NFL | Bryan Joiner

November 2, 2011

Tim Tebow and “Leadership”

The Tim Tebow experiment is, at its core, about “leadership.” If “leadership” exists, and one leads maximally, can one succeed in the NFL, despite a lack of talent? Obviously for those people who wish to assign qualities of “leadership” willy-nilly—basically everyone involved in the football/industrial complex—it would be wonderful if Tebow succeeded. He won’t, and his failure won’t be protracted or debatable. The noble experiment will end quickly and violently.

Will this stop NFL pundits for looking for the next great “leader?” Of course not. It’s alchemy, and alchemy is what they’re trained in. Guys like Peyton Manning and Tom Brady make their jobs boring by being quite good at their own jobs, and they are repeatedly knighted with leadership qualities when what they really have is talent. It helps that unlike in baseball, where the average fan can understand the game quite well, football is beyond the comprehension of even some people who study it for a lifetime. Watching football on TV will hardly get you closer to the truth of what’s happening out there, and why: it’s like digging with your hands to get to the Earth’s core.

Instead of taking an industrial core driller to the game, TV pundits are content to serve up the softest stories imaginable. It’s basically the Today show for dudes, and it’s hard to blame them. You can always pin the glory on a particular player, and you can nearly always spread the blame to another one. It’s a shell game in which we’ll only hit on the truth by accident.

There are a really just a handful of announcer types. They are:

a) The surface-level guys

b) The parrots

c) The guys who actually try to explain what’s going on

d) The moralists

Taking them one, by one:

The surface-level guys

This is almost everybody, from really good announcers like Mike Tirico to really bad ones like everybody. They describe game action without describing the game itself. There’s enough game action, and more, to fill the time. There’s nothing wrong with this approach, but it should be the baseline from which we strive to learn more, not less. Instead it usually works the opposite way around, and we think we know shit-all about football because we have the volume on. It’s just not true.

The parrots

I’m sticking with the Monday Night guys because it’s a Tuesday morning, but Ron Jaworski, who is awful, awful, awful, is a parrot. The parrots describe to you what you just saw. They do nothing more. They assume, implicitly, that your eyes do not work. Jaworski is getting worse at this, if anything. Maybe he feels like he’s being pushed aside in the X’s and O’s department by…

The guys who actually try to explain what’s going on

I can’t remember who said it, but I read on Twitter last year that “Jon Gruden likes football the way a kid likes dinosaurs,” and that couldn’t be phrased any better. Gruden believes in both halves of the equation, the Tebow-esque mysticism and the deep-cut diagramming, but it seems like he’s been actively discouraged from the second. He can’t help himself sometimes, however, and before you know it you’re thigh-deep in the intricacies of the Tampa-2 against four-receiver sets from seven to nine yards between the hashmarks. Cris Collinsworth is one of these guys, too, and better at it than Gruden, but less hilarious.

The moralists

Daryl Johnston, specifically, but almost all of them at one time or another. The strange thing about the moralists is that they’re fairly easy to tune out. They’ve become such a part of football that moralizing is essentially background noise until a guy like Tim Tebow shows up, and everybody starts doing it.

It’s clear that people want Tim Tebow to succeed, for reasons that are flimsy projections of their own self-images, and that a delusional 50.5 percent of the Broncos’ fanbase has hijacked the impressionable franchise the same way 50.5 percent of the populace steered the world into nonsense seven years ago. Why did they do this? In both cases, it was the invisible quality of “leadership” as embodied in an evangelical Christian. The difference is that Tebow doesn’t have a four-term. He’ll be lucky to last four days.

You might think I’m writing off the quality of “leadership.” I’m not. I just don’t think Tim Tebow is a leader in the NFL. Leadership in the NFL is about talent and preparation, and Tebow looks unprepared out there. Let’s agree to learn from Tebow, and let’s learn that football is a lot harder than it looks, even when it looks simple. Tim Tebow is very good at a specific type of football, but pretty much every player in the league is better than Tim Tebow at NFL football. Some of these players are leaders. All of them are very, very good at what they do.

