Culture
NFL offensive linemen Christmas gifts ranked: Do QBs, teams benefit from their generosity?
Offensive linemen have the most thankless job in the NFL. Go stand in that guy’s way, and if you do a good job, we’ll never talk about it. Screw up and, best case, we’ll publicly shame you. Or we’ll blame you for a loss or injury.
The big lugs need a hug, and that’s why they look forward to the holiday season. Their rich quarterbacks — and sometimes the running backs — reward offensive linemen for their blood, sweat and tears with lavish gifts for Christmas. While they’re not always shared with the public or annoying media types, we were able to compile our list of the top 10 gifts from this year, plus a couple of honorable mentions. (The bottom of the list is best left to one’s imagination, and we were not able to confirm our theory that Houston Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud gave his offensive linemen some rocks to kick.)
Did the quarterbacks, and teams, get immediate dividends from the offensive linemen for their generosity? Let’s take a look at the best gifts along with how those teams fared in Week 17.
1. Cincinnati Bengals
Week 17 result: Beat Denver Broncos 30-24
Joe Burrow asked his linemen what they wanted, and when some said guns, it got him thinking about the coolest weapon — and samurai swords were the obvious answer.
“Samurai swords, I think, are pretty dang cool,” he told reporters.
He bought authentic Japanese Katana swords, each having a unique backstory of a town or battle, lined them up in a room and had the linemen pick.
“Joe does a great job at buying gifts that are extremely meaningful,” left tackle Orlando Brown Jr. told reporters. “The fact that he bought me a sword, it’s the most ancient form of respect.”
“My favorite gift I’ve ever gotten by far because it’s so different,” guard Alex Cappa added.
Burrow was sacked seven times in the Bengals’ overtime win over the Broncos on Saturday, so maybe less pretend sword fights this week, guys.
2. Green Bay Packers
Week 17 result: Lost to Minnesota Vikings 27-25
Running back Josh Jacobs wrapped up customized diamond pendants for his 12 offensive linemen. They were commissioned by ZoFrost and Co., a custom jewelry maker based in Houston.
Jacobs is having a huge season but was held to 69 yards and a touchdown on 17 carries in the loss to the Vikings. The Packers did score the last 15 points of the game to make it close, so maybe it just took the linemen a while to stop squinting from all the bling.
3. Philadelphia Eagles
Week 17 result: Beat Dallas Cowboys 41-17
Running back Saquon Barkley, who is vying for the NFL rushing record, was smart and went in with quarterback Jalen Hurts on gifts for the linemen. They bought each one a personalized golf cart, customized with the player’s last name and number. And, of course, the logos for Hurts and Barkley on the back. After all, what’s the point of a gift if there isn’t a constant reminder of who got it for you?
Jalen Hurts and Saquon Barkley’s joint holiday gifts to the #Eagles offensive line arrived earlier today. They bought each lineman a personalized golf cart with their last name and number on it. Hurts and Barkley’s logos are on the back. #FlyEaglesFly | #Eagles 🎅🎄🎁 pic.twitter.com/5kQLLsdRmo
— Quay L.Jones🦅 #FlyEaglesFly (13-3) (@QuayLJones3) December 24, 2024
4. San Francisco 49ers
Week 17 result: Lost to Detroit Lions 40-34
Brock Purdy was also smart. He hasn’t gotten his big payday yet, so he turned to corporate sponsorship. Thanks to his friends at Toyota, Purdy gave 10 linemen either a Toyota Sequoia or a Toyota Tundra. Though these are the most expensive gifts on the list, we can’t rank them too high since Purdy was more of a middleman.
Santa Purdy 🎅
Brock surprises his O-Line with some new wheels 🛻 pic.twitter.com/4iYIWs9k3t
— San Francisco 49ers (@49ers) December 20, 2024
5. New York Jets
Week 17 result: Lost to Buffalo Bills 40-14
You can’t dress up a pig, but that doesn’t mean pigs don’t like to clean up nicely every now and then. Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who has had a miserable season, tried to style up the Jets facility. He had a tailor come in and measure the linemen for a custom Tom Ford suit, which they can wear with their new Tom Ford sunglasses and Tom Ford cologne. They also received a Louis Vuitton passport holder.
And if that was all too much for them, Rodgers threw in a stereo speaker and a bottle of Devils River bourbon.
As for the game, Rodgers benched himself in the fourth quarter with the Jets down 40-0. There is no truth to the rumor that one of the lineman at that point yelled out, “Who the eff is Tom Ford?!?”
6. Detroit Lions
Week 17 result: Beat San Francisco 49ers 40-34
After all, offensive linemen are a simple lot. Jewelry? Trucks? Nah. Lions quarterback Jared Goff knew his audience.
“It’s hard when you got guys giving out Toyota trucks to try and keep up with that,” he told reporters, “but I got them a nice Yeti package with a ton of wagyu — steaks and beef. I hope they like it.’”
