Picking up the slack

Cassel is still a work in progress, however, signs are encouraging..

I'm not going to post the Brady-Cassel comparison this week - mostly because the Boston Globe has already done it. But it is interesting to note that other media outlets are finally getting that comparing Cassel to Brady '07 isn't the appropriate comp to make. They're finally figuring out that the appropriate comp is for the late-round pick, career back-up getting the start is to compare him to when Brady was the late-round pick, career back-up.

Its about freakin' time.

While I'm not going to repost the numbers here, having provided the link above, I am going to say that it's interesting to note that the numbers through seven games are remarkably similar, and with the exception of in the area of sacks, touchdowns, and interceptions, Cassel leads Brady version .01 in almost every other category - and neither leads the other by any sort of significant number in any category.

It's creepy.

Other thoughts and observations...

The Giants front office is gutless.

Plaxico Burress won't start the game against the Steelers as punishment for actions detrimental to the team - harassing officials last week, not showing up for treatments, and other petulant actions are at issue. Sure, he plays and collects all his salary. Wow. What a punishment.

Would the Giants have just benched Burress for the first couple of plays of the game had the team been playing the Lions? Or would they have suspended him again? I'm guessing the latter.

But against the mighty Steelers? No. It's all hands on deck for that, discipline be damned.

I notice they had no problem suspending him for a game against the lowly Seahawks.

Other boneheads...

Former Jets receiver Don Maynard said some dumb things this past weekend.

"You have 106 coaches in the NFC that's never played pro ball, you got 126 in the AFC that's never played pro ball," Maynard said. "You got 64 coaches that never played college football, so now you know why the knowledge of pro football has gone downhill. They don't even do what we did in offenses and defenses."

Never mind the fact that three of the last five Super Bowl winning coaches never signed a contract to play in the NFL (Bill Belichick, Jon Gruden, Tom Coughlin); never mind the fact that the man for whom the championship trophy is named, Vince Lombardi, never played a down of professional football; or that Maynard's own NFL coach with whom he won a ring - Weeb Ewbank, never played professional football (that's eight rings from five coaches who obviously have no idea what they're doing by Maynard's reckoning - more if you include Green Bay's pre-Super Bowl Championships). Never mind all of that.

Let's just talk about one of the biggest differences in the game - the playbook. When I was in high school in the mid 1980's, we ran a pro-style offense...from the late 1960's and 1970's, with a dash of the 80's thrown in. The closer we got to current day, even then, the more complicated the plays became. This guy probably couldn't decipher today's playbook- so, yeah, he's right, they're not playing the offenses and defensed they did then - they're playing much more complicated schemes.

On second thought, I think I am going to address the boneheaded thought that someone who never played pro football is less qualified. There have been 42 Super Bowls, of those 42 championships 26 rings/trophies went home with 15 (head) coaches that never played pro football. There are only 26 coaches that even have earned the right to wear Super Bowl rings, and 15, essentially 58 percent, haven't played a down in the NFL. They account for 62 percent of the wins in the big game.

More impressively, eight of those coaches that Maynard thinks lack the requisite background account for 19 rings. Thirty-five percent of the coaches on the list account for 45 percent of those wins. Some of the names of the unqualified (Maynard's complaint, not mine):

Vince Lombardi
Weeb Ewbank
Bill Walsh
Joe Gibbs
Bill Parcells
George Seifert
Jimmy Johnson
Mike Shanahan
Bill Belichick

Lombard, Ewbank, Walsh, and Gibbs are all in the Hall of Fame for their coaching acumen. All the others are, at worst, in the discussion.

So what have we learned?

That Don Maynard is a total ass-clown with the football IQ of a brain-dead platypus.

Sigh.