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We Americans are an interesting bunch. We cherish our independence. We love our rugged individualism. Despite having pride in our system of government, we really don’t like government telling us what to do.

Since rebellion is literally how we were founded, it’s sort of baked into our national identity. But it doesn’t always serve us well. Especially when we find ourselves in a global pandemic.

Individualism—at least the “I do what I want, when I want” idea—is the antithesis of what is needed to keep contagious disease under control. More than anything in my memory, the coronavirus pandemic has tested our nation’s ability to put up a united front, and so far we are failing miserably.

I hear a lot of the same complaints from people who decry government mandates to wear a mask or governors’ stay-at-home orders. We don’t need a nanny state telling us what we can and can’t do! This is tyranny! This is dictatorship! What ever happened to personal responsibility?

I actually have the same question. What did happen to personal responsibility?

Anti-mask folks throw that phrase around a lot, but I don’t think it means what they think it means. After all, if everyone were actually taking personal responsibility, we wouldn’t be in the position we’ve found ourselves in—floundering in an out-of-control pandemic with an accelerating death toll and continuing economic devastation because of our ongoing, half-assed response to it.

Taking personal responsibility doesn’t mean only looking out for yourself. It means being responsible for yourself, which includes doing the responsible thing for the society of which you are a part precisely because you are a part of it.

More than 400 years ago, the poet John Donne wrote these famous words, which are timelessly and universally true: “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” We are connected with one another whether we like it or not. And because we are part of a whole, we have a responsibility toward the whole. The irony in this particular moment, of course, is that our connectedness is what’s killing us. It feels counterintuitive that we must acknowledge our oneness by staying apart from one another, but that’s what keeping a pandemic from destroying the whole requires.

Personal responsibility in a pandemic means choosing, as individuals, to exercise that responsibility we have toward one another. It means using our individual agency, our freedom of choice, to do the right thing for the whole. It means that even if I am not personally at high risk of complications or death from COVID-19, I take responsibility for how my personal actions affect others. If lifelong public servants who are at the top of the epidemiology field ask me to wear a mask to protect others and keep our country from floundering in a pandemic, I choose to wear a mask. If the public health officials in my state, who are generally some of the least appreciated people in our government, say that we need to keep our distance from one another to protect the vulnerable, I choose to abide by their guidelines.

Making the choice to do what public health officials are recommending is what being personally responsible looks like in a pandemic.

As an American who trusts most politicians about as far as I can throw them, I understand people’s distrust of government. But just because a message is coming from government officials doesn’t mean it’s untrustworthy. Just because a mandate is coming form government officials doesn’t mean it’s tyrannical. Generally speaking, governor’s are following the advice of public health officials—the people who have spent their lives and careers preparing for just such a time as this—and if you think public health officials are in the same category as the politicians you don’t trust, well, you’re probably overly paranoid.

The key here is that if people were actually good about taking personal responsibility, we wouldn’t have to keep having government mandates in the first place. The countries that have managed to control the virus—New Zealand, Vietnam, South Korea, Taiwan, to name a few—did so with a combination of swift and decisive governmental response and unified action on the part of the people. An effective pandemic response requires both. Guidelines from the government are useless if people don’t comply, and people don’t know what they should do if the government isn’t clear about what needs to be done and why. Successful countries understood both things. America seems to have rejected both things.

Our government’s handling has been terrible, yes, but Americans’ tacit distrust of government is also not a virtue in this moment. By extending that distrust to public health officials, we are hurting ourselves and each other. We have sacrificed the societal freedom that would come with controlling the virus for individual freedom in the moment, which results in effectively losing individual freedom anyway because if the society we live in is negatively impacted by a virus, so are we.

“Live free or die” is too simplistic right now. In a pandemic, “live free or die” effectively means “live free and kill people.” Is that really the kind of freedom we cherish?

The bottom line is that my right to do what I want, when I want, doesn’t outweigh my responsibility to my fellow Americans. Not when there’s a pandemic raging through the country. I sacrifice for the greater good because I am part of that greater good. I recognize that our collective freedom in the long run is more important than my individual freedom in the moment, and I take personal responsibility by doing my part to ensure our collective freedom.

