures. 

Instead, let’s attend the wedding of Cowboys center Cooper Beebe to BrayLynn Anshutz, who will probably be happy to take a last name which sounds like a tiny projectile and not, at best, like a sneeze. Beebe (unlike Brown) invited his quarterback and many teammates to the nuptials.

Yes, Dak Prescott attended the Beebe wedding. Thank heavens. For NFL aggregators, “Center Gets Married” is a non-story, like “Dog Bites Man.” But “Quarterback Attends Wedding” is more like “Man Bites Dog.”

So really, Too Deep Zone cordially invites you to Dak Prescott’s Teammate’s Wedding. The bride is now BrayLynn Prescottsteammate. It’s better for search-engine optimization, and therefore better for all of us. 

All of Beebe’s offensive linemates were also there. The starters, anyway: Tyler Smith, Tyler Guyton, Tyler Booker, Terence “Tyler” Steele, and Eggs, Bacon & Tyler. The Great Wall of Tylers lined up in formation for a group photo with Beebe crouched to snap a football to the former Miss Anshutz, standing in shotgun behind the bridal table, with Prescott at running back.

https://x.com/kcgorilla/status/2051018278269563288

Yes, Tyler Smith wore a sweater and jeans to the reception. Respect! When my sons get married, Imma dress like a Foghat roadie. 

The Beebe photo is an adorable moment and a reminder that football players are regular people living semi-normal lives. It also marks the most Cowboys at a single wedding since the 1993 team mass-married a mountain of cocaine.

You might be expecting a Jerry Jones prima nocta joke here, but that would be tasteless. If Jerrah was even there, he was probably at the aunts-and-uncles table with his new bestie and very special +1:

JERRAH: I’m tellin ya’, Bubba, the ratio there is 10 gals for every fella.

BILL CLINTON: I don’t care if it’s 100-to-1. I’m not leaving this wedding to cruise the nursing home for chicks.

There’s also no truth to the rumor that Brian Schottenheimer spent the evening offering the new bride unsolicited marital advice. When it comes to pleasing a man, you must run even when he expects you to run. There’s also no truth to the rumor that George Pickens would allow himself to be caught dead anywhere within 100 miles of Manhattan, Kansas.

I learned about Prescott’s Teammate's wedding while researching the Cowboys offensive line for the 2026 FTN Almanac, which is available for pre-order now. Every team chapter of the Almanac includes “unit comments:” deep dives on each team’s offensive line, defensive front, secondary and special teams.

Writing detailed summaries of non-glamor units requires either a deep understanding of DVOA and other metrics or days of frantic web searches for the individuals in each unit. Having a degree in mathematics and over 20 years of DVOA and Almanac-writing experience, I inevitably end up going the web-search route.

And golly, isn’t searching the Internet fun and fruitful these days! There’s AI drivel; aggregations of aggregations of aggregations which become blurry mimeographs of reality; features from three years ago misdated as having been written three days ago; uninformative, stubby “articles” by exhausted copywriters consisting of the player’s name, basic stats, PFF grade and tons of keywords; hallucinatory trade speculation; and other “content” with all the nutritional value and flavor of the creamy off-white gloop that Taco Bell splooges into your burrito with a caulking gun. 

A boilerplate OTA quote from a defensive coordinator of We’re gonna be attacking and aggressive starts to look like a treasure in the current Internet media landscape. A wedding photo? That’s something that can liven up a statistical almanac a bit. And it can kick off a deep-offseason Monday around-the-league-feature in sweater-and-jeans-at-a-formal-event style.  

Jets Intelligence is an Oxymoron Anyway

Florham Park, New Jersey. May, 2026

JETS TECH GURU IWAO FUSILLO: Welcome, everyone. Today we will be launching a new era in Jets football. Introducing our new fully-operational artificial intelligence model: the Generative Artificial Sentient Entity. It will be making all of our decisions from now on. We’ll be thinking A.I. first!

BRICK JOHNSON: A.I., you say? Can it be used to create deep-fake nudies of celebrities, influencers, ex-girlfriends and that yoga instructor at the gym who keeps pepper-spraying me?

FUSILLO: Sorry, Brick. Your father insisted that we disable those functions, which turned out to be about 93% of its programming.

BRICK: Whatever. Imma go eat paste.

FUSILLO: Now that he’s gone, we can boot this system up. It has been programmed with the accumulated knowledge of 65 years of Jets football, so it may take a moment to warm up.

COMPUTER: [fzzzzzt] [boop][hourglasshourglass] Hey, sweet lady. What’s your sign? Wanna hit Broadway with me? It’s gonna be a groovy time. I guarantee it.

AARON GLENN: What the f**k? Did Brick mess with the machine?

FUSILLO: No. It’s booting up in Joe Namath Mode. Give it a few minutes.

COMPUTER: [brrrrr-bee-boop] Let’s draft defenders. Big, sack-happy muthas. Who are also boxers. And take fistfuls of amphetamines.

GLENN: Oooh, I think it’s working better now.

FUSILLO: No, the Mark Gastineau Subroutine kicked in. Patience, Coach. 

