RoY and QB Rankings

A quick shout out to Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia for winning Rookie of the Year honors. Pedroia garnered 24 of 28 first place votes for 136 points, while Tampa Bay's Delmon Young was second, receiving three of the remaining four first-place votes and a total of 56 points, and Kansas City pitcher Brian Bannister received the remaining first place vote and a total of 36 points.

Neither Daisuke Matsuzaka nor Hideki Okajima showed up in the voting. I will grant that Bannister put up a better ERA and WHIP than the Dice-man, however, pitching 165 innings in Kansas City without the pressure of a pennant race is not really the same thing as pitching 204 2/3's in Boston...ever. I'm not saying that Bannister didn't deserve at least consideration for the honor, because he did - I just believe that his 3.87 ERA in Kauffman Stadium isn't necessarily significantly better than a 4.40 in Fenway.

But the real shame here is Okajima receiving no consideration. It's almost like a sick joke. This is an award voted on by the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA), the guys who are supposed to know baseball inside and out. The prevailing attitude among this group is that a reliever doesn't play enough to merit this sort of consideration - the same reason that relievers seldom win the Cy Young, even if he gave the best performance of any pitcher on the season.

The reason this is a tragic joke? Without Okajima, the Red Sox are sitting at home in October watching someone else win the World Series. He was, arguably, the most important piece in the Sox championship run, bridging the gap between the team's starters and Jonathan Papelbon in dominant fashion for almost the entire season. Essentially, this he is what the team has been missing since 2004. At the very worst, his name should have come up.

Field Generals...Colonels...Majors...Captains, so on and so forth...

After some of the comments, I wanted to talk a little bit about the quarterbacks in the league. This is my own personal ranking based on a number of criteria - I considered who I would pick if I were starting a franchise right now, but that wasn't the be all and end all. I looked at personnel and what the quarterbacks have had to work with, longevity, potential, and their ability to win with what they have been given. Here goes...

The elite -

1. Brett Favre - Last year he would have been a little farther down the list as I really did believe that we were looking at the last gasps of a guy eying retirement. However, throughout his career the Green Bay QB has done more with less than any quarterback in the history of the game, and he's doing it again this year. He has played with only one sure-fire Hall-of-Famer, and that guy played defense (Reggie White).
2. Tom Brady - The question the pundits have always asked is what would this man do with the tools that Peyton Manning had at his disposal. For the first time in Brady's career he has a wide receiving corps that rivals any that Manning has had since he came into the league. What's he doing? Currently on pace to shatter every single season quarterbacking record in the books (at least the non-dubious ones).
3. Peyton Manning - I know there will be those out there that accuse me of being a homer for putting Manning behind Brady, but consider the following - many of the national writers are excusing Manning's performance this past weekend because of the many Colt injuries, however, I think we're finally seeing what Manning could have done had he and Brady swapped teams/tools. We know what he's capable of while driving a Ferrari, let's see how well he handles a Mustang. For those of you that want to say the Patriots were never as decimated, I give you the 2004 edition - rookie at center, right guard in his first NFL season hadn't played football since high school, they started Brandon Gorin at right tackle because starter Tom Ashworth was lost after six games (the then third-year man was out of the league by the end of his fourth season) - essentially 60 percent of the O-line had never played together before - number one draft pick TE Ben Watson was lost for the season, their top receiver from two of the three previous seasons was lost to the defensive side if the ball due to injuries to Ty Law, Tyrone Poole, Gus Scott, and Asante Samuel, leaving Brady with top receivers David Givens, David Patten and Bethel Johnson. Between offense and defense, the Pats at one time or another were starting back-ups or rookies at eight spots (nine if you include nickel corner). Now it's time to see if Manning can step up and make the people around him better. The game against the Chargers was not a good start.
   

Up and Coming -

1. Ben Roethlisberger - Before I put Big Ben among the elite, I want to see more consistency from him. Yes, I know he was injured this year, but even in the year that he helped the Steelers to a Super Bowl title, he was never the one taking the team on his shoulders when times got tough, and when you look at the game that he played in the SB, it can be argued that Pittsburgh won in spite of him rather than because of him.
   
2. Carson Palmer - A year ago he would have been behind Brady and Manning. This year, I'm just not completely sure if he's improving or regressing, and it's hard to tell with the team with which the Cincy braintrust has surrounded him. One thing we do know is that he's got the arm.
   
3. Tony Romo - Another that I'm not completely sold on. What happens when one of the children that Dallas has at receiver reverts to their problem child ways? Terry Glenn, and Terrell Owens have a pretty spotty history. How does Romo handle it if and when one of these guys reverts to form and has a hissy fit? That will go a long way to showing us where he's really at.
   

The Jury is Out -

1. Derek Anderson - Streaky and erratic, but impressive when on. Ugly against Pittsburgh this weekend, consistently throwing behind receivers on five yard in-cuts that was tantamount to missing on center screens.
   
2. David Garrard - Appears to have potential, but to me he looks like a carbon copy of Byron Leftwich. Maybe a little more consistent than Leftwich, and with marginally more mobility. But only time will really tell.
   