We stay distanced because we’re connected, and we isolate because we are not islands. And as John Donne wrote later in his poem, we see ourselves in one another and acknowledge what our essential oneness means as we watch the statistics rise:

“Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.“

Teams across the league are gearing up for the 2020-2021 campaign, and with the new NBA season just around the corner, the media is getting a closer look at what’s going on behind the scenes as players and coaches prepare themselves for another 82-game grind in the perpetual quest for championship glory.

Many good and entertaining things can happen during media availability week, as spirits are still high and in the mode of maintaining a light atmosphere, which sometimes also results in candid and revealing moments that might not normally happen in the thick of the season.

It’s also the time for teams to let their marketing department get creative and drum up some excitement for what’s to come. Take the Washington Wizards, for example, who decided to build off the theme of what has been a contentious election cycle in America, tapping CNN’s John King and Wolf Blitzer as a quirky way to introduce their schedule for the coming season, with a little help from the election map so many of us have been staring into like the abyss.

It’s NBA Season in America!

Let’s go to @wolfblitzer and @JohnKingCNN for more.@CNN | @CapitalOne pic.twitter.com/AwYO2sQ0gL

— Washington Wizards (@WashWizards) December 4, 2020

It was the perfect gimmick for a team that is at the epicenter of the electoral process, executed brilliantly by the two CNN election stalwarts, who played it with a straight face from start to finish.

The Wizards, of course, made other headlines this week when they traded John Wall to the Rockets for Russell Westbrook, closing the chapter on an era that was once so filled with potential but had been derailed by injuries. But with a fresh start, Washington is hoping to get back into contention and secure the “votes” (wins) they need to secure the “White House” (NBA title).

Fans of Rico Nasty and Big Mouth alike were in for a treat Friday. Not only did Rico Nasty drop her highly-anticipated debut album Nightmare Vacation, but Netflix released the fourth season of Big Mouth — and some dedicated fans picked up on a sly homage to popular musicians in the show.

The season has been out for less than a day, but it didn’t take fans long to spot a reference to their favorite singers in the show. It appeared in a scene halfway through the second episode of season four when Missy sits in her cousins’ bedroom while they teach her about Black culture. During their conversation, fans spotted an Easter egg: Missy’s cousins had their walls plastered with cartoon posters for SZA, Rico Nasty, Killer Mike, and Angela Davis.

None of the musicians have addressed their short cameo in the animated series just yet, but Rico Nasty has clearly had a big day. Speaking about the release of Nightmare Vacation in a recent interview with Uproxx, the rapper said she hasn’t yet claimed a genre:

“Obviously, we don’t know what [my genre] is now because it’s only been three years of rapping. It’s because they’re just unfamiliar with it, but 10 years down the line, it’ll be a trail of what this is. It could be punk, it could be a bunch of things. But I say I don’t resonate with those things, because rather than putting me in those things, I would rather people just watch and see what happens. Because I change a lot, so you never know what it could be. Just appreciate it for what it is.”

Check out the Rico Nasty, SZA, and City Girls reference on Big Mouth above.

Nightmare Vacation is out now via Sugar Trap/Atlantic. Get it here.

Rico Nasty is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Today marked a big win for marijuana… Look, we know we’ve been saying that a lot lately, but weed just keeps winning as our favorite psychoactive plant slowly (but surely) makes its way toward full legalization. This week’s win comes out of the United States House of Representatives (we told you it was big!), which voted to decriminalize and tax marijuana at the federal level in a 228-164 win.

According to AP, the bill sets out to officially remove marijuana from a list of federally controlled substances, allow states to still make their own rules and decisions regarding pot, and use money from a new tax on marijuana to help reverse some of the damage done by the decades-long “War on Drugs,” expunging existing federal marijuana convictions and arrests. This is absolutely huge, and the only reason you’re not hearing more about it is that this bill is essentially dead on arrival at the Republican-controlled Senate.

