And One, what beautiful words, and one. Let those two words wash over you for a minute. That is some satisfying shit right there. Two words and my faith in the football gods has been restored. Two words and I have had a huge smile on my face since about 10pm last night. Two words and all my masshole coworkers can come up with are stuttering excuses and what was the Raider’s record retorts.
For 18 weeks I was subjected to endless hyperbole of how this Pats team was the greatest of all time, and I had no counterargument. This was the best football team that I could remember seeing. They were doing things that no other team in the salary cap era had accomplished. As a football team they were truly remarkable. Unfortunately the Pats fan base is so hard to stomach it took away from my ability to watch the football equivalent of a Picasso being created.
Most days I ride too and from work with a Pats fan. He endlessly would regale me with his theories on the Pats motivation, the Pats strategy, the Pats Perfection. He and the other Pats fans at work would joyfully expound on the Pats exploits for hours. The best I could come up with was that the season wasn’t over yet and if they didn’t win the Super bowl than all would be for naught.
Every week I would pin my hopes on one overmatched team after another. Looking for some way that David could hit Goliath with that fateful stone. Every week Goliath laughed.
Until all was left was Eli. I had to pin my hopes on Eli. Sure he had had the best game of his young career against the Pats. Sure his team matched up as well as any other David had all season. Punishing pass rush, punishing run game, the two factors that gave this Goliath fits. But week after week tough defenses and run games wilted under the Onslaught of Goliaths execution.
Here I was, pinning my hopes on Eli, a guy whom up to this point had his picture next to wilting in the dictionary. Impossible expectations had been heaped upon the lesser Manning since college. He was expected to be his brother, but seemingly would never measure up. How could this mere mortal be expected to come through on the biggest stage in American sports?
The game went much the way I expected. It was a tough physical game. The Giants as a team matched up well. Then in the 4th quarter the Pats offense put together a drive that seemingly put a dagger in the hearts of the football world. Eli came out onto the field and looked shaky as the Pats D applied their most consistent pressure of the game. It looked as if yet another team would falter in the waning moments to Goliath’s onslaught.
Then something miraculous happened. On 3rd down the pressure was all over Eli. The game was seemingly over. The Pats had Eli surrounded. Somehow, someway David hurled his stone and found a receiver. A collective holy shit went up from football fans everywhere. One of the greatest plays in Super Bowl, nay, Football history happened on the biggest stage at the most critical junction of the game. Goliath had been hit between the eyes. The game wasn’t over, but the monster was staggered.
The rest of the game was a blur. I was on the edge of my seat. Hoping that this hope wasn’t snatched away as it had been so many times before where this Pats team was involved. All of the sudden, Eli was no longer Fredo Manning, Eli was the chosen one, a couple plays later and the writing was on the wall. Eli had not wilted, he had done his part and succeeded where so many others had failed.
Goliath was reeling. The offense now took the field and looked panicked. A team that calmly had marched down the field in the past when time was short now swung wildly looking for a knockout shot. The poise that had been there in Super Bowls past and all season was gone. A couple long bombs later the game was over.
A Giant had felled Goliath.
Everyone in my living room jumped up. Cheering and clapping as if we were actually at the game. Never in my life had I celebrated a win that didn’t involve the Raiders in this manner. There was not one Giant fan in the room, but we had all come together to support the underdog, the most American of all rooting interests. We had shared our food and drink and now our joy. As we started to disperse it didn’t feel like hyperbole to call this the greatest game we had ever seen. We were all witness to the impossible occurring in some far off stadium.
My wife wanted me to call my parents, both Pats fans, to rub it in. But I declined they were surely heartbroken enough. They hadn’t called me to apply salt when the Raiders fell to the Bucs, they were the 1st Pats fans to admit to me that the Raiders had been jobbed in the Snow Bowl. This wasn’t the time to call them.