They did. The only downside is the gift is gone in four days.
7. Pittsburgh Steelers
Week 17 result: Lost to Kansas City Chiefs 29-10
This one should be higher on the list. We are just anti-gift cards. Even if they’re for $10,000 for an Airbnb that can be used worldwide. The Steelers’ Russell Wilson also gave 14 offensive linemen a black and yellow Louis Vuitton duffel bag, custom-made black and yellow Good Man Brand shoes and a bottle of wife Ciara’s Ten To One rum.
The Steelers have lost three games in a row, so clearly vacation-themed gifts were a bad idea.
🎁
From: @DangeRussWilson
To: The offensive line pic.twitter.com/eFXiVZfy4f— Pittsburgh Steelers (@steelers) December 24, 2024
8. Kansas City Chiefs
Week 17 result: Beat Pittsburgh Steelers 29-10
This should be higher on the list, as well. But we’re tired of the Chiefs winning everything. And of Taylor Swift. The Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes gave his bodyguards a red Yeti cooler with a Rolex watch, Oakley sunglasses, Lucchese boots and Normatec recovery boots inside. This after giving them a golf cart last year and a personalized golf bag with clubs the year before.
QB1 spread some Christmas cheer by giving gifts to the o-line 🎁 pic.twitter.com/xASg3iplnX
— Kansas City Chiefs (@Chiefs) December 18, 2024
9. Washington Commanders
Week 17 result: Beat Atlanta Falcons 30-24
Jayden Daniels is impossible to predict on the field, as he can throw it over defenders’ heads or run by them. But when it comes to buying gifts, the Commanders QB kept it simple. He wrapped up electric scooters for his offensive linemen, “so they don’t have to walk around as much,” he told reporters.
10. Los Angeles Chargers
Week 17 result: Beat New England Patriots 40-7
Justin Herbert got his linemen two gift cards, one from Delta Airlines (along with luggage) and one for wagyu beef from Snake River Farms — to keep their minds off their vacation plans.
The Patriots didn’t show up Sunday, so it didn’t really matter for this study what Herbert got his guys.
Justin Herbert gifted the offense lineman with luggage and gift cards.
Here’s Rashawn Slater with a thank you vid: pic.twitter.com/JUXuEyVafL
— Kris Rhim (@krisrhim1) December 24, 2024
Honorable mention
Buffalo Bills
Week 17 result: Beat New York Jets 40-14
In the past, Bills QB Josh Allen gifted his linemen custom scooters, golf clubs and lessons. But his Bills linemen have reversed the trend — since whenever they screw up, Allen just runs by a defensive lineman or trucks a defensive back.
Last year, they gave him an ATV. This season, they decided to let him know what they thought about the pending MVP vote. The linemen gave him a custom diamond necklace of Allen’s No. 17 jersey with “MVP” on the nameplate. The back has the names of the linemen listed. Tackle Dion Dawkins posted the gift on Instagram with the caption, “Merry Christmas to our MVP.”
New York Giants
Beat Indianapolis Colts 45-33
Daniel Jones is living the good life as a practice squad player on the Vikings. But he didn’t forget his former teammates — or hold a grudge for all the beatings they facilitated earlier this season — and sent his old Giants linemen presents. He gifted them a limited edition bottle of Clase Azul tequila. The bottles can range in price from $120 to $19,000.
Here’s hoping the linemen didn’t Google their respective bottles.
Overall record: 8-4
Moral of the story: Big guys like presents.
(Top illustration: Will Tullos / The Athletic; photos of Jalen Hurts, Joe Burrow and Jared Goff: Emilee Chinn, Dylan Buell and Todd Rosenberg / Getty Images)
Maybe you woke up this morning haunted by the first four lines of W.H. Auden’s “The More Loving One” — or tickled by its tongue-in-cheek handling of existential dread. (Not ringing any bells? Click here to begin the Poetry Challenge).
This is a love poem. Perhaps that seems like an obvious thing to say about a poem with “Loving” in its title, but there isn’t much romance in the opening stanza.
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.
Ada Limón, poet
Nonetheless, the poem soon makes clear that love is very much on its mind.
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
David Sedaris, writer
The polished informality gives the impression of a decidedly cerebral speaker — someone who’s looking at love philosophically, thinking about how it works and what it means.
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Reginald Dwayne Betts, poet
Musing this way — arguing in this fashion — he stands in a long line of playful, thoughtful poetic lovers going back at least to the 16th century. He sounds a bit like Christopher Marlowe’s passionate shepherd:
Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That Valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.