Even though this vote is destined for failure and the votes fell pretty much along party lines with 222 Democrats and just 5 Republicans voting to pass the bill, it’s still an indication that this is where a large portion of the American public’s heads are at when it comes to legalizing weed. Right now, marijuana is legalized in 15 states across the country, with four states voting to increase access medically or recreationally in 2020 elections alone. So make no mistake, weed will be legalized in America in our lifetimes.

Hold up if there’s this much broad public support for marijuana, why is this bill destined for failure in the senate?

Because of Mitch McConnell. Not only has the Senate Majority leader already mocked the bill in deflections over the Senate’s inaction on a Coronavirus relief bill, sarcastically calling the marijuana bill “serious and important legislation befitting this national crisis,” but he’s let similar weed-related bills die on the Senate floor by never offering them up for a vote, like a bill passed in the House last year that would give pot businesses access to traditional banking services.

Could a handful of Republicans and all of the Democrats in the Senate get this bill to pass? It’s possible, but McConnell will never put it up for a vote to begin with.

So then all hope is lost?

Nope. On January 5th Georgia will enter a special runoff election to decide which two senators will represent the state. If both Democrats win, control of the Senate will go to the Democratic party, Mitch McConnell won’t be Speaker of the House anymore, and this bill will surely pass. That means Republicans have essentially put marijuana on the ballot in the Georgia runoff election, which has got to be the dumbest political misstep by the Republican party since… well, you know.

TLDR: If you’re a Georgia resident who doesn’t give two f*cks about politics and you just wish you could get high in your state legally, you’ll get there a lot faster by voting for the democrats on January 5th.

One of the major themes that arose out of World War II was how America’s national character helped propel the Allies to victory over the Axis powers. Americans came together and sacrificed by either picking up a rifle and heading “over there” or on the homefront, they did whatever they could to help the war effort.

They bought bonds. They turned their businesses into factories. They rationed items such as meat, dairy, fruits, shortening, cars, firewood, and gasoline.

After living through nine months of COVID-19, one wonders whether today’s Americans would be adult enough to make the sacrifices necessary to win such a war.

While many people have sacrificed during the pandemic, for some, getting them to social distance and wear a mask has been like pulling teeth. This reluctance to sacrifice for the common good has led to tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths.

Courtney Farrar lost his father Dr. Marvin Farr, 81, to COVID-19 on December 1, and used his obituary to illustrate the difference in attitudes between those of the “Greatest Generation” and the selfish anti-maskers he believes contributed to his father’s death.

“He was preceded in death by more than 260,000 Americans infected with covid-19. He died in a room not his own, being cared for by people dressed in confusing and frightening ways. He died with covid-19, and his final days were harder, scarier and lonelier than necessary. He was not surrounded by friends and family.”

via Tim Dennell / Flickr

The obituary draws a sharp comparison between those who heard the call of duty when their country needed them versus many today who confuse inconvenience for tyranny.

“He was born into an America recovering from the Great Depression and about to face World War 2, times of loss and sacrifice difficult for most of us to imagine. Americans would be asked to ration essential supplies and send their children around the world to fight and die in wars of unfathomable destruction. He died in a world where many of his fellow Americans refuse to wear a piece of cloth on their face to protect one another.”

Marvin Farr had a doctorate in veterinary science, which stands in sharp contrast to those who’ve chosen to promote the spread of the virus.

“He chose life over death. The science that guided his professional life has been disparaged and abandoned by so many of the same people who depended on his knowledge to care for their animals and to raise their food.”

After the obituary went viral, Courtney lashed out at those who’ve played down the deadly virus.

“I’ve spent most of this year hearing people from my hometown talk about how this disease isn’t real, isn’t that bad, only kills old people, masks don’t work, etc,” he wrote on Facebook. “And because of the prevalence of those attitudes, my father’s death was so much harder on him, his family and his caregivers than it should have been. Which is why this obit is written as it is.”

He also pushed back against those who criticized him for turning his father’s obituary into a political statement.