Besides, they weren’t the Pats fans who had taken joy in rubbing my and my coworker’s noses in our teams collective failings all year long. I had a simple enough retort for those who had delighted in pointing out the shortcomings of others all year long.
Once I arrived at work this morning the whiteboard in the conference room received a simple message.
18-1
Nothing more needed to be said. As the Pats fans trickled in the expected tired retort came my way. “Well at least we made the Super Bowl, where did the Raiders finish?” To which I replied, “The same place as the Pats, without a ring”.
Then, as I expected, someone erased the message on the whiteboard before our Monday morning meeting, so that those who aren’t in the office wouldn’t know that this is a haven of N.E. supporters. The same board that once counted down the Red Sox magic number and wins needed to clinch a World Series ring, suddenly was to important to be relegated to sports info. The morning meeting came and went, with the local Steeler fans talking about the great game last night, and a strange silence from the out of town Pats fans. The board stayed blank, despite needing to be cleared for important business.
I sat quietly knowing that it may have taken 5 months, but all was right in my football world again. Little to no mention of football dominance will be made by the collective bandwagon for a while.
Soon the euphoria will fade and the realization that no meaningful football will be played for 7 months will sink in. But until then I can reflect on a great game and those two words… and one.
Monday, February 4, 2008
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Man of the Year - the nominees
While dozing in and out of conciseness while being driven to work this morning, I heard Don King announce his man of the year on the Howard Stern Show. Now as I said, I was half asleep, so I turned to the driver and said, “Did Don King just announce his man of the year?” Once he assured me that Don King had in fact named some General from the Iraq war (Look I know his name, I’m just too lazy to look up the spelling) as his man of the year, I knew I needed to do something.
I needed to name the inaugural brickinthebox man of the year.
For this award to have any meaning, I must put the maximum effort into selecting the right individual, but where to start, I mean I should really start doing some work by lunch today, so that only leaves me 3 ½ hours to pull this off.
Step 1 – Select potential nominees
Face it, this blog hasn’t been around that long, just since October, so I’m not going to get a good feel for the year by looking through the archives for nominees. But that’s where we will start:
Tom Brady seemed to get mentioned a lot, so did Stuart Scott, Tom Cable would be a selection only Raider Fans could appreciate, as would Lane Kiffen, Peyton Manning won a Super Bowl and made at least 5,000 commercials, and I guess Bill Simmons got a lot of run around here.
Not much to choose from there, for this websites purposes, we are going to take Tom Cable from that pool, as he installed a system that actually had the Raiders look competent in the run game.
So we have our 1st nominee, where do we find the next one. Well what do I remember from the year.
Mike Vick did something stupid, so did Pac-Man Jones, Bush was a disappointment (both at running the country and the football), Clint Bowyer drove real fast in circles while drinking Jack, some little faggot shot some innocent people at VT, K-Fed actually won a custody battle, read that again, K-Fed is a better parent in the eyes of the court.
So from this group I’m selecting Clint Bowyer as the nominee, K-Fed almost got the nod, but I could give two shits about celebrity gossip and love Jack Daniels. The other guys are all asshats.
We still need a 3rd nominee, and we are almost a ½ hour into the process, we’d be further along, but the phone is ringing off the hook today, god damn it, why do I actually have to do work to get paid. I guess we’ll go to CNN’s year in review page and see what sticks out to me.
Some crazy astronaut drove half-way across the country in a diaper, Barry Bonds pissed of baseball purists, Larry Craig tapped his foot, Sean Taylor died.
That was a dead end, nobody there makes the grade for this prestigious award, Sean Taylor came the closest, but just doesn’t feel right for this site.
So I’m just going to go with my favorite piece of entertainment from the year. The movie 300 was great, so our final nominee is King Leonidas.
There you have it, BrickintheBox’s 3 nominees for Man of the Year are:
Tom Cable
Clint Bowyer
And
King Leonidas
The phone won’t stop ringing, so we will return to this important task later in the day.