August 18, 2011

The NFL is Ridiculous, Vol. MCVII

As Tommy Craggs writes, the NFL has suspended Terrelle Pryor for breaking the NCAA’s rules, which makes approximately zero sense, but is pretty much par for the course:

I’m guessing the NFL would argue that the league’s power to punish players for breaking the rules of the NCAA, a totally separate organization, falls somewhere under the NFL’s non-statutory labor exemption, which is the gift owners received because American jurisprudence couldn’t give them Green Lantern’s power ring.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Doug Lesmerises blames the NFL’s Supplemental Draft, which he calls “the rulebreaker’s draft,” and basically says that since Pryor left the Buckeyes instead of being kicked off the team, the NFL has decided to punish him twice, because he’s Terrelle Pryor and not Random Dude: Once by putting him in the Supplemental Draft in the first place, and a second time with the five-game suspension.

That seems pretty high. The two highest-profile NFL stars to be suspended in recent years were Michael Vick and Ben Roethlisberger. If Will Leitch’s excellent profile of Vick, posted today, proves anything, it’s that he still really believes he was mistreated by the media but is really just committed to nailing his lines so that he can continue to play football. His heart doesn’t seem to be in it, but it doesn’t matter to the NFL, which can’t have another scandal. Ditto Roethlisberger, the allegedly lecherous quarterback fresh off a Super Bowl appearance and, more recently, a marriage. His six-game-turned-four-game suspension seems to have worked like a charm, in that it was inconsequential to the Steelers and Roethlisberger changed his ways. The machine purrs.

Suppose that we actually hold these suspensions up as ideal, and say they changed Vick and Ben, and that Goodell deserves credit for scaring them straight. What behavior is Terrelle Pryor expected to change? He didn’t break any NFL rules. So maybe the suspension is symbolic, and exists to discourage other college players from breaking NCAA rules. To see how effective this might be, consider that Donté Stallworth was suspended for year for killing a pedestrian while driving drunk. Hines Ward, arrested for DUI in July, has not been suspended. Maybe you’d say that he hasn’t been found guilty, so no punishment is due. Well, Roethlisberger was found guilty of exactly jack squat. But he had a pattern of behavior, you might say. Well, do we know that Ward only allegedly drank and drove that one time? No. That’s just when he got caught. This is a case where the NFL trusts the legal system; the Stallworth (who settled with the family), Vick, Roethlisberger and Pryor cases are not, as Pryor isn’t in trouble with the law, as far as I can tell. The only consistency here is inconsistency, which is what happens when Personal Conduct Policies exist: They allow its administrators to make stuff up as they go.

I’m guessing this is far less effective than the NFL thinks it is, and I’ll likely be reminded of this every time Hines Ward catches a pass this year.

5 Comments

November 24, 2009

Books, Vince Young, Radiohead — It’s a Rambling Tuesday Post

I have this nasty habit of buying a bunch of books and piling them up, just waiting for them to be read. Right now I’m reading at least three of them simultaneously: The Book of Basketball, Imperial, and Light on Yoga (h/t CF). They sit in a stack near my bed next to loose magazines, and in the minutes before I turn it, I turn to whatever suits my fancy for the day.

I get more magazines than I need. This is a fact. I went on a buying spree in the summer, when ate lunch outside every day. That’s prime magazine-reading time, so in early August I ordered up a bunch of subscriptions because at the time I was only getting The New Yorker and Sports Illustrated (and Sports Illustrated suuuuuucks). By the time they arrived I was back on an indoor lunch schedule, and my indoor lunches take place in front of the computer. For better or worse.

I re-read Flannery O’Connor’s “Everything That Rises Must Converge” last night, because I saw a screen shot of Jacob reading the book in Lost, and the cover is the same color as one of the other books I was reading, so I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I bought the book shortly after seeing it on Lost because I think the day before that episode I had finished whatever I was reading previously, so I thought, well, why not? Title story much better on second reading. What is the point of all this? I’m not sure. I just like watching that word counter go up in the lower-left-hand corner.