“Well, his death was political,” Courtney Farr wrote. “He died in isolation with an infectious disease that is causing a national crisis. To pretend otherwise or to obfuscate is also a political decision.”

Courtney Farr isn’t the only person to use a family member’s obituary to speak out against those responsible for spreading the pandemic.

In July, Stacey Nagy, 72, blamed the death of her husband, David W. Nagy, 79, on President Trump, Texas Governor Greg Abott, and “the many ignorant, self-centered and selfish people” who refuse to wear a mask.

“Dave did everything he was supposed to do, but you did not,” Stacey Nagy, 72, wrote in the tribute to her husband. “Shame on all of you, and may Karma find you all!”

“Family members believe David’s death was needless,” the obituary reads. “They blame his death and the deaths of all other innocent people, on Trump, Abbott and all of the other politicians who did not take this pandemic seriously and were more concerned with their popularity and votes than lives.”

When the history of America’s reaction to COVID-19 is written, the story won’t be about how America’s heroic national character shone through and helped the country beat the disease.

Sadly, it’ll be about how a lot of Americans didn’t stand up and sacrifice for their communities’ health and refused to listen to science until it came up with a vaccine, then they were all ears.

Young MA proved herself a talented MC well before she first arrived on the scene with her first mixtape Herstory back in 2017. Ever since, she’s been perfecting her flow through her 22-track debut LP, an EP, and a handful of singles. But despite her success, Young MA has also dealt with the occasional run-in with police. Per a report, Young MA was recently arrested and charged with reckless driving.

According to a report from TheShadeRoom, Young MA was arrested for reckless driving around 3 a.m. on Friday morning. Apparently, the rapper was apprehended and charged but has reportedly since been released.

The report mentions that Young MA has yet to confirm the arrest. However, TheShadeRoom seems to think she addressed the situation when she posted an Instagram photo Friday which shows her sipping on a drink and flipping the bird.

In other Young MA news, the rapper has released a handful of projects this year. This week, the rapper appeared on Pornhub’s Christmas mixtape XXXMas where she delivered a song titled “Stuff Our Stockings Santa.”

Before that, Young MA tapped Eminem to kick off her Always Me Radio show. The two discussed Young MA’s 2020 EP Red Flu, where he admitted to being on his third listen-through of the project. “I’m still catching [bars]… When you get your punchlines or however your writing process is, you can always tell somebody who has studied the game and who is a student of it… Your punchlines don’t sound like setups. They sound like punchline after punchline after punchline. That requires a lot of skill and a lot of thought.”

After taking a week off for the Thanksgiving holiday, our column — and hip-hop — is coming back with a vengeance this week.

Not only did Rico Nasty make her long-awaited debut, but returning favorites Aminé and Blxst dropped deluxe versions of their stellar projects, adding new tracks with features from Saba and Ty Dolla Sign. Meanwhile, a plethora of up-and-coming artists also contributed to the week’s glut of new albums, including Che Noir and Yung Baby Tate (proving that women are in the genre’s driver seat to close out the year).

Unfortunately, one of the tracks we were most looking forward to including was pushed back — then accidentally made available on Apple Music anyway, leading to an outburst from the artist. Happily, a few more tracks came out from all corners of the hip-hop world to make up the difference.

Here is the best of hip-hop this week ending December 4, 2020.

Albums

Aminé — Limbo (Deluxe)

The reissue of Aminé’s outstanding sophomore album includes new songs featuring Saba, Valee, and Unknown Mortal Orchestra.

Blxst — No Love Lost (Deluxe)

Blxst’s deluxe album adds fellow West Coast favorites Dom Kennedy and Ty Dolla Sign, as well as Blxst’s go-to collab pal, Bino Rideaux.

Che Noir — After 12

Producing all seven tracks herself, the Buffalo bomber caps a year that saw her become every bit as prolific as her hometown peers in Griselda.

Dave B — Delicate

The Seattle somnambulist offers up another dreamy collection of relatable, late-night musings after 2019’s Bleu.