I needed to name the inaugural brickinthebox man of the year.
For this award to have any meaning, I must put the maximum effort into selecting the right individual, but where to start, I mean I should really start doing some work by lunch today, so that only leaves me 3 ½ hours to pull this off.
Step 1 – Select potential nominees
Face it, this blog hasn’t been around that long, just since October, so I’m not going to get a good feel for the year by looking through the archives for nominees. But that’s where we will start:
Tom Brady seemed to get mentioned a lot, so did Stuart Scott, Tom Cable would be a selection only Raider Fans could appreciate, as would Lane Kiffen, Peyton Manning won a Super Bowl and made at least 5,000 commercials, and I guess Bill Simmons got a lot of run around here.
Not much to choose from there, for this websites purposes, we are going to take Tom Cable from that pool, as he installed a system that actually had the Raiders look competent in the run game.
So we have our 1st nominee, where do we find the next one. Well what do I remember from the year.
Mike Vick did something stupid, so did Pac-Man Jones, Bush was a disappointment (both at running the country and the football), Clint Bowyer drove real fast in circles while drinking Jack, some little faggot shot some innocent people at VT, K-Fed actually won a custody battle, read that again, K-Fed is a better parent in the eyes of the court.
So from this group I’m selecting Clint Bowyer as the nominee, K-Fed almost got the nod, but I could give two shits about celebrity gossip and love Jack Daniels. The other guys are all asshats.
We still need a 3rd nominee, and we are almost a ½ hour into the process, we’d be further along, but the phone is ringing off the hook today, god damn it, why do I actually have to do work to get paid. I guess we’ll go to CNN’s year in review page and see what sticks out to me.
Some crazy astronaut drove half-way across the country in a diaper, Barry Bonds pissed of baseball purists, Larry Craig tapped his foot, Sean Taylor died.
That was a dead end, nobody there makes the grade for this prestigious award, Sean Taylor came the closest, but just doesn’t feel right for this site.
So I’m just going to go with my favorite piece of entertainment from the year. The movie 300 was great, so our final nominee is King Leonidas.
There you have it, BrickintheBox’s 3 nominees for Man of the Year are:
Tom Cable
Clint Bowyer
And
King Leonidas
The phone won’t stop ringing, so we will return to this important task later in the day.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Contest Entry - Super Bowl
Why does anyone go to the Super Bowl? I mean sure it’s a huge event. It’s the culmination of the all to short NFL season where millions tune in each week, it the most heavily wagered sporting event of the year where you can bet on everything from who scores first to the number of times they show random crowd shots of celebrities.
But I can see all this from the comfort of my own couch. Preferably with a few friend over, who bring their significant others to distract my wife long enough that I can actually watch the game.
Then you throw in the fact that the majority of the people in attendance either really don’t care about the two teams on the field since they are there with free tickets, or are complete douchbags like this guy:
So for those who aren’t lucky enough to work for a corporate sponsor, or be a douchbag sports writer, you are left either dealing with ticket agency’s like this one www.ticketsofamerica.com/super-bowl-tickets where you can spend almost $4,000.00 to sit with corporate types and douchbags. Or you can deal with scalpers since the NFL only makes a few thousand tickets available to the general public. Or if you are really lucky you can win tickets, which is the only reason I wrote this post. Consider it my entry.
Look at that over 100 words and about the Super Bowl, with link inserted, looks like I qualify.
But I can see all this from the comfort of my own couch. Preferably with a few friend over, who bring their significant others to distract my wife long enough that I can actually watch the game.
Then you throw in the fact that the majority of the people in attendance either really don’t care about the two teams on the field since they are there with free tickets, or are complete douchbags like this guy:
So for those who aren’t lucky enough to work for a corporate sponsor, or be a douchbag sports writer, you are left either dealing with ticket agency’s like this one www.ticketsofamerica.com/super-bowl-tickets where you can spend almost $4,000.00 to sit with corporate types and douchbags. Or you can deal with scalpers since the NFL only makes a few thousand tickets available to the general public. Or if you are really lucky you can win tickets, which is the only reason I wrote this post. Consider it my entry.