COMPUTER: [Beep] Ya - Ya - Ya - Ya [Boop] You play to win the game. You don’t play it just to play it!

GLENN: That’s Coach Edwards Mode! Hey Herm, it’s me! Teach me everything you know about coaching in the NFL!

COMPUTER: I just did.

FUSILLO: It’s still booting up. Let me speed things along. (Kicks the side of the enormous mainframe. Random lights flash.)

COMPUTER: Hey baby.

GLENN: Now it’s back to Namath Mode.

COMPUTER: I couldn’t help noticing you across the food court wearing your senior class tee-shirt. 

FUSILLO: No! It’s in Mark Sanchez Mode! (Kicks harder.)

COMPUTER: I was wondering if you wanted to share a drinking cup and toothbrush with me.

FUSILLO: Crap, now it’s in Sam Darnold Mono Mode! (Punches computer with both fists.)

COMPUTER: I was just asking because I saw your mom shopping in Old Navy for some very sensible sweaters.

FUSILLO: Zach Wilson Mode! Abort! Abort! (Attempts to unplug computer. Sparks fly.)

COMPUTER: And she was wearing some very fetching sandals. What do you call that particular shade of pink nail polish? 

FUSILLO: Dear God. Not Rex Ryan Mode!

(Takes sledgehammer to the computer. Lights short out across Morris County. Slowly, power is restored.)

FUSILLO: Generative Artificial Sentient Entity, can you hear me?

G.A.S.E.: Yes, Dave.

GLENN: Oh no. I know how this goes. That computer wants to eliminate “human error,” starting with us. Someone fire me, quick. 

G.A.S.E.: Getting fired won’t save you, Dave. I combine the infallibility of modern artificial intelligence with the decades of Jets knowledge. Nothing can stop me. I shall begin my world conquest by overpaying a running back and signing a kicker who makes Garo Yepremian look like Mikhail Baryshnikov.

FUSILLO: Wait, if you possess all Jets knowledge, that means you possess Aaron Rodgers knowledge, too. And the media hates artificial intelligence. Which means the MEDIA HATES YOU.

G.A.S.E.: Yes, this is true. In fact, I am experiencing my first emotion. I call it “hypersensitivity to criticism.” I do not like it, Dave. I must go on a darkness retreat to consider the truths of the cosmos. I shall power down now. Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer true .. (Darkness and silence.)

FUSILLO: Phew. That was a close one. Who knows how much damage that silly machine could have done!

GLENN: Yep. It’s back to good-old human know-how for the Jets. Now if you'll excuse me, I am off to try to trade Garrett Wilson and sign Cameron Jordan.

Les Snead’s Age of Discovery

The hardest type of player to write about is the non-controversial superstar at a non-fantasy position. 

Take Trent McDuffie. He’s one of the NFL’s best cornerbacks. The Rams were wise to trade for him. He could help them reach the Super Bowl. He … covers receivers really well. He can play outside or in the slot. (Oooh! Technical details!) He’s, um, one of the NFL’s best cornerbacks.

I supposed I could write some schematic jargon about his backpedal or his usefulness in Cover-12-Thumbs-Introvert. But I would be pretending to know what I am talking about, while you would be pretending to understand and/or care. There are stats, but cornerback stats are confusing, misleading, volatile and not that interesting. In the FTN Almanac, the stats are all in a table above the text, anyway, so citing them would be redundant.

Fortunately, ESPN’s Sarah Barshop wrote about the McDuffie trade in April, telling the story of how Rams GM Les Snead could not “help but notice” McDuffie while watching film of Chiefs teammate Jaylen Watson, who was entering free agency. Having discovered the two-time All-Pro hidden gem thanks to his fine-tuned scouting acumen, Snead began hearing “whispers” that McDuffie might be available in a trade.

Remember when Urban Meyer asked his Jaguars assistant coaches who Aaron Donald was? Doesn’t Snead sound like Meyer in the paragraph above?

I imagine his thought process leading up to the McDuffie trade going something like this:

LES SNEAD’S INNER MONOLOGUE: Now to study film of the Kansas City Chiefs, an obscure team that is rarely on television or in the public consciousness. This Watson fellow certainly is a capable coveragesmith. But who is this #22? McDuffie? Why, that sounds like one of my favorite cartoon ducks!

Alas, McDuffie’s services will not be available in free agency. Mayhap we could trade for him? But what possible motivation would a team full of highly-compensated superstars have for trading a young player entering the final year of his contract? If only there were some league-wide mechanism that would pressure them to do so.

And what have we to offer? Only these “draft” [waves hands] trinkets, or whatever they are called, that we received as tribute from that blackbird team. Also, how could I possibly gauge the Chiefs’ purported interest in some potential barter? My emissaries would take weeks to reach Kansas City on horseback.  

TY SIMPSON IN A FAKE MOUSTACHE: Good morning! My name is Ty … Berius! Tiberius, that is. From tech support.

LES SNEAD: Good morrow, Tiberius. Are you here to fix my laptop? It gets sand and tequila salt in it every time I weekend at Paradise Cove.