DJ Scheme — Family

South Florida rabble-rouser DJ Scheme corrals an impressive diverse chorus of talents that expand his rebellious thrash-rap into new territory.

Drakeo The Ruler — We Know The Truth

Free from Men’s County jail after a three-year ordeal, Drakeo returned on a hot streak thanks to GlobalTel Link.

Rico Nasty — Nightmare Vacation

Read our digital cover story on the DMV punk-rap punisher here.

TisaKorean — Wasteland

All off-kilter humor and hummable melodies, the irreverent Houston rapper follows up 2019’s Soapy Club with 14 songs of carefree party rap.

YFN Lucci — Wish Me Well 3: Me Against The World

Atlanta’s own returns with more syrupy street anthems featuring Mozzy, Mulatto, Rick Ross, and more.

Your Old Droog — Dump YOD: Krutoy Edition

Paying homage to his cultural heritage, the Brooklyn-based former Nas soundalike drops one of his most personal projects to date.

Yung Baby Tate — After The Rain

Said to have been recorded in the aftermath of a bad breakup (by text, no less), Yung Baby Tate’s latest is a defiant declaration of independence.

Singles/Videos

DC The Don — “Worst Day”

Drawing inspiration from Napoleon Dynamite, Milwaukee rapper DC the Don releases a bouncy track that belies its melancholy subject matter.

Homeboy Sandman — “Waiting On My Girl”

Funny and relatable, the backpack rap mainstay laments the long wait every guy goes through on date night.

Jaah SLT — “Intro/What We Do”

A colorful, discordant punk-rap rager gives way to a boastful and melodic statement of self-reliance.

Jackboy — “Man Down” Feat. Sada Baby

Jackboy flies his Florida flag proudly on this street stomper, reeling off violent rhymes with an urgent, almost desperate delivery.

J.I. — “Excuse My Pain”

New Yorker J.I. has been building a significant buzz by blending precise rhymes with a singsong cadence and cold-blooded storytelling.

Prado — “Men In Black”

Women are even taking over hip-hop in Canada. The Vancouver artist spits dismissive disses at unworthy men over a high-energy beat that stops just shy of EDM BPMs.

Rob Vicious (Shoreline Mafia) — “Crash Dummy”

A menacing banger, the Shoreline Mafia member toes the line between party and gangsta rap, warning would-be haters not to step to him.

Sheff G — “No Negotiations”

The Brooklyn drill movement grows again with a bruising anthem that has all the makings of an underground hit.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Trump’s legal “Strike Force” continues to make noise in key swing states, hoping to reverse the results of the 2020 Presidential Election in court, but their latest claim of voter fraud in Georgia looks to have already been debunked — by members of their own party.

Jenna Ellis, a member of Trump’s legal team, appeared on Fox Business on Friday morning to rehash conspiracy theories about fake ballots being counted for President-elect Joe Biden, votes that helped him swing the state blue. Ellis told host Maria Bartiromo that Trump’s team, led by Rudy Giuliani, had uncovered “shocking” video footage of election workers wheeling out “suitcases” full of ballots after hours at the State Farm Arena in Fulton County where ballot-counting took place on November 3rd.

In the video, Ellis claims you can see multiple workers who stayed despite being told to go home, transporting containers of ballots to be scanned and counted, ballots that were shoved under what looks like a counting table.

“Absolutely shocking, Maria,” Ellis says in the clip. “What happened is that at about 10:30 at night in that voting center location, the election officials told everyone to just go home, stop counting. And then four people remained behind. And you can see from the video that they reached under a table, and took out four big boxes of ballots, and kept scanning them through, through the night.”

The only problem with this crackpot theory is that it’s already been called on its bullsh*t — and by Fox News reporters and Republican officials, no less.

Georgia’s election implementation manager, Republican Gabriel Sterling, took to Twitter to put out the fire, assuring the public that his office, as well as Georgia Secretary of State investigators, spent hours combing through the security footage in question and found nothing alarming about the counting process.