Look at that over 100 words and about the Super Bowl, with link inserted, looks like I qualify.
Fantasy Bullshit wrap-up
I'm not going to lie, reading about other people's fantasy football is boring as fuck. I could give two shits about your fantasy team in some league I’m not involved in. So I don’t blame you if you just skip over this item, and read my bitching about some other subject. But, since I committed to giving props on this blog to the winner of one league, I’ll keep my word and post a few lines here.
You may remember from the last 7 things column before I took a holiday break that I told you not to fuck with the Thomlinson/ Brady combo. Well going into the finals in 2 of my leagues I was on the wrong side of this combo in 1 and had them starting for me in the other. So I figured at worst I’d be winning 1 of the 2.
Well I took it in the ass in both leagues.
In the money league, I was on the wrong side of the combo. So I was rooting for both players to shit the bed so that I could take home the big payday. Well that didn’t happen as both of them performed right about at their average. So my opponent, we’ll call him lucky fuck, immediately had a huge advantage.
Now this didn’t shock me, and I still felt that I had a puncher’s chance to pull off the win, as I had defeated Lucky Fuck and his deadly combo just a couple of weeks prior to clinch my playoff spot. But no, not only did lucky fuck have the deadly combo performing at their standard level, but he also had Brandon Jacobs and Aaron Stecker put up career days (OK, Stecker was actually better the previous week, but who the hell tracks Aaron Stecker).
So while Lucky Fuck was having his players post huge numbers, my team decided to take an unscheduled bye week. Carson Palmer decided that he already put up enough stats for the year against Cleveland in week 2. Brett Favre decided to have one of those days where he kills his own D by tossing up picks for TD’s. But the one that really pissed me off was Ron Dayne. Now you may be asking yourself, what kind of idiot starts Ron Dayne. Well the Texans had been starting him with success for the previous few weeks. But they gave him the day off against Indy. Then he came back the following week with nothing on the line to put up 17 on a tough Jacksonville run D.
So as I’m sure you figured out by now, Lucky Fuck got the big win. Congrats Lucky Fuck, too bad you can’t keep Brady and Thomlinson next year and you gave up your #2 pick next year for LT, have fun in the basement next year. (No, I’m not bitter).
But even more frustrating was my no-money just for fun league. Here I was the proud owner of the deadly combo. Not only that but I had Maurice Jones-Drew, Jericho Cotchery and the Redskins D putting up huge points for me in what should have been a blowout. But I made a big mistake, what should have been my #2 running back, M. Lynch, and my #2 receiver, D. Bowe, sat on my bench. While Lucky Fuck #2 squeaked out a win riding huge days by Kurt Warner, Brandon Jacobs, Steven Jackson, Braylon Edwards and the Seahawks D.
So I guess the moral of my tale of woe is don’t fuck with the Thomlinson/Brady combo, unless you have Kurt Warner, since god loves him some Kurt Warner.
You may remember from the last 7 things column before I took a holiday break that I told you not to fuck with the Thomlinson/ Brady combo. Well going into the finals in 2 of my leagues I was on the wrong side of this combo in 1 and had them starting for me in the other. So I figured at worst I’d be winning 1 of the 2.
Well I took it in the ass in both leagues.
In the money league, I was on the wrong side of the combo. So I was rooting for both players to shit the bed so that I could take home the big payday. Well that didn’t happen as both of them performed right about at their average. So my opponent, we’ll call him lucky fuck, immediately had a huge advantage.
Now this didn’t shock me, and I still felt that I had a puncher’s chance to pull off the win, as I had defeated Lucky Fuck and his deadly combo just a couple of weeks prior to clinch my playoff spot. But no, not only did lucky fuck have the deadly combo performing at their standard level, but he also had Brandon Jacobs and Aaron Stecker put up career days (OK, Stecker was actually better the previous week, but who the hell tracks Aaron Stecker).