As long as we’re hopscotching topics, I love the Vince Young resurrection. It’s a great story, and he’s the single best test case for how much harder the NFL is than college football. Dude won the National Championship in one of the best performances of all time, certain the best in the BCS era, without apparently being able to run a complicated offense. He got to the NFL, hit it fairly big on talent alone, then bottomed out, personally and professionally. Now he’s slowly working himself back into a decent NFL quarterback. That’s some The Natural sh*t right there. I actually like Tennessee when he’s playing, but I can’t stand Kerry Collins, so last night’s game was a treat.

Due to the rousing success of Music Monday, and the festivity of the short week, here’s a ridiculous video the MZA pointed me toward yesterday. If your sentiments run anti-Radiohead or anti-Japanese animation/themes, this might not be the video for you. You’re wrong, but it might not be the video for you.

3 Comments

November 10, 2009

Brady vs. Manning

Not a lot of time today, so I’ll go down a well-traveled road: Brady vs. Manning.

Let’s get one thing out of the way: Peyton Manning will finish his career with superior passing stats. He’s played in a pass-first offense his entire career, and he plays in a dome. I’m not making excuses for Brady here; I am, as always, just saying. Brady will probably finish with better winning stats, depending on how you define it. The three Super Bowls, the 16-0 season, the highest all-time winning percentage—they’re all his.

These guys entered the league around the same time and have matching career arcs, so they’re natural to compare more than, say, either one of them and Ben Roethlisberger (who came later), Donovan McNabb (who didn’t reach as high), Drew Brees (late bloomer) and the newer crop of Philip Rivers, Eli Manning and Matt Ryan (two of whom didn’t actually postdate Ben, but whose success did). Part of that contrast, for a while, were their styles: Manning ran the Blue Angels-like airshow, while Brady ran the crafty, surgical Patriots offense. Before Randy Moss arrived, the Patriots weren’t known as a team to blow out their opponents. They didn’t always win big, but they always won.

Then 2007 hit, and Brady was doing his Manning impression. He wiped Manning’s 49 touchdown record from the books in a game ya boy was at (and at which he was egged for wearing a Welker jersey), and led the Pats to within 90 seconds of the Super Bowl title. Then he got hurt eight minutes into the following season, left to watch his backup lead the Patriots’ spread offense to a respectable 11-5 record, two wins better than near Super Bowl Champions Arizona Cardinals.

Brady returned this year against the Buffalo Bills hoping to spread-offense them into submission, and the Pats won only because they got bailed out by a (typical?) Bills error (see number four here). Then they lost to the Jets, who blitzed dropback Brady into submission, and the Pats went back to the drawing board. The new Pats gameplan would look a lot like the one that won them three Super Bowls: more running, more play-action, a greater mandate to eat time away and set up big plays rather than go for them on every down. It’s something of a Classic Brady offense, even if it’s more Classic Belichick scheming: use what you’ve got. The Patriots are short on wide receivers, so this is the best plan for them.

At 6-2, the plan seems to be working. Now we’ll see how the contrast in styles with Manning’s Colts works this year. No longer do Brady and Manning look like the same quarterback, as they did in 2007. Brady’s back to being The Guy That Wins and Manning’s brought his aerial attack to another level. The contrast in styles is back, and I couldn’t be happier. It’s Pats/Colts, and it’s as big as ever.

2 Comments

October 21, 2009

Chuck Klosterman, Bill Simmons, David Foster Wallace, Footnotes and Football

I wouldn’t say I was a fan of David Foster Wallace so much as I simply read Infinite Jest, a feat about which I was prone to brag. It was the worst type of bragging, too, in that I was completely passive-aggressive about it (that should probably say “am” passive-aggressive about it.) Whenever something came up that necessitated the “reveal,” so to speak, I would hold my information for a beat and really treasure letting it out of the cage—the whole time pretending that it meant nothing to me. I wanted my reaction to be like “Yeah, so what, I read it!” and in doing so, I’m sure it came across as the exact opposite. I’m sure it was, and is, annoying. I would have been better off just taking my literary d*** out, so so speak and laying it on the table, or bragging about it, Rushmore-style. I read a giant book. What did you ever do?

But yeah: I read Infinite Jest. The defining feature of Infinite Jest is that there are more than 100 pages of endnotes, which most people call footnotes. Reading IJ required two bookmarks and a constant reference-book like tossing of the middle section back and forth to see what DFW had meant by “the” in the thirty-seventh chapter. Once you got used to it, it was all very entertaining.