Frances Watson, the chief investigator for the Georgia secretary of state office, also confirmed to fact-checking site Lead Stories that those “suitcases” were actually just average containers you’d expect to hold ballots, and they were empty while sitting under the table.

“There wasn’t a bin that had ballots in it under that table,” Watson said. “It was an empty bin and the ballots from it were actually out on the table when the media were still there, and then it was placed back into the box when the media were still there and placed next to the table.”

As for certain workers leaving while others remained throughout the night, there’s a perfectly normal reason for that too — for anyone familiar with the vote-counting process. The workers who were told to leave were “cutters,” whose job is to open absentee ballot envelopes and verify ballots before they’re scanned. They don’t actually count the votes though, which is what Ellis suggested. The workers who stayed are in charge of scanning and counting and once ballots are open, they must be counted — which is why those people couldn’t leave and continued working through the night. According to Watson, the media and the public were never told to leave, telling Lead Stories that the location “was still open for them or the public to come back in to view at whatever time they wanted to, as long as [election workers] were still working.”

And one of Fox News’ own, reporter Griff Jenkins, verified that claim.

“I just got off the phone with a senior source in the Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office, a Republican, who tells me that they had a designated observer at that spot all night, the entire time, and they’ve seen this video, they’re familiar with the claims, and they said that they’re simply not true,” Jenkins said in a report on Friday morning. “The suggestion that Georgia vote-counters were sent home and ballots were brought in in suitcases, also not true.”

Plus, and this is just pure speculation on our part, wouldn’t people who were trying to commit voter fraud to influence an election try to keep as much of their illegal activity as possible off-camera? If you’re going to do some conspiracy theorizing, at least make it worth our time.

One of Donald Trump‘s most loyal supporters and former campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, has broken from the president’s rhetoric and publicly admitted that Joe Biden won the 2020 election. In a new interview, Conway spoke candidly about Biden and Kamala Harris’ victory, which is in stark contrast to the messaging coming out of the White House. However, Conway did take pains to put Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results in a generous light. Via The 19th:

“The president wants to exhaust all of his legal avenues, as he has made clear many times. His team is doing that, and that is his right,” Conway said in an interview with The 19th’s Washington correspondent, Amanda Becker, that aired Friday. “If you look at the vote totals in the Electoral College tally, it looks like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will prevail. I assume the electors will certify that and it will be official. We, as a nation, will move forward, because we always do.”

In another surprising move, Conway offered her services to the incoming Biden administration before once again breaking from Trump by emphasizing the importance of a peaceful transition. “You always need a peaceful transfer of democracy, no matter whose administration goes into whose administration.” It should also be noted that Trump has pretty much run out of “legal avenues” and some of his deranged loyalists are now nudging him to “suspend” the Constitution and declare martial law and order a new election, but who’s counting?!

As of this writing, Trump has yet to lash out at Conway’s seeming betrayal on Twitter.

You can see a clip of Conway’s remarks below:

While Conway’s acceptance of Biden’s win is notable, she’s not the first high-profile member of Team Trump to acknowledge the reality of the election results. Earlier in the week, Attorney General Bill Barr contradicted the president’s legal team by telling the Associated Press that the Department of Justice has found no evidence of widespread voter fraud. “To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election,” Barr said.

(Via The 19th)

Kyler Murray and I were supposed to talk about Call of Duty, but the rigors of the NFL season narrows the time to game once the weeks hit double digits. Murray, who regularly streams Call of Duty and as an avid Warzone fan, mentioned several times during our talk that he plays “every day,” but what he seemed to mean was “normally.” In the offseason, that is, not when the second year quarterback is doing everything he can to get the Arizona Cardinals to the postseason.

That means a focus on football, the sport he determined to play after a well-documented flirtation with baseball. So far, that move has been a wise one, as he’s thrived under (or several yards behind) center in his first two seasons as a pro. An electrifying passer and runner, Murray has justified the hopes of Cardinals brass by embracing the quarterback position and delivering breathtaking plays and miraculous last-ditch victories this season alone.

