Tuesday, December 11, 2007

7 Things that are a day late

Wait a minute, its Tuesday, usually I get this list out on Monday. I'm really slacking if the only regular column on my site doesn't even get out. No wonder only 3 people stop by here.

So without further ado, lets get to 7 things that I've learned.

1 - Don't Fuck with the Brady/Thomlinson combo

In all 4 of the Fantasy leagues that I'm in somebody has the combo of Brady and LT. Every single one of those owners is in the playoffs and all but 1 is the #1 seed (and he just traded for LT two weeks ago). Fortunately for me I have this combo in 1 league, unfortunately it isn't a league with any money on the line.

So what have we learned, the theory of drafting 2 RB's before a QB has screwed 90% of fantasy football players this year. Anyone who took a RB in round 1 not named LT, Westbrook or Addai should be cursing the football gods right now.

The age old theory that their are only 32 starting runnning backs and you need 3 of them to win has been blown out of the water this season. What does this mean for next year? Probaly nothing, but it will lead to more consternation leading up to the draft.

2 - Brady Knee Watch

Yet another week where Brady has skated by injury free, I'm begining to loose faith in NFL players. This week Brady plays the JETS. So there is no-one capable of taking out Tom this week. This Item exists purely for filler this week.

3 - Guaranting a win is Bush league

What a surprise, the media found some young kid on the Steelers to guarantee a win and then rode the story into the ground. Honestly, if I were an NFL player I'd just tell the media to fuck-off, since all they are looking to do is make the average player look like an idiot. Than again, they always seem to find some idiot to oblige them and open their mouths.

Look NFL players, if you want to Guarentee something, pick one of the below items for the next time, It may not get the same headlines, but it also won't get you imasculated by Tom Brady on national TV:

I guarantee that Stuart Scott's lazy eye is the result of a gay porn related injury.

I guarantee that I would last more than a minute with Jessica Alba in the sack.

I guarantee that eating green M&M's doesn't do anything for you in the bedroom or on the playing field.

I guarantee that Ed Hockulea isn't getting the same random tests that the players are.

I guarantee that Deion Sanders is color blind, cause there is no other way that someone would pick out those outfits.

Feel free to add your own in the comments.

4 - Raider thoughts of the week

I wish I could say that I was surprised by Sunday's result against Green Bay. But coming into the game I said to a fellow Raider fan that Green Bay's D was too much for the Raiders to handle, and that the Raiders couldn't cover all 5 GB recievers or stop their running attack.

Now GB scored about 2 more TD's than I thought they would, and Oakland got about 6 less total points than they should have. But overall its what I expected.

Until this team finds:

A run stuffing D-lineman

and

A #1 WR

They will continue to wallow in mediocrity.

Lets see what JR can do against Indy.

5 - Retailers may be worried

So after hunting all day Saturday, I aquiested and went Christmas shopping with my mother. We headed up to the local outlet mall, where I anticipated the kind of crowds that would quickly make me hate my life.

Instead the stores were vertualy empty. I don't think we walked into more than 1 store where there were more than 5 shoppers other than us. Picking up a gift for my wife in 1 store we commented on this to 1 of the employees and he said that the managers were freeking out, but he didn't care.

Now the Best Buy I went into last night was packed, so this weekend may have been an isolated incident. But its not a good sign when an outlet mall that I've had trouble finding parking at this time of year in the past has almost no shoppers visiting with only 2 weekends left before Christmas.

6 - Some Celebutards get what they deserve

With asshats like Spears and Hilton getting little or no jail time mostly due to the fact they are celebraties, it is easy to loose faith in the judicial system and feel that all you have to do is be rich and you don't have to live by societies rules.

Well we all learned that is wrong this week. You have to be rich, white, female and show your snatch to the paparatzi.

Mike Vick is only rich. So he get to go to Jail for the next two years for being an asshole. Seems about right to me. Now hopefuly the state of Virginia gets off its ass and hands down some local charges so that we can be assured that this fuckwad never sees another NFL field, unless its on the prison TV.