I mention this because I just read Chuck Klosterman’s wonderful book excerpt on football and Bill Simmons’ book excerpt on basketball, and they both use some sort of notation system (Off the printed page, they’re formatted as endnotes. I don’t know how they’ll be in the book, but is anyone going to care anyway?). Simmons has, in the past, acknowledged his use of “footnotes” as a direct homage to Wallace, whom he admired. They work in Simmons’ prose for the same reason they worked for Wallace—they appeal to the helter-skelter mind of the reader and the writer, allowing quick (or in DFW’s case, not so quick) tangeants on whatthefuckever. DFW was Twitter before Twitter.

Klosterman’s thesis is that football is a progressive game in a conservative shell. For all the talk about football as being the man’s man, grounded-in-tradition sport, everything changes all the time. The forward pass, instant replay, challenges, the spread offense, the Wildcat: anything that’s new is at first rejected upon some sort of anti-traditionalism basis, then copied ad infinitum. Isn’t the same thing Klosterman and Simmons are doing with footnotes?

The correlation might not be perfect, but here’s a snippet from Michiko Kakutani’s review of IJ in the Times (emphasis mine):

The book seems to have been written and edited (or not edited) on the principle that bigger is better, more means more important, and this results in a big psychedelic jumble of characters, anecdotes, jokes, soliloquies, reminiscences and footnotes, uproarious and mind-boggling, but also arbitrary and self-indulgent.

A decade and a half later, Klosterman and Simmons, two pop culture writers, have brought the form to the mainstream. For Klosterman’s part, he realizes that the faux-anti-innovation processes he’s witnessed in football are present elsewhere:

I had played football and written about football and watched it exhaustively for twenty years, so I thought I knew certain inalienable truths about the game. And I was wrong. What I knew were the assumed truths, which are not the same thing. I had brainwashed myself. I was unwilling to admit that my traditional, conservative football values were imaginary and symbolic. They belonged to a game I wasn’t actually watching but was still trying to see.

Over time, I realized this had happened with almost every aspect of my life.

You can add one more to the list. As to the future of footnotes in pop writing, one need no look farther than Klosterman, again. If you like them, enjoy them while they last:

Twenty-five years ago, the read option didn’t exist. Coaches would have given a dozen reasons why it couldn’t be used. Ten years ago, it was a play of mild desperation, most often used by teams who couldn’t compete physically. But now almost everyone uses it. It’s the vortex of an offensive scheme that has become dominant. But ten years from now — or even less, probably — this play will have disappeared completely. In 2018, no one will run it, because every team will be running something else. It will have been replaced with new thinking.

3 Comments

October 19, 2009

Football Sunday: An Odyssey

For the first time this year, I headed out to the bar to watch the Patriots. And oh, what a decision!

From the friendly confines of O’Keefe’s on Court Street in Brooklyn, fivethirtyeight.com and I watched the late-afternoon games over Jamesons, alternatively splashed and on the rocks. There were also beers, but not until overtime of the Jets/Bills game. Which was later. These things take time.

For the first time this season, yr. author skipped the 1 p.m. games at home. After a long day on Smith Street enjoying the college football action—and arguing the merits of our public education system—I was football’d out by the time Vikings/Ravens rolled around. I was even man enough to head over the lady’s house for some Trader Joe’s Indian food and some HGTV. DO YOU REALIZE THE TYPE OF HOUSE YOU CAN GET IN CHICAGO FOR $600,000? I bet you didn’t, because you were sucked in by Giants/Saints.

(That is not an altogether bad thing.)

I came home in the “Feels like 36 degrees” weather only to head back out to the bar at 4:15, as Joe Flacco was setting his team up to miss a game-winning field goal. Nevermore, bitches! There was no place to sit at O’Keefe’s due to the preponderance of Eagles fans. One World Series isn’t enough, their demeanor said. It’s hard not to respect that. Then the Eagles lost to the Raiders. Then the situation changed.

John Doe has the upper hand. Or maybe JaMarcus Russell.