So while Lucky Fuck was having his players post huge numbers, my team decided to take an unscheduled bye week. Carson Palmer decided that he already put up enough stats for the year against Cleveland in week 2. Brett Favre decided to have one of those days where he kills his own D by tossing up picks for TD’s. But the one that really pissed me off was Ron Dayne. Now you may be asking yourself, what kind of idiot starts Ron Dayne. Well the Texans had been starting him with success for the previous few weeks. But they gave him the day off against Indy. Then he came back the following week with nothing on the line to put up 17 on a tough Jacksonville run D.
So as I’m sure you figured out by now, Lucky Fuck got the big win. Congrats Lucky Fuck, too bad you can’t keep Brady and Thomlinson next year and you gave up your #2 pick next year for LT, have fun in the basement next year. (No, I’m not bitter).
But even more frustrating was my no-money just for fun league. Here I was the proud owner of the deadly combo. Not only that but I had Maurice Jones-Drew, Jericho Cotchery and the Redskins D putting up huge points for me in what should have been a blowout. But I made a big mistake, what should have been my #2 running back, M. Lynch, and my #2 receiver, D. Bowe, sat on my bench. While Lucky Fuck #2 squeaked out a win riding huge days by Kurt Warner, Brandon Jacobs, Steven Jackson, Braylon Edwards and the Seahawks D.
So I guess the moral of my tale of woe is don’t fuck with the Thomlinson/Brady combo, unless you have Kurt Warner, since god loves him some Kurt Warner.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
I'm back, and just as mediocre as ever.
Damn, it’s been almost a month since my last post. That sucks for you. I have excuses but nobody cares, so lets just get right into it.
Quite honestly my return post looks nothing like the article I had prepped on Saturday. I had two pages ready to go about how the Pats have ridden the NFL’s storyline arm to reach an undefeated record and was ready to document each and every bad call in the game against Jacksonville, both for and against the NFL’s golden boys.
Than a funny thing happened. The crew assigned to the Pats game called just about the best game I’ve seen by an officiating crew all year. Sure there were some close calls (Jax 1st TD, mystery facemask call on Seau, roughing the passer call against Jax) but overall other than the refusal to call holding against the Pats line and receivers it was a well called game. It really came down to a piss poor game plan by Jacksonville on D and the weather not helping them contain the Pats offense.
That’s not to say that the NFL had a good officiating weekend. The Colts got every questionable call that the NFL’s storyline committee could dream up in order to maintain the dream game of Peyton vs. Brady. But somehow the Colts failed to take advantage and squandered what should have been a gift-wrapped win.
Unfortunately the weekend’s results in the AFC leaves us with the most unappealing match-up possible in my eyes, as the NFL’s biggest assholes travel to take on the NFL’s golden boys backed by the most annoying fans.
Lets start with the visitors. San Diego consistently produces the most despicable football players in the NFL. Something about the culture of that team brings out the worst in players. Going back to the development of Harrison and Seau (more on them later) this team has been full of cheap shot artists, steroid abusers, overrated hacks and loudmouths.
The poster boy for the Chargers D is Shawne Merriman. You only need to know that he has been caught using steroids to wonder how the NFL, Nike and the announcers can continue to prop up this overrated piece of garbage. The guy is good at one thing and one thing only, blitzing the QB. Sure this gets you media recognition and probowl slots as most are either to lazy or dumb to take a look at his overall game. But this guy is such a liability in run support and pass coverage that there is no way he should be getting any kind of love from football savvy watchers. This guy is the complete San Diego package, overrated, steroid abuser, loudmouth hack, nice.