7 - NFL Parity... its sucktastic

OK, so the NFL has its top 4 - NE, Indy, Dallas and Green Bay

it has its bottom 5 - Miami, SF, NY Jets, STL and Atlanta

Then it has 24 inconsiquential teams, who no-one other than the fans of said team give a fuck about. With 3 weeks left almost any one of these teams could still sneak into a wildcard slot, or into a top 10 draft pick. Honestly, if one of the top 4 teams isn't playing and your favorite team isn't playing, why would you watch any other random NFL game?

The Saints played Atlanta last night. I'm a football fanatic, but I found I was more interesting in watching the 15th anaversary of RAW than Monday night football.

Here's one for you, give me Seatle's record without looking it up. If you aren't a Seahawks fan, I'm guessing you have no idea.

As usual, I'll blame this on the media, they are so busy riding Brady and the Patroit's collective jocks, that they have forgoten that any teams other than the Pats, Colts, Packers and Boys play the game. I could understand this in the final couple weeks of the year, but this has been going on since camera-gate.

I'de love to see a pregame show just say "you know what, you already know all there is to know about these 4 teams, lets talk about this surprising Buffalo team this week". But it aint gonna happen.

By the way, the Seahawks are 9-4.

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

7 Things that have nothing to do with X-Mas shopping

I have to admit, I was a little scared as I left the family's land in West Virginia Saturday night. As I drove down the winding road that leads to route 50 from our property I saw two large bonfires being lit. Was I wrong about the start time of the West Virginia vs. Pitt game? Had it been moved up from Saturday night due to security concerns? I turned to ESPN radio to see if they were talking about the game, but for some reason the broadcast was coming from the ASU A-St game. No mention of the WV game. You are useless ESPN.

Once I saw my 3rd large bonfire in the 1st 20 miles of driving I called home to check with my Old man. Had the WV game already been played? My trip home takes me right past Morgantown and I wanted no part of driving through a war-zone. He assured me that the game hadn't started yet, and that he just saw a bunch of bananas warming up on TV so I should be safely past Morgantown before all hell broke loose.

Safely at home I got to watch the carnage unfold on the big screen, and not as I drove through. Once again, I'm glad to be able to say, Suck-it BCS, lets all hope that you are dissolved soon.

Now onto the 7 things from the week.

1 - Thank you Tom Cable.

I could just leave it at that, Thank You, but then I'd just be mailing in another posting. I was genuinely excited when I saw that the Raiders were bringing in Cable this off season. The man learned the zone-cut blocking scheme from the best in Alex Gibbs when they worked together in Atlanta. Looking at the majority of the Raiders lineman, I thought the scheme would really benefit their talents.

The season started strong for the Raider's run game. Fans were excited, but a closer look revealed that there was still much work to do. The team was still struggling in pass protection and the run game was far from consistent.

A rough stretch in the middle of the year had some fans loosing patience with Cable and the Oline. But those who read my musings on the line knew that the system would take more time to get implemented.

The last two weeks, it appears that something is starting to click with the Raider's lineman. The holes are their consistently, and occasionally they are gaping. More importantly the pass protection is greatly improved. No sacks were given up against Denver. Read that again, no sacks. Sure Denver's pass rush isn't impressive, but for a much maligned Raider line this is a huge building block.

So thank you Mr Cable. Lets hope the Raiders don't make the same mistake that Atlanta made, and they keep you around to further build this system. Some stability would do wonders for this unit long term.

2 - College Bowling

I'm looking at this years college bowl schedule, and I might be more excited to see Co-eds bowling than the actual bowl games this year (especially if they are some of the girls from SEC poon). Look, I'm happy that their is a mess at the top as I hate the BCS system. Either give me a playoff or go back to the old system, enough with this half-ass shit.

The talk is that they will go to a +1 system soon. So what, we are going to have 4 or 5 BCS games with a game featuring the winner of 2 of the games while the other 2 or 3 go home, WTF is that.

