We Must Establish The Run Against Authoritarianism

Football knowers have told me for years and years that it’s the only way to play against modern defenses: Tough, physical play designed to matriculate the football a few arduous yards at a time, blocking and pushing and banging until, at last, you’ve reached the end zone paint. 

If a defense is begging you to run the ball, these football knowers have told me, you simply run the ball. 

I’ve usually responded to this run-the-damn-ball edict with revulsion, a reflexive rejection of a decidedly old-school approach to the game that (I thought) was outdated, outmoded, irrelevant. As a species, I argued, we’ve moved beyond such gridiron drudgery. But a high-speed evolution of football defenses over the past half decade or so has made run establishment cool again. All the run-game hipsters who grumbled in the shadows during the height of Patrick Mahomes’ reign of terror want you to know they were right all along. Because, sadly for me, they were. Mahomes' Chiefs stink now largely because they can't run the ball.

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The premise of the establish-the-run ethos is that enough effective rushing – moving opponents backward and advancing the football in the most physical manner possible – will both tire out the opposing defense and force them to draw closer to the line of scrimmage to stop the run, at which point you simply uncork an aggressive pass and enjoy your chunk gain. Forget for a moment that all objective analysis says establishing the run does not, in fact, open up the passing game, and that establishing the pass actually opens running lanes. It feels right, and that is what’s important. 

I held on to the idea that NFL offenses could eschew the run in favor of an ultra pass-heavy approach because I – like a lot of football fans – dig the deep ball, I like the quick strike downfield, I’m very much into passing on first downs and going for it on fourth downs and everything else favored by the radical Spreadsheet Warrior Agenda. The 2025 season was a rough one for these warriors, as eight of the 14 NFL postseason teams had a bottom-half pass rate. Six of those teams could be considered truly run heavy. Seven of the league's 14 postseason teams finished in the top half of the NFL in rush EPA. Only one of the ten pass-heaviest teams (the Chargers) made it to the playoffs. Only one truly awful running team (the Texans) clinched a postseason berth.

Establishing the run, for the most part, was the way to go in 2025. Woe unto the analytics nerds. 

Ridding Ourselves Of The Little Fascist Within

In these times of creeping societal decay we should do what we can to see ourselves in the light of day and ask why we might accidentally align with the values of a fascist movement we vehemently oppose.

Bad Faith TimesDenny Carter

As I reel over the smoldering rubble of my football priors, I think there’s a lesson to be learned here about patience, about chipping away, about small acts of relentlessly pushing forward, lessons the good folks of Minnesota are learning in real time during life under Trump’s occupation. 

Spencer Hall, also known as Bum Chillups on Bluesky, the official app of sports, has said it more than a few times in America’s era of what’s known as competitive authoritarianism: We must establish the run against the bad guys. On the surface it’s a joke, a funny nod to football culture as Americans are besieged by fascist overreach at every turn. 

I think there’s something there though. What would establishing the run against authoritarianism look like? What would it mean to run the goddamn football against a defense that has endless money and weapons and does not observe any rules of the game? 

First and most importantly, there is no passing on this fascist defense. Like most modern defenses, they have two safeties playing twenty yards off the line of scrimmage. They have effectively eliminated the big play. In fact, if you look closely, they have three safeties playing deep, creating a hardened shell against the big downfield play. Maybe there's a fourth safety down there somewhere. I don't know.

What I do know is that there will be no quick way to score against this defense. There is no path to a quick and decisive electoral or judicial defeat that stops them and their private, unaccountable army from doing bad shit to good people. The defense we face today is going to make damn sure we earn it, one grueling yard at a time. This defense has made it clear: If you want to beat us, you’re going to have to grind us down. 

So that’s what we have to be willing to do. Americans opposed to the authoritarian terror campaign that is only ramping up have to be ready and willing to do the small stuff, the stuff that doesn’t make SportsCenter. It's the little stuff that makes a running play successful, just as it's the little stuff that creates an environment in which fascism cannot survive. It's the tight end chipping the edge rusher. It's the fullback going headlong into a linebacker with hate in his eyes. It's the quarterback getting his precious hands dirty with a block when the runner meets resistance and reverses field. It's the exhausted rusher lunging for that extra yard with someone wrapped around his legs.

"The idea is that running the ball isn’t about the results initially, it’s more of an attitude and a commitment to showing up to fight incrementally and at a very immediate and tangible level," Spencer Hall, cohost of the Shutdown Fullcast. "But ultimately, those small tenacious and repeated acts of small coordinated resistance crack the dam.

"Everything else," Hall added, "plays off of them, including the big plays you get later on."