I was throwing back whiskey-and-waters as I watched the Eagles choke, and the Patriots exert their dominance over the hapless Titans. 59-0? That’s the biggest Patriot win in history. Tom Brady threw 5 touchdowns in the second quarter alone. That’s also a team record. Also: an NFL record. My favorite part was everything. But something ringed in the back of my head. A question.

Isn’t football bad?

It’s true: after reading Malcolm Gladwell’s article on the consequences of football hits, it’s hard to retain the same enthusiasm for the game that I did before. There’s basically a concussion on every play. We may not be long from a maximum age of 30. That the NFL is underwriting studies that may torpedo the league is the height of irony, but it was inevitable. The game is simply too violent to continue unabated. I think. But I digress, because Pats/Titans didn’t involve a lot of hitting, unless the football hitting the endzone after being spiked counts. Take that, “No Fun League!”

I will admit: I partook of everything that was advertised during the NFL game. “Tailgate tested? Tailgate approved!” Really, Miller Lite? THEN BRING IT ON! It’s the best way to enjoy the Pats, according to the people on TV. Saving that money to enjoy it at home, or just kicking back with an-ice cold soda? Humbug!

In the end, I schlepped my drunk ass after the game to Trader Joe’s, where I was too glassy-eyed to find Indian food, but I managed to buy $20 worth of pizza, burritos and french onion soup. It is, I am told, good value. Enough to offset the nearly $30 I spent on booze at the bar? Probably! Let’s face it: I’m going to drink either way, so I might as well make money on the back end. The Pats’s 59 points don’t carry over, but I can make sure my buzz translates into savings. I can apply that savings to things that really matter, like real estate. Don’t you know what kind of house you can get for $600,000?

5 Comments

October 6, 2009

Favre (FAVRE)

Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre. Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre, Favre. Favre Favre?

Favre.

Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre—Favre—Favre Favre Favre Favre. Favre Favre?

Favre.

Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre, Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre. Favre Favre Favre. Favre Favre Favre Favre, Favre Favre: Favre, Favre, Favre Favre. Favre Favre: Favre, Favre, Favre, Favre Favre. Favre Favre Favre Favre:

Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre. Favre Favre Favre Favre? Favre: Favre Favre. Favre! Favre: Favre Favre. Favre. Favre Favre Favre.

Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre, Favre Favre Favre Favre. “Favre Favre Favre Favre, Favre,” Favre Favre. “Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre.” Favre Favre. “Favre. Favre Favre Favre Favre, Favre Favre.”

Favre Favre? Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre.

Favre Favre Favre, Favre Favre Favre. “Favre Favre—Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre—Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre,” Favre Favre. Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre. Farve Favre Favre, Farve Farve Favre Favre; Favre Favre, Favre Favre (Favre Favre Favre?); Favre Favre, Favre Favre Favre Favre. Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre.

Favre Favre Favre Favre. Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre. Favre Favre Favre Favre? Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre. Favre Favre. Favre Favre. Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre. Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre, Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre, Favre Favre “Favre Favre Favre Favre.” Favre Favre Favre Favre. Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre.

Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre, Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre. Faver Favre Favre Favre Favre, Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre. Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre? “Favre Favre,” Favre Favre, Favre Favre Favre Favre. “Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre.”

Favre?

“Favre, Favre,” Favre Favre.

Favre?

“FAVRE!” Favre Favre. Favre Favre Favre.

Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre. Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre-Favre, Favre Favre Favre, Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre. (Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre, Favre Favre Favre Favre.) Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre, Favre Favre Favre Favre.

Favre Favre Favre, Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre.

Favre. Favre Favre. Favre Favre Favre Favre Favre.

Favre.

FAVRE: Favre Favre Favre Favre, Favre Favre Favre Favre. Favre Favre [Favre: Favre Favre]. Favre Favre Favre Favre? Favre. Favre Favre Favre. Favre Favre, Favre Favre Favre Favre.

1 Comment

September 29, 2009

The Myth of NFL Parity

American sports are supposed to be about balance. That’s the thinking, anyway. If every team doesn’t have a chance to win it all every five years or so, there must be something wrong with the system. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and a championship are things we believe to be human rights.