Lets say that the following teams were to win their BCS games this year:
USC
VT
LSU
OSU
Georgia

Who is your +1 game? USC vs. LSU and you send home VT, OSU and Georgia? Who is to say that OSU isn't better than USC right now? Yet somehow their are pundits who are looking forward to a +1 game. Me, I could give a fuck. Give me a playoff. To those of you who feel that this would be detrimental to the regular season, give me a break. The fight for the 8 or 16 playoff slots would be just as entertaining.

Now as for the rest of the bowls. First thing I would do is cut the number in half. Do we really need any of the following match-ups?
Florida Atlantic vs. Memphis
Nevada at New Mexico
Ball State vs. Rutgers
Maryland vs. Oregon State
Central Michigan vs. Purdue
Air Force vs. California
Houston vs. TCU
BYU vs. UCLA
Penn State vs. Texas A&M
Bowling Green vs. Tulsa
Boston College vs. Michigan State
Navy vs. Utah
Connecticut vs. Wake Forest
Alabama vs. Colorado
Fresno State vs. Georgia Tech
Cincinnati vs. Southern Miss

That's 16 out of 32 bowl games that I can cross off the list without a 2nd thought. Sure a couple of these teams are nice stories and deserve a bowl game, but we could easily replace another bowl eligible team in the remaining 16 games with one of them to improve the match-ups.

As for the rest, I'd adjust the remaining games the following ways:

Michigan vs. Florida and Texas Tech vs. Virginia would be replaced by

Michigan vs. Virginia and Florida vs. Texas Tech, these two match ups would be much more entertaining. Michigan vs. Virginia would feature two of the best players in college football going head to head in the two Longs. Florida and Texas Tech would be a great offensive shootout. As is we have Florida dismantling an underachieving Michigan squad and a match-up nobody outside of Texas and Virginia cares about.

Kansas would play Arkansas and VT would play Missouri to improve both of those match-ups.

The national Title game would be OSU vs. USC, in my mind the two teams who are playing the best right now, with THEO playing VW and LSU playing Illinois. All 3 match-ups are better than what we currently have.

Just by switching those 7 games around I have more than doubled the number of games I would be genuinely excited to watch. And as I have said before, the BCS should be replaced by a system that entertains me.

3 - Back to the Raiders

Tom Cable may have gotten his own Item, but two consecutive division wins means that the Raiders get more than 1 item.

Griffen and O'Neil give the Raiders an outstanding 1-2 punch at FB. I love watching these two blow up guys in the hole. The Raiders haven't had this kind of blocking in the backfield since Steve Smith was opening holes for Jackson and Allen.

Last week's victory formation was nice, but it pales in comparison to this week's I give up kneel by the Broncos. There is nothing like a division rival giving up at the end of the game.

Game balls to the entire Oline, there were holes my slow ass could have run through Sunday.

The D played a complete game. Sure the 1st Bronco drive was bad, and there were a couple of long balls that were poorly played, but the team seems more inspired now that the offense is moving the ball.

Special teams were also very good this game, I will have to go back and watch the tape, but I think the Raiders won the field position battle for the entire game, save for the one long FG miss by Jano.

Look at that, offense wins, defense wins, special teams win and the Raiders win the turnover and penalty battles, all in 1 game. Oh yeah, and some guy named Russell looked sharp in limited action. Good weekend to be a Raider fan.

4 - Oh to have a doe tag

So after my 1st weekend in the wilds of West Virginia had me come home without firing my riffle, I was sure that I would get off a shot this weekend, as I had a better idea of where the deer were.

Well I was right, I knew where the deer were, too bad they were all bitches. I got myself set-up to start hunting right at the start of hunting time (1/2 hour before sunrise) it wasn't 15 minutes before the 1st deer came into my range. Too bad it came up behind me and spotted me before I could figure out if it was a buck or a doe (fuck you trees) the deer bolted and I never got a good look, but it was just foreshadowing for the rest of the day.