He wasn’t very interested in talking about miracles on Monday, though. His Cardinals had just lost on a last-second field goal on a rainy day in Western Massachusetts, dropping Arizona to 6-5 on the year. Football season is the busy time of year for Murray, of course, and it’s hard not to let the weekly results stay with you when they don’t go your way.

Two weeks ago, Murray pulled off what will likely be the play of the year this NFL season: a last-second Hail Mary to DeAndre Hopkins in the end zone to beat the Buffalo Bills. But success in football is fleeting, and the next two games were close losses for the Cardinals that made joy of improbable victory short-lived.

But in talking with Uproxx Sports, he had some interesting things to say about what you can learn from losing, his interest in gaming and maybe even Esports and what year two in the NFL has been like for one of the most exciting players in the game.

I know you’re right in the middle of the season but I know you’re a huge Warzone fan and wanted to see if you had a chance to play Cold War yet?

I usually play every day. I haven’t really gotten a chance to play the new one, but I play Warzone every day. I just haven’t dove into Cold War yet.

What do you think it is about Call of Duty and maybe Warzone in particular that is so attractive to athletes? I think other than sports sims like NBA 2K and Madden, this is the game I hear guys talking about more than anything else.

Honestly, I think it’s just the camaraderie. It’s a fun game for everybody to play. Me and my boys play every day, we have a friendly competition but at the same time it’s a thing everybody gets to do together. So I think that’s why everybody loves it so much.

Do you have a gaming setup you bring on the road with you? I know especially this season there’s a lot of downtime when you travel to road games, do you bring a system with you?

Nah. Especially with COVID, obviously in the hotel that’s all we can do so that would be a good time to. But me playing quarterback, I don’t ever bring the system unfortunately.

What have you been spending your time with on the road? Are you finding new hobbies or reading more or really just focusing on game plans and the task at hand?

Obviously we’re in the thick of the season and every game matters. Unfortunately we just lost yesterday, obviously. But for me, you know, I play quarterback so my time is spent more so just game plan, taking care of my body, eating right. Then off the field, whoever I have time, all I can do is really game and sit in the house.

This offseason has been one of the weirder in recent memory, but for you it was the first where you only had football to focus on. Did that ability to focus help things this summer?

As far as like the play?

Yeah, in prepping for a season. You didn’t have to worry about baseball or anything but playing for the Cardinals. I was wondering if you noticed a difference in your offseason with just one thing to focus on?

Yeah, like you said, this was really my first offseason to really focus on football with playing other sports, which I think was good for me. I also think the natural maturation of going into year two, having played all 16 games last year, seeing all the things I probably could have saw in my rookie year. Having lots of ups and downs, going into this year, I think there was expected to be a jump. I know me, personally, I expected to be a lot better and I think we have been a lot better. Obviously, like I said, we’re in the thick of the season. We’ve kind of let a couple slip that we thought we should have won. But, individually, I’ve played a lot better than I did last year. But I expected to, obviously, going into year two. It was another year to grow and get better.

I wanted to ask about your wideouts. You’re playing with Larry Fitzgerald, who has been a longtime NFL vet. Is there anything you’ve learned from him that’s helped you make that leap in year two?

Fitz, he’s like a big brother. He doesn’t really kind of school me on the field, he kinda knows I have that natural feel for the game. I love the game. He more so, everything he tries to teach me has been off the field. And I think that’s just a testament to the type of guy that he is.

Comfort when you’re a young quarterback is so important, that ability to trust who you’re throwing to will make a play for you. Obviously you got a big boost with Deandre Hopkins this year, and I’m thinking about the Hail Mary against the Bills a few weeks back. Does it change your confidence in that kind of play knowing you have a guy like Hopkins to throw it to?

Yeah, I mean, me personally I think he’s the best in the league. He’s one of those guys that you just have to give him a chance, put the ball anywhere in his vicinity and good things happen. Acquiring him, it changes the whole dynamic of our offense. We got a lot better the day we got him, so I’m glad he’s on my team.

When a play like that happens, I know everyone always asks ‘What is your reaction?’ But it’s been a bit of time now, have you been able to reflect on how improbable it was or was it easy to sort of just move on to the next game?