His supporting cast on D isn’t much better, hell the team isn’t referred to as Bengal’s West for nothing. Louis Castillo, steroid user, Shaun Phillips (the real best LB on the squad) has had offfield run ins with the police (reportedly fought with officers after putting a woman in a headlock), Marlon McCree has taken up the late hit/cheap shot position left vacant by Harrison, and that’s just picking 1 guy from each level.
Then you head over to the offense, sure LT is the teams best known player, but the traditional leadership position is manned by this guy.
Damn, if I had know what an assclown this guy was, I never would have supported the move to trade Fredo Manning for this guy. I thought the Chargers did the right thing from a talent and football maturity standpoint. It turns out I was way off. The talent levels are comparable and Rivers looks as if he should still be in diapers by the tantrums he pulls on the field. This is the guy you let Drew Breese go for? This is the long-term face of your organization. A.J. Smith, you are a genius.
Other than that there isn’t too much bad on this offense. Sure LT’s halo is a media fabrication, if you care to look around there is plenty of ass-hattery there. But this is starting to run long, and we haven’t even delved into the Pats and their fans.
I've made no secret of my dislike of the Pats, and as the season has gone on my disdain has only grown. The team is given verbal BJ's by the media on a daily basis. I've almost completely stopped watching ESPN and listening to both ESPN and NFL radio due to the nauseating coverage.
Somehow this team is almost universally praised for doing things the right way both on and off the field. Praised for their player's sportsmanship and dedication. The only dissent being the complaints that Bellichick runs up the score, which is the one place I agree with them, you are on the field to score, it’s the other team's job to stop you.
But how can the media ignore the constant cheap shots by Harrison and Seau, the eye gouging by Wilfork, the taunting by Brady, Moss’ remarkable revival as he front runs for a playoff team after quitting on his previous two teams. Make no mistake; this team is full of dirty players and assholes.
Hell, lets remember that Harrison was referred to by many as the dirtiest player in the league while in San Diego, for committing the same actions that he is now praised for in New England. Harrison is one of the few players I have actually rooted for to get injured and laughed out loud when he broke his arm last year. Sure I call for the opposition to take out Brady, but its in jest and I appreciate his football skills. Harrison is a thug with no redeeming qualities.
I have never liked Seau; the guy has always been a fraud in my eyes. While in San Diego the team listed him at OLB instead of MLB just to ensure he would make the probowl. He has preached class on and off the field while being a dancing cheap shot artist on the field. His tearful retirement ceremony was just another publicity stunt in this man’s sham of an image. Is it any surprise that both he and Harrison have San Diego ties?
But this pales in comparison to the NFL’s kid glove treatment of the Pats, and their self absorbed fans. The most egregious thing I have seen all year in the NFL is the official's treatment of the Pats. This team has been given every possible advantage on the field by the NFL's unbiased officiating crews. Every time the Pats were challenged by the opposing team, the yellow hankies came out to salt the game away for the Pats. The Giants game was the most flagrant example of the NFL's desire to maintain the perfect season storyline. Early in the game the Pats were given 1st downs when struggling on offense to keep the Giants from building an early lead. Once the Giants offense proved they could move the ball almost at will against the Pats, the officials found questionable call after questionable call to make against the Giants offense. We need go no further than the week 12 and 13 games against the Eagles and Ravens to see that this team does not deserve a perfect record. Make no mistake; the Pats need to distribute perfect season bonuses to the leagues officials as a thank you for the 16-0 gift they received.
This would be more than enough to wish bodily harm on Tom Brady and Randy Moss, but remember I am a Raider fan; I lived in New England for 10 years prior to my recent move to Pittsburgh. I watched the Pats go from an afterthought, with most of my friends from that area identifying them as their “2nd favorite NFL team” to a region full of bandwagoners. I watched the NY Giants flags & bumper stickers in southern CT be replaced by Pats flags and bumper stickers (hell I had 1 neighbor put his brand new Pat Patriot bumper sticker right over the old NY Giants sticker). The entire region is in full bandwagon mode.