I had 3 other deer walk through my line of fire zones as the morning progressed, all does. I had the option when I bought my licence to pick up a doe stamp, but has seen enough deer signs on the land to say, I'll just save the $25 dollars and take a buck. Now I'm pissed that all those deer got to prance around 10 yards from me, teasing me with their stupid deer walk.

Next year, does, next year. As for me, I'm headed to NY this weekend with mallace in my heart and a riffle in my hand. I'm coming for you finger lake deer.

5 - Shut the fuck up Kiper

So listening to ESPN radio for the 2nd striaght weekend driving back from WV. I was once again subjected to Kiper's rambling on College football. The guy may have started a cottage industry rating pro prospects, but who said this guy is in any way qualified to discuss overall team play? Give me someone who knows college ball and keep Kiper judging guys in shorts.

The thing that pisses me off the most about Kiper is his Heisman opinions. To Kiper the Heisman is Tebows. No one else is in the conversation. You would think that a guy who is such a player guru would know that Long, Long and Dorsey deserve to be in the conversation, but he only looks at QB's and RB's.

Not only that, but he completely dismisses Colt Brennen as being a system QB playing in Hawaii. So you mean to tell me that Brennen is a system QB, but Tebow isn't? How stupid do you think the listeners are? Tebow is playing in the same system that made Alex Smith look like a 1st round QB. Tebow is a single wing RB. I won't argue this, if you don't agree, go learn about the single wing offense, this is what Tebow runs.

This isn't a QB playing a pro style system, making great reads and revolutionizing the position. This is an athlete being put into a system that keeps him from needing his brain. Sorry, but if you are going to discount a QB who plays in a pass happy system, you need to do the same to a QB that need not make more than 1 read a play. You can't have it both ways Mel.

The thing is the majority of college players play in a gimicy system. I personaly don't hold Tebow's system against him. He is running the single wing better than anyone has in 50 years. Part of the fun of college football is that you get a chance to see a variety of takes on the game, as opposed to the NFL where everyone runs a variation of the same offense. But don't discount 1 player due to his system while ignoring another players system and the advantages it gives him.

6 - Winter is coming

Fall is my favorite time of year. Football is in full swing, there are games almost every day of the week, and there is almost always something to talk about. Through in my new found love of hunting and September through November is great.

I used to love snow, as it brought the promiss of days off of school. Now it just brings about poor driving, and signals the waining football season. The weekend brought the 1st snow that stuck to the ground around here, and I relized the following:

- There are only 4 regular season NFL games left. That means only 4 more weekends of Raider football for me this year.

- All the college football teams have only 1 game left. That only 1 time left this year to get excited to watch some of my favorite players and teams.

- I have only 1 weekend left of freesing my ass off in the woods looking for white tails.

- I have to go to the mall at least 3 more times in the next month with my wife to finish up Christmas shopping.

I look forward to all of these things, well except for the shopping, but all are sad in a way as they signal the end of another year, and the start of the long offseason. Every year the offseason seems to get longer and the real season gets shorter. Now is the time I stomp my feet and yell "Its just not fair".

7 - Brady knee watch

Damn you Ray Lewis, I had fully bought into the fact that you are God's linebacker and would be his angel of vengance. You let us all down (please don't knife me).
Not only that but your entire team gave the country a full on cock-tease before collapsing on the final drive.

So now that Ray Lewis has failed us, who do we look to on the Steelers to permently disable Tom and end the Boston Bukaki on the face of America?

My pick for the week is Deshea Townsend. We all know that Pittsburgh loves to blitz, hense the biltzburgh nickname. (Either that or most anouncers are confused by a 3-4 defense and don't understand that rushing 4 isn't a blitz)

Deshea is the pick, as this is the week where growing up with a girls name finaly caused him to snap and take a cheap shot at Tom's knee. I don't even think it will be a called blitz, Deshea will just take it upon himself after getting burned by a white guy named Wes once too often.

Thats it for this week, I have nothing else to say now.