It’s galling, then, when your team is out of it from day one. Ask any Kansas City Royals or Pittsburgh Pirates fan how it feels, and they’ll tell you it’s downright un-American. They don’t have a snowball’s chance in August at beating the Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs, or Mets who toss around money without looking at the numbers on the bills.

To be fair, this works for baseball’s owners—the only people that the sport is set up to serve. Perhaps that’s why, despite record attendance and viewership, baseball can’t compete with football’s popularity. Or maybe it’s the nature of football that makes it so appealing: fast-paced and, with its once-per-week, short-season setup, well-suited to the short attention spans of the HD era. Finally, it could be the old saw that the NFL is the exemplar of “parity”—that American ideal that your team will, at some point soon, get a chance to win it all. What could be more compelling?

The problem is that the last part isn’t true: there’s no more parity in football than there is in baseball. And the problem might be even worse.

The difference is that while baseball fights over money, football teams stock up on brains. Managerially-speaking, baseball is an easy thing to master: get the best players, make sure they get along, and go. Football’s the opposite. There’s so much to know that’s exclusive to the sport that there are precious few people who have it down cold. There are rules on top of rules on top of rules for everything from the draft to the those the penalty mask penalty, and they change every year. Mastering it is a mix of game theory, attention to detail, and brute force. It’s like knowing the code for Deep Blue, or reading a map of Queens. It’s incredibly hard to do.

For all the talk of NFL parity,there have been more World Series winning teams (8) this decade than there have been Super Bowl winners (6). This year, while some new teams (like the Vikings and Jets) have joined the traditional powerhouses (Colts, Patriots, and Steelers) amongst the league’s elite, there is a slew of teams that will be luck to win four games. The Chiefs, Browns, Raiders, Rams, Pathers and Lions are symbols of the futility of hope. What are they playing for? Not much. At least baseball’s fickle enough to give teams a glimmer of hope for a couple months. In football when it’s gone, it’s gone.

What’s the cause of this? The strength of organizations. The Steelers, Colts and Patriots understand how the game is run: they supplement star players with replaceable ones, and employ a buy-low, sell-high philosophy. It sounds easy, but it’s not, and it takes supreme know-how to pull it off at every level of your organization: CEO, GM, coaches, players. Everything is constantly in motion, and having everyone keep pace is what makes the great teams great. It’s anything but a numbers game.

That’s what makes it harder than baseball, and why football won’t even out anytime soon. In baseball, a good numbers man (or woman) can still exploit the gaps and give the little team a fighting chance. In football, it’s one giant gap to be exploited, and the people who do it at a championship-caliber level are far fewer in number than their baseball counterparts. Football’s not considered a thinking man’s game, but if you look beyond the line of scrimmage, it’s exactly that. It’s like 53-person chess. If you’re good, you’re good, and if you’re not, you’ve got a better chance hoping for a miracle at a Mets game.

11 Comments

September 17, 2009

NFL Week 1.5 Report

WHAT I’VE LEARNED BY WATCHING

Games consumed: Steelers/Titans, Jets/Texans, Pats/Bills, Giants/Redskins (partial), Bears/Packers (partial)

1. HOUSTON STINKS There was more talk this year that the Texans would be a suprise team, but they looked listless in week one against the Jets. They couldn’t do a thing against the Jets, which has been attributed largely to the Jets’ defense. I wouldn’t be so quick to put all the credit there. It takes hard work for a team to look as bad as Houston did against the Jets — it wasn’t like they were missing opportunities, they just weren’t making any. And this was in week one, where they had months to prepare. If the coaching staff can’t find a way to get a single good drive going with what is supposed to be a talented offense at the outset of the season, here’s betting they can’t scheme up much for the rest of the year. You can forget about them. Texans: written off

2. MARK SANCHEZ IS GOING TO BE GOOD My lack of love for the Texans doesn’t cast any shadow on Mark Sanchez’ performance as Jets’ QB. As has been noted elsewhere, Sanchez’ footwork already puts him far ahead of most NFL quarterbacks in that department and at near-peak Brady levels (the best I’ve ever seen, and the one skill category in which Brady is, I think, unquestionably dominant). He didn’t get a chance to read defenses yet, or deal with pocket pressure, but it appears he’s got all the tools to succeed. Sanchez’ development marks something of a barometer for the NFL-readiness of USC QBs after the Carson Palmer and Matt Leinart experiments. It’s my contention that he’s NFL-ready, but others don’t think so, as baby-buddy-of-blog “Cleveland Frowns” disagrees, and we duked it out in the comments. Will the experiment look as good in week two against a banged-up—but still Belichick-schemed—unit? Highly, highly doubtful. But we’re looking long-term and buying.