Enough little things done consistently and correctly leads to the bigger things – the shifts in public perception, the waking of the politically asleep. Then the mission can be fulfilled, the madness and the dehumanization and state-sponsored terror can be wiped away, though never forgotten.

The people of Minnesota are doing the little things. Unlike their hometown Vikings under head coach Kevin O'Connell, these folks are establishing the fucking run against the ICE goons that have invaded their neighborhoods in hopes of ethnically cleansing the place while creating some good social media content and maybe even starting riots that can serve as pretext for their boss to bring down the Insurrection Act hammer on a state that dared not vote for him in any of the past three presidential elections.

It doesn't take long to find a thousand different ways in which everyday folks have come together to establish the run against the fascist menace on their streets. Whistles meant to alert people to the president's secret police are selling by the thousands; people are doing laundry for immigrants in their communities as ICE agents break down the doors to local laundromats; parents are patrolling near local school buildings, watching out for secret police in unmarked vehicles looking to viciously assault and abduct local children; regular folks are making meals for immigrant families hiding from the extrajudicial paramilitary force observing no constitutional limits; and protesters are defending their neighborhoods by pouring water on freezing streets and sidewalks, creating hazards for slip-prone secret police who lack that Minnesota Winter Dawg in them.

Every small act, every whistle blown and every meal made and every laundry basket washed and every kid kept safe from the pedophile president's personal police force – all of it constitutes run establishment. They add up, and they add up quickly.

Flowers, Minnesota protesters have pointed out, grow in shit. "I don’t think those fuckers were ready for all of this and how quickly we mobilized," one protester told Flaming Hydra.

Clergy members from across the US have flocked to Minnesota to protest the president's terror campaign against the state because they know evil when they see it and they understand their presence can help establish the goddamn run. While elected Democrats continue to shovel money into the president's personal police force and local Minnesota elected leaders like Amy Klobuchar pay no mind to the invasion of their state and the state-sponsored attacks on their constituents, the people have responded in ways that you should find heartening and inspiring.

If you want to help establish it with a small act today, consider sending a few bucks to the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, which has run into unprecedented demand for services amid the occupation of Minneapolis. Maybe talk to a nonpolitical friend or family member about what's happening in Minnesota, and why it's about to go nationwide. Be patient, be kind, know that the coming months and years will require strange and uncomfortable allies. You can try today to pull a friend or loved one away from the fascist poison of Elon Musk's X platform and urge them to check out Bluesky and its newfound place as the official app of sports. Pull them from the fascist muck that becomes so terribly normalized for those who scroll all day every day on Musk's propaganda machine. If they must be logged on, they might as well be logged on to a pro-democracy social media platform that includes sports, and lots of it.

The run is established one act at a time. Something good can come from this shit. That much is undeniable.

Establish The Anti-Fascist Mindset

Establishing the run isn’t just an on-field strategy for taking advantage of light defensive boxes and high safety coverages. Establishing the run is a frame of mind. Offenses that want to be a run-first unit view themselves as the dominator. They ache for the glory of the defense succumbing to their superiority and toughness and determination. They want nothing more than for the opposition to crumble, knowing Derrick Henry is once again barreling toward them like a freight train with no brakes.

We, in turn, must embrace an establish-the-run mindset and say no, our opponent is not a fully-consolidated authoritarian regime with control over every lever of government and business and culture. 

No, 2024 did not mark the end of history, and the electorate that picked a criminal fascist to return to the White House was not permanent, but a mirage. Buying into their social media illusions makes their domination real. Fascism requires acquiescence from its enemies and opponents. Their terrible little secret is that they can't make their best-laid plans real unless you allow them. Like Dracula asking to come into the house, they require your permission.

Running the damn ball means we outright reject their posturing as an indomitable Leviathan. This rejection will make them mad. We see this when the president's secret police brutalize an animal mascot dancing in the streets as an act of laughtivism against the authoritarian monsters marauding lawlessly through the streets on Minneapolis.

A protester dressed as a fox was saying publicly for millions online to see that they did not believe the lie that an unstoppable autocratic machine had taken hold of the United States, and the president's private soldiers were upset about this. The assault of this fuzzy dancing fox was both galling and a stunning act of weakness, and like all effective acts of laughtivism, it put the guys with guns into a lose-lose situation while simultaneously making them look small and impossibly ridiculous. It was an admission that these guys do not have the control they claim to have. Shoutout to the fox for exposing them so thoroughly.

The fox refused to give into autocratic despair. Be like the fox. Establish the run.

Follow Denny Carter on Bluesky at @dennycarter.bsky.social.