Auden’s poem, like Marlowe’s, is written in four-beat lines:
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
Josh Radnor, actor
And it features strong end rhymes:
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Samantha Harvey, writer
These tetrameter couplets represent a long-established poetic love language. Not too serious or sappy, but with room for both earnestness and whimsy. And even for professions of the opposite of love, as in this nursery rhyme, adapted from a 17th-century epigram:
I do not like thee, Doctor Fell
The reason why I cannot tell.
But this I know and know full well
I do not like thee, Doctor Fell.
There is some of this anti-love spirit in Auden’s poem too, but it mainly follows a general rule of love poetry: The person speaking is usually the more loving one.
This makes sense. To write a poem requires effort, art, inspiration. To speak in verse is to tease, to cajole, to seduce, all actions that suggest an excess of desire. That’s why it’s conventional to refer to the “I” in a poem like this as the Lover and the “you” as the Beloved. The line “Let the more loving one be me” could summarize a lot of the love poetry of the last few thousand years.
But who, in this case, is the beloved? This isn’t a poem to the stars, but about them. Or maybe a poem that uses the stars as a conceit and our complicated feelings about them as a screen for other difficult emotions.
What the stars have to do with love is a tricky question. The answer may just be that the poem assumes a relationship and then plays with the implications of its assumption.
This kind of play also has a long history. Since love is both abstract and susceptible to cliché, poets are eager to liken it to everything else under the sun: birds, bees, planets, stars, the movement of the tides and the cycle of the seasons. Andrew Marvell’s “Definition of Love,” from the 1600s, wraps its ardor in math:
As lines, so loves oblique may well
Themselves in every angle greet;
But ours so truly parallel,
Though infinite, can never meet.
The literary term for this is wit. The formidable 18th-century English wordsmith Samuel Johnson defined a type of wit as “a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike.” “The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together,” he wrote; that kind of conceptual discord defines “The More Loving One.”
The second stanza is, when you think about it, a perfect non sequitur. A hypothetical, general question is asked:
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
Mary Roach, writer
The answer is a personal declaration that is moving because it doesn’t seem to apply only or primarily to stars:
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Tim Egan, writer
Does this disjunction make it easier or harder to remember? Either way, these couplets start to reveal just how curious this poem is. We might find ourselves curious about who wrote them, and whom he might have loved. Tomorrow we’ll get to know Auden and his work a little better.
Play a game to learn it by heart. Need more practice? Listen to Ada Limón, Matthew McConaughey, W.H. Auden and others recite our poem.
Question 1/6
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
Tap a word above to fill in the highlighted blank.
Your task today: Learn the second stanza!
Let’s start with the first couplet in this stanza. Fill in the rhyming words.
Ready for another round? Try your hand at the 2025 Poetry Challenge.
Edited by Gregory Cowles, Alicia DeSantis and Nick Donofrio. Additional editing by Emily Eakin,
Joumana Khatib, Emma Lumeij and Miguel Salazar. Design and development by Umi Syam. Additional
game design by Eden Weingart. Video editing by Meg Felling. Photo editing by Erica Ackerberg.
Illustration art direction by Tala Safie.
Illustrations by Daniel Barreto.
Text and audio recording of “The More Loving One,” by W.H. Auden, copyright © by the Estate of
W.H. Auden. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd. Photograph accompanying Auden recording
from Imagno/Getty Images.
Literature
Oedipa Maas from ‘The Crying of Lot 49’ (1966) by Thomas Pynchon
“The unforgettable, cartoonish protagonist of this unusually short novel is a California housewife accidentally turned private investigator and literary interpreter, and the mystery she’s attempting to solve — or, more specifically, the conspiracy she stumbles upon — is nothing less than capitalism itself,” says Ngai, 54. “As Oedipa traces connections between various crackpots, the novel highlights the peculiarly asocial sociality of postwar U.S. society, which gets figured as a network of alienations.”
Sula Peace from ‘Sula’ (1973) by Toni Morrison
“Sula arguably begins to disappear as soon as she’s introduced — despite the fact that the novel bears her name. Other characters die quickly, or are noticeably flat. This raises the politically charged question of who gets to ‘develop’ or be a protagonist in American novels and who doesn’t. The novel’s unusual character system is part of its meditation on anti-Black racism and historical violence.”
The speaker of ‘Lunch Poems’ (1964) by Frank O’Hara
“Lyric poems are fundamentally different from narrative fiction in part because they have speakers as opposed to narrators. Perhaps it’s a stretch to nominate the speaker of ‘Lunch Poems’ as a main character, but this book changed things by highlighting the centrality of queer counterpublics to U.S. culture as a whole, and by exploring the joys and risks of everyday intimacy with strangers therein.”
This interview has been edited and condensed.
More in Literature
See the rest of the issue
Let’s memorize a poem! Not because it’s good for us or because we think we should, but because it’s fun, a mental challenge with a solid aesthetic reward. You can amuse yourself, impress your friends and maybe discover that your way of thinking about the world — or even, as you’ll see, the universe — has shifted a bit.