Look, I have nothing against Boston as a whole; I met my wife there, went to college there, and still have friends there (well maybe not after this column). But the Pats fan with his constant whining about the officiating (1st the Pats have been handed more games in the last 7 years than any other team, 2nd if the Pats hadn’t been breaking the rules on PI there would have been no need to re-emphasize them) the way they take anything said negatively about the team as a personal affront, and the way they defend the most undefendable actions of the team is nauseating.
So here I am, with only two NFL weekends left, and I am guaranteed that one of these two teams will be a major part of both weekends, the only thing I am left to root for is some sort of natural disaster to hit Foxboro this weekend, eliminating both teams from the playoffs. Hopefully God hates douchbags as much as I do and will smite both teams before our very eyes this weekend. But he has already abandoned his coach, Dungy, and linebacker, Rey Rey, so I have little hope for the majority of NFL fans.
Quite honestly my return post looks nothing like the article I had prepped on Saturday. I had two pages ready to go about how the Pats have ridden the NFL’s storyline arm to reach an undefeated record and was ready to document each and every bad call in the game against Jacksonville, both for and against the NFL’s golden boys.
Than a funny thing happened. The crew assigned to the Pats game called just about the best game I’ve seen by an officiating crew all year. Sure there were some close calls (Jax 1st TD, mystery facemask call on Seau, roughing the passer call against Jax) but overall other than the refusal to call holding against the Pats line and receivers it was a well called game. It really came down to a piss poor game plan by Jacksonville on D and the weather not helping them contain the Pats offense.
That’s not to say that the NFL had a good officiating weekend. The Colts got every questionable call that the NFL’s storyline committee could dream up in order to maintain the dream game of Peyton vs. Brady. But somehow the Colts failed to take advantage and squandered what should have been a gift-wrapped win.
Unfortunately the weekend’s results in the AFC leaves us with the most unappealing match-up possible in my eyes, as the NFL’s biggest assholes travel to take on the NFL’s golden boys backed by the most annoying fans.
Lets start with the visitors. San Diego consistently produces the most despicable football players in the NFL. Something about the culture of that team brings out the worst in players. Going back to the development of Harrison and Seau (more on them later) this team has been full of cheap shot artists, steroid abusers, overrated hacks and loudmouths.
The poster boy for the Chargers D is Shawne Merriman. You only need to know that he has been caught using steroids to wonder how the NFL, Nike and the announcers can continue to prop up this overrated piece of garbage. The guy is good at one thing and one thing only, blitzing the QB. Sure this gets you media recognition and probowl slots as most are either to lazy or dumb to take a look at his overall game. But this guy is such a liability in run support and pass coverage that there is no way he should be getting any kind of love from football savvy watchers. This guy is the complete San Diego package, overrated, steroid abuser, loudmouth hack, nice.
His supporting cast on D isn’t much better, hell the team isn’t referred to as Bengal’s West for nothing. Louis Castillo, steroid user, Shaun Phillips (the real best LB on the squad) has had offfield run ins with the police (reportedly fought with officers after putting a woman in a headlock), Marlon McCree has taken up the late hit/cheap shot position left vacant by Harrison, and that’s just picking 1 guy from each level.
Then you head over to the offense, sure LT is the teams best known player, but the traditional leadership position is manned by this guy.
Mr. Personality himself, Philip Rivers.
Damn, if I had know what an assclown this guy was, I never would have supported the move to trade Fredo Manning for this guy. I thought the Chargers did the right thing from a talent and football maturity standpoint. It turns out I was way off. The talent levels are comparable and Rivers looks as if he should still be in diapers by the tantrums he pulls on the field. This is the guy you let Drew Breese go for? This is the long-term face of your organization. A.J. Smith, you are a genius.
Other than that there isn’t too much bad on this offense. Sure LT’s halo is a media fabrication, if you care to look around there is plenty of ass-hattery there. But this is starting to run long, and we haven’t even delved into the Pats and their fans.