Honestly, it was a quick turnaround. We really didn’t have much of a choice but to get over it because we played the Seahawks that next Thursday. So, that’s a divisional game and that was a crucial game that obviously we came up short in. We didn’t get time to dwell on it or really soak it in. It kind of just happened, and I was just as surprised as probably everybody watching it was. But it’s obviously a cool deal.

You’re taking part in the My Cause, My Cleats campaign for the NFL and I wanted to ask about the design you picked. You’re working with the Call of Duty Endowment and I know you said it was in part because of your grandfather.

My initial reason, like you said, my grandfather served in the army and the navy. He was close to me, close to my mother. And the Call of Duty Endowment charity helps veterans secure high-quality jobs after their service, which is hard to find. So that was the main reason why.

I wanted to ask about doing these sort of promotional things and work during your pro career. Have you gotten used to this kind of stuff or has the pandemic made it a bit different this year?

Yeah, I’ve done a couple things throughout this season and having to do everything through Zoom and not being able to meet or talk to people in person, it’s all been different. I think everybody had to be very versatile through this time, but we all understand the circumstances and the challenges. But it’s been fun, it’s been weird but like I said, it’s a unique situation and I’ve just tried to make the most of it.

I wanted to ask about the Cardinals and this season. You’ve been one of the more exciting teams in the league to watch. How satisfying has it been to work with Kliff Kingsbury and put in place a system that’s maybe defied some expectations among NFL skeptics?

Yeah, man, you’re catching me at a bad time because we started off hot and now, like I said, we’ve let a couple games slip away that we feel we should have won. I’ll tell you this: it’s not easy to win in this league. Like you said as far as the offense being exciting the team being exciting, we have a lot of great talent, a lot of great coaches, a lot of great guys in the locker room. But as of late, we’ve just gotta find a way to finish. I guess as far as excitement goes, I definitely think we’re one of the more exciting teams in the league, but that doesn’t matter much in my eyes.

OK, this is the part of the interview where I reveal that I’m a Buffalo Bills fan.

[laughs]

Obviously that Hail Mary was tough for me, but I have to say it’s one thing I’ve learned is when you have a player on your team who can do something like that, losing games in tough ways somehow feels better because you feel like you can win games like that, too. I wonder if that same thing translates into the locker room, too? When you know you have a talented team, when you know you have great players, is it easier to bounce back from tough losses because you feel you can do the same thing to other teams?

Man, honestly no. The close ones sting the most. Like yesterday, just the way the game kinda turned out, I don’t know if you got to watch it or see it. That stings. Then you have to get on a five hour flight back to Arizona and all you’re thinking about is the loss and maybe what we could have done differently.

And obviously the Bills were in the same boat. They had 45 seconds, you think you have the game wrapped up and we throw a Hail Mary. Hop catches it, and then they’re on a five hour flight back to Buffalo. So it’s crazy how the game works.

Is there something to learn from that? I know there’s always a cliche that you can learn from tough losses, but is that true? Or is it just something to endure, and you overcome it and try again next time? Are there actual lessons to find in losing?

Man, I’m not a big fan of losing. I will say I think there are in some cases. I think you have to learn from every loss, but not make it a thing. I don’t want to make losing a thing. But I guess you can say there’s something to learn from a loss.

I wanted to ask about Warzone again. Any favorite modes or guys you like to hook up with? Any teammates that are good?

Yeah, Warzone is my favorite if we’re talking Battle Royale. But if it’s multiplayer, I grew up playing Search and Destroy.

As far as teammates, Chase Edmonds, he’s good. Christian Kirk, Chandler Jones. We got a lot of Warzone players, or Call of Duty players on my team. So we all like to talk crap to each other.

Have you taken any interest in Call of Duty League or ever thought about investing in esports? I know a number of athletes that are big gamers have taken that step.

Oh, for sure. We might have something on the way that I can’t really speak on yet, but in the offseason I play every day. If I wasn’t an athlete, I’d probably be a gamer.