3. EITHER THE PATRIOTS LINE STINKS, BUFFALO’S D-LINE IS GREAT, OR BOTH Tom Brady got the least amount of time to throw the ball against Buffalo since, well, the last full game he played (the one were Osi Umenyiora lined up in his ass). The Bills got an amazing amount of push and shut down the Pats’ running game completely. Does this mean we’re going to see a full-fledged Brady-slinging game against the Jets? Maybe not. But maybe. We’re working toward that point, and when the offense went ballistic at the end of the game, the Bills had no answer. Ben Watson’s winning catch was bananas, by the way.

4. THE QBS? FINE Trent Edwards looked pretty damn good in the fast offense; we’ll see how much of it was Pats-D related when the Bills (blech) take on the Bucs (BLECH) this week (kill me). Brady’s a little tentative, and might never hit 2007 form again, but if he’s at 80 percent of that it’s plenty good enough. Actual exchange after the fumble with fashion-language-understanding and unhelmeted-Brady-loving girlfriend.

Her: Is that good?

Me: Yes, they’re going to get a touchdown now and win.

Her: How do you know that?

Me: It’s why Tom Brady is married to Gisele.

Verdict: Brady is a good man

5. THE GIANTS AND THE REDSKINS BLAH One of the dedicated readers of this blog is a Giants season ticket holder. I applaud his enthusiasm. Maybe I’ll share it some day. It’s unlikely. The Giants sure seem to rough teams up, but without Plaxico, it seems like they have that oh so little weakness of Eli’s habit of not quite throwing it to the right place. Osi is scary, good, though: I said after Super Bowl XLII that it might look like less of an upset once Osi and Strahan were both in the HOF, the same way the Rams/Pats Super Bowl result looks completely in retrospect. Not enough attention is paid, btw, to the similarities to those two seasons, down to the earlier, fingernail-close meeting in the season, the 14-point spread, and the miracle last drive. Verdict: I don’t want to talk about this any more, but before I go, the Redskins could compete if they had an offense. Still better than the Texans.

6. I THOUGHT THESE TEAMS WERE GOOD Watching Bears/Packers was like getting hit in the face by errant footballs. I thought these teams were supposed to be good, and maybe they are, just well-matched. But that game was shit. And I could give a crap about the “rivalry,” just like everyone in Chicago. Trust me, they don’t give a lick about beating the Packers more than any other team. They just want to win the Super Bowl. That’s no crime. But to force some East Coast-style rivalry on it just isn’t going to work. Verdict: we’ll know more after this week

7. OOPS I ALMOST FORGOT Steelers/Titans and Chargers/Raiders. That happened. I had four Simpler Times lagers. There was a lot of hitting. I was bored, but I know these teams are good. They’re annoying too.

Teams as-yet unconsumed: Dolphins, Ravens, Bengals, Browns, Colts, Jaguars, Broncos, Chargers, Raiders, Chiefs, Cowboys, Eagles, Vikings, Lions, Falcons, Saints, Panthers, Buccaneers, 49ers, Cardinals, Seahawks, Rams.

Teams written off: Texans (Week 1)

Picks for this week: Each week, I submit to you my picks in the Cheddar Bay Invitational Picking tournament on Cleveland Frowns. Must pick six games vs. the spread, at least one of which is an NCAA game, and have a 100 word essay accompanying a pick. Here’s this week’s entry.

I had a tough time last week. I went 0-6. But look at it this way: the only way to go is up!