Over the next five days, we’ll look closely at a great poem by one of our favorite poets, and we’ll have games, readings and lots of encouragement to help you learn it by heart. Some of you know how this works: Last year more Times readers than we could count memorized a jaunty 18-line recap of an all-night ferry ride. (If you missed that adventure, it’s not too late to embark. The ticket is still valid.)
This time, we’re training our telescopes on W.H. Auden’s “The More Loving One” — a clever, compact meditation on love, disappointment and the night sky.
Here’s the first of its four stanzas, read for us by Matthew McConaughey:
The More Loving One
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.
Matthew McConaughey, actor and poet
In four short lines we get a brisk, cynical tour of the universe: hell and the heavens, people and animals, coldness and cruelty. Commonplace observations — that the stars are distant; that life can be dangerous — are wound into a charming, provocative insight. The tone is conversational, mixing decorum and mild profanity in a manner that makes it a pleasure to keep reading.
Here’s Tracy K. Smith, a former U.S. poet laureate, with the second stanza:
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Tracy K. Smith, poet
These lines abruptly shift the focus from astronomy to love, from the universal to the personal. Imagine how it would feel if the stars had massive, unrequited crushes on us! The speaker, couching his skepticism in a coy, hypothetical question, seems certain that we wouldn’t like this at all.
This certainty leads him to a remarkable confession, a moment of startling vulnerability. The poem’s title, “The More Loving One,” is restated with sweet, disarming frankness. Our friend is wearing his heart on his well-tailored sleeve.
The poem could end right there: two stanzas, point and counterpoint, about how we appreciate the stars in spite of their indifference because we would rather love than be loved.
But the third stanza takes it all back. Here’s Alison Bechdel reading it:
Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.
Alison Bechdel, graphic novelist
The speaker downgrades his foolish devotion to qualified admiration. No sooner has he established himself as “the more loving one” than he gives us — and perhaps himself — reason to doubt his ardor. He likes the stars fine, he guesses, but not so much as to think about them when they aren’t around.
The fourth and final stanza, read by Yiyun Li, takes this disenchantment even further:
Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.
Yiyun Li, author
Wounded defiance gives way to a more rueful, resigned state of mind. If the universe were to snuff out its lights entirely, the speaker reckons he would find beauty in the void. A starless sky would make him just as happy.
Though perhaps, like so many spurned lovers before and after, he protests a little too much. Every fan of popular music knows that a song about how you don’t care that your baby left you is usually saying the opposite.
The last line puts a brave face on heartbreak.
So there you have it. In just 16 lines, this poem manages to be somber and funny, transparent and elusive. But there’s more to it than that. There is, for one thing, a voice — a thinking, feeling person behind those lines.
When he wrote “The More Loving One,” in the 1950s, Wystan Hugh Auden was among the most beloved writers in the English-speaking world. Before this week is over there will be more to say about Auden, but like most poets he would have preferred that we give our primary attention to the poem.
Its structure is straightforward and ingenious. Each of the four stanzas is virtually a poem unto itself — a complete thought expressed in one or two sentences tied up in a neat pair of couplets. Every quatrain is a concise, witty observation: what literary scholars call an epigram.
This makes the work of memorization seem less daunting. We can take “The More Loving One” one epigram at a time, marvelling at how the four add up to something stranger, deeper and more complex than might first appear.
So let’s go back to the beginning and try to memorize that insouciant, knowing first stanza. Below you’ll find a game we made to get you started. Give it a shot, and come back tomorrow for more!
Play a game to learn it by heart. Need more practice? Listen to Ada Limón, Matthew McConaughey, W.H. Auden and others recite our poem.
Question 1/6
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
Tap a word above to fill in the highlighted blank.
Your first task: Learn the first four lines!
Let’s start with the first couplet. Fill in the rhyming words.
Monday
Love, the cosmos and everything in between, all in 16 lines.
Tuesday (Available tomorrow)
What’s love got to do with it?
Wednesday (Available April 22)
How to write about love? Be a little heartsick (and the best poet of your time).
Thursday (Available April 23)
Are we alone in the universe? Does it matter?
Friday (Available April 24)
You did it! You’re a star.
Ready for another round? Try your hand at the 2025 Poetry Challenge.
Edited by Gregory Cowles, Alicia DeSantis and Nick Donofrio. Additional editing by Emily Eakin,
Joumana Khatib, Emma Lumeij and Miguel Salazar. Design and development by Umi Syam. Additional
game design by Eden Weingart. Video editing by Meg Felling. Photo editing by Erica Ackerberg.
Illustration art direction by Tala Safie.
Illustrations by Daniel Barreto.
Text and audio recording of “The More Loving One,” by W.H. Auden, copyright © by the Estate of
W.H. Auden. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd. Photograph accompanying Auden recording
from Imagno/Getty Images.
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