I've made no secret of my dislike of the Pats, and as the season has gone on my disdain has only grown. The team is given verbal BJ's by the media on a daily basis. I've almost completely stopped watching ESPN and listening to both ESPN and NFL radio due to the nauseating coverage.
Somehow this team is almost universally praised for doing things the right way both on and off the field. Praised for their player's sportsmanship and dedication. The only dissent being the complaints that Bellichick runs up the score, which is the one place I agree with them, you are on the field to score, it’s the other team's job to stop you.
But how can the media ignore the constant cheap shots by Harrison and Seau, the eye gouging by Wilfork, the taunting by Brady, Moss’ remarkable revival as he front runs for a playoff team after quitting on his previous two teams. Make no mistake; this team is full of dirty players and assholes.
Hell, lets remember that Harrison was referred to by many as the dirtiest player in the league while in San Diego, for committing the same actions that he is now praised for in New England. Harrison is one of the few players I have actually rooted for to get injured and laughed out loud when he broke his arm last year. Sure I call for the opposition to take out Brady, but its in jest and I appreciate his football skills. Harrison is a thug with no redeeming qualities.
I have never liked Seau; the guy has always been a fraud in my eyes. While in San Diego the team listed him at OLB instead of MLB just to ensure he would make the probowl. He has preached class on and off the field while being a dancing cheap shot artist on the field. His tearful retirement ceremony was just another publicity stunt in this man’s sham of an image. Is it any surprise that both he and Harrison have San Diego ties?
But this pales in comparison to the NFL’s kid glove treatment of the Pats, and their self absorbed fans. The most egregious thing I have seen all year in the NFL is the official's treatment of the Pats. This team has been given every possible advantage on the field by the NFL's unbiased officiating crews. Every time the Pats were challenged by the opposing team, the yellow hankies came out to salt the game away for the Pats. The Giants game was the most flagrant example of the NFL's desire to maintain the perfect season storyline. Early in the game the Pats were given 1st downs when struggling on offense to keep the Giants from building an early lead. Once the Giants offense proved they could move the ball almost at will against the Pats, the officials found questionable call after questionable call to make against the Giants offense. We need go no further than the week 12 and 13 games against the Eagles and Ravens to see that this team does not deserve a perfect record. Make no mistake; the Pats need to distribute perfect season bonuses to the leagues officials as a thank you for the 16-0 gift they received.
This would be more than enough to wish bodily harm on Tom Brady and Randy Moss, but remember I am a Raider fan; I lived in New England for 10 years prior to my recent move to Pittsburgh. I watched the Pats go from an afterthought, with most of my friends from that area identifying them as their “2nd favorite NFL team” to a region full of bandwagoners. I watched the NY Giants flags & bumper stickers in southern CT be replaced by Pats flags and bumper stickers (hell I had 1 neighbor put his brand new Pat Patriot bumper sticker right over the old NY Giants sticker). The entire region is in full bandwagon mode.
Look, I have nothing against Boston as a whole; I met my wife there, went to college there, and still have friends there (well maybe not after this column). But the Pats fan with his constant whining about the officiating (1st the Pats have been handed more games in the last 7 years than any other team, 2nd if the Pats hadn’t been breaking the rules on PI there would have been no need to re-emphasize them) the way they take anything said negatively about the team as a personal affront, and the way they defend the most undefendable actions of the team is nauseating.
So here I am, with only two NFL weekends left, and I am guaranteed that one of these two teams will be a major part of both weekends, the only thing I am left to root for is some sort of natural disaster to hit Foxboro this weekend, eliminating both teams from the playoffs. Hopefully God hates douchbags as much as I do and will smite both teams before our very eyes this weekend. But he has already abandoned his coach, Dungy, and linebacker, Rey Rey, so I have little hope for the majority of NFL fans.
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.
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.
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.
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