Toledo +20.5
Pats -3.5
Seahawks +1.5
Broncos -3
Giants +3
Colts -3

Essay: I’m not confident the Patriots are going to cover against the Jets. But this one seems a bit easy, no? The Pats are 1-9 in their last 10 games ATS, came off a miracle win (and not even near cover) against the Bills at home, and the Jets convincingly thumped the Texans, a popular pick to improve this year. As a result, the Pats/Jets line is dropping downward, but should it? I think it’s more likely that the pundits were wrong about the Texans, and the Jets exploited a bad team, than the opposite, given the results. And I think talk about the Pats’ defense’s demise, while certainly noteworthy, may not be as relevant in this game. Mark Sanchez is going to see things on Sunday he’s never seen in his life, and I think it’s more likely than not that the Pats will pull out a typical AFC East slog victory over Gang Green, but by at least six points.

That’s it for now. See you in the 2.5.

3 Comments

September 17, 2009

State of the Patriots

patpatriottattoo I have a renewed interest in the NFL this year. I’m not playing fantasy football, and we’re two years removed from the Patriots/Giants debacle — the debacle not just of the game itself, or the whole season.

That’s right, I’m calling an 18-1 season a debacle. From the moment Spygate hit until Tom Brady’s final heave to Randy Moss hit the turf in Glendale, it was a miserable season. That’s what happens when you lose sight of what sports are supposed to mean. Pats fans were already excited at the prospect of an undefeated season before Spygate hit, and in its aftermath, saw a perfect record as a road to validation. The push was on, and Bill Belichick appeared to take the bait as well. Through the first nine weeks of the year, the Patriots trounced everyone they played, and the talk of an undefeated season was on.

It’s not bad that Patriots fans were excited, but it’s important to remember that winning is just as much a part of the game as losing. The Patriots have had too many great wins to count over the last decade, and in 2007 Pats fans were acting like wins were a birthright, and alienating the entire country in the process. I wanted none of it. I wanted them to win the Super Bowl, but not at the expense of their fans dignity. If the Pats had won the Super Bowl, we would have never — ever — heard the end of it. So when they lost, I wasn’t even devastated; I was just worried I would be implicated in the mourning process. It was, however, just a game.

That’s why last season’s knee injury to Tom Brady was, in some way, a refreshing way to reset expectations. After the white-hot 2007 campaign, where every game was too important, the 2008 season was the opposite: it wasn’t really taken seriously. Wins were great, and losses were okay too. That’s the healthy way to watch sports, and I was happy for it.

The Patriots aren’t the only team that needed a re-adjusting of attitudes; in fact, their conquerors needed one as well. After the Super Bowl win over the Pats, some Giants fans were devastated at last year’s boucning from the playoffs by the Eagles, including this fine fellow:

Giants fan and friend of the blog Big Dood has responded on Shea Hey! with the rare well-reasoned, mature take on sports on the Internet:

To a good many Giants fans, the ending to last season was doubtlessly a bitter disappointment. Fair enough, I suppose, but I’m here to send a wakeup call to everyone who cried themselves to sleep after a one and done ouster at the hands of the Eagles: It’s all disappointment from here on out. This truth should have risen from the ashes as the dust settled in the aftermath of Super Bowl XXZXXZXZSEQR (did I get those Roman Numerals Right?). To quote Christopher Walken’s character in True Romance “that’s as good as it’s gonna get. And won’t ever get that good again.”

By all rights, the New York Giants should never win anything else again. In the interest of balance, they ought to have tumbled into the bowels of the earth and been left to stumble over and upon one another (for at least a few seasons) in abject misery.

Or better yet, they should’ve simply ceased to be, disappearing in streaks of light and vapor behind falling sheets of confetti in the canyon of heroes.

By this standard, the Patriots should have shut down shop a few years ago, but there they are, on my TV every weekend. Two seasons removed from the nightmare, I’m determined not to relive it. Football’s too great for that, and I’ve seen too much great football recently for it to hurt too much. Maybe I’m not a “real fan,” or maybe I never was until now. I love the sport more than ever, and that’s why one loss isn’t going to get me down. It gives me something to do every Sunday for 5 months; the rest is just details. Details that I’ll scream and piss and moan about for those 5 months, but less than I would have before. Nothing is guaranteed, and I’m not going to pretend like it is or that I deserve it.

All that said, GO FREAKING PATS. Jets game is big this weekend.

I’m done.

1 Comment

Category: NFL