3. Jason Campbell - Is showing signs of progressing, but has thus far been unable to beat quality teams. The only team with a winning record that Washington has been able to beat has been Detroit (6-3, and to be honest, looking at Detroit's remaining schedule, the idea that they could finish as bad as 6-10 or 7-9 is not unrealistic). Sure he's young and this is part of the growing process, but until he's able to come up big against somebody with a winning record other than Detroit, Redskins fans should forget about the playoffs this season.
   
4. Jay Cutler - He has the physical ability to make any throw. Potential doesn't always lead to success in this league, and it wouldn't be the first time Shanahan has drafted a QB with an elite arm (Brian Griese had a cannon, but not the head). It's still too early to tell which way Cutler will go, but the potential is certainly there, and that's the only reason I have ranked him ahead of some of the others in the next category.
   

Comfortably in the middle -

1. Drew Brees - Part of the continuing deterioration between Shottenheimer and AJ Smith was Shottenheimer's belief that Brees should have been kept and should have been starting over Rivers. Last season he did more with less than Rivers and he did it with the hopes of a region riding on his back. One of the most touching moments in sports this year was the reception the people of New Orleans gave the Saints upon returning from the playoff loss in Chicago.
   
2. John Kitna - Kitna is having a career year in Detroit under Mike Martz. The question is whether or not they can sustain for the remaining seven games against competition significantly harder than what they had in the first nine. That said, Kitna was always a better quarterback than he was generally given credit for, and there's a reason he's almost always been the guy keeping the seat warm for the young rookie. However, he has also almost always made it difficult for a coaching staff to justify benching him for unproven talent. If there's a guy that epitomizes the words, "pretty good, but not great," it's been Kitna.
   
3. Kurt Warner - Statistically, he still puts up good numbers. Unfortunately he's been doing it for years on teams that don't exactly excite those that like to watch good line play. While I'm not really a fan of Warner's, I believe that in many ways he's a lot like Drew Bledsoe - a big, fairly immoble guy who can still win if he has a decent line in front of him.
   
4. Matt Hasselbeck - I never saw in Hasselbeck what Mike Holmgren saw in him. He's solid, dependable, and not a whole lot else. Should he be a starter in the league? Certainly. However, I don't believe he could have made the Pro-Bowl were it not for a lack of talent at the QB position, particularly in the NFC over the last couple of years.
   
5. Eli Manning - I think he's made strides this season, but I'm still not sold on him. Too often he can disappear for large periods of time in important games, and his performance in London, the weather not withstanding, against a struggling Dolphins team was not one that builds confidence for the future.
   
6. Matt Schaub - I think Schaub could still go in either direction. If the Texans continue to block for the pass the way they have been (btw, Mr. Schaub, welcome to the wonderful world of what it feels like to be David Carr), then Schaub should just reserve a room at the local hospital so he can be treated for the concussions that will be coming his way.
   
7. Joey Harrington - I'm not a Harrington fan, but I think that he takes way too much heat for the failings of the Detroit Lions during his tenure in the Motor City. No, Harrington is not a great quarterback, and even in my rankings here he is 17th overall, marking the top of the bottom half of the league's regulars, but given the right situation, I think Harrington still has the potential to make a solid career.
   
8. Damon Huard - Irony, thy name is Huard. Huard, who is a middling starter and the best option the Chiefs have had for the last two years, was recommended to take over Dan Marino's starting position by Marino himself as he was going into retirement. Then coach Dave Wanstedt gave the job to Jay Fiedler instead. It's no coincidence that both Wanstedt and Fiedler are out of the NFL, but Huard is still chugging along. With John Beck's start this weekend, it will mark the franchise's 12th starting QB since Marino's retirement in 1999.
   

Heading in the wrong direction -

1. Kyle Boller - The former first round draft pick has never successfully convinced anyone that he's any better than a back-up. Dangerous territory for Ravens fans whose oft-injured starter, Steve McNair, is once again on the bench with an injury. For a team whose head coach is supposed to be an offensive guru, it's nothing short of amazing that he, along with the front office, has been unable to identify a quarterback who could still play at a high level in the NFL.
   
2. Philip Rivers - Rivers is still young enough to turn it around, but he is definitively regressing from last season. My bet is that AJ Smith still thinks it's about the talent picks and not the way the talent is coached.
   
3. Marc Bulger - After the saber-rattling for a new contract this off-season, Bulger needed to come in and perform. He hasn't. I wouldn't be surprised if the people of St. Louis rose up and put his head on a pike in front of the gateway to the west, the Arch of St. Louis, nor would I blame them.
   
4. Chad Pennington - He is what he is, and he's never been anything different - a smart quarterback with a wet noodle for an arm. Until recently you could at least count on him to play well enough so that he wasn't beating himself, he wasn't making the mistake that would cost his team. That hasn't been true this year.
   
5. Donovan McNabb - It could just be the knee injury, but I'm not completely sure that McNabb has ever completely recovered from the physical and emotional beating he took in the Super Bowl and during the subsequent year. Both he and Andy Reid have, during the course of his career, held him to a ridiculous standard, putting the team totally and utterly on his shoulders when it would have been wiser to let the runners help shoulder the burden. As such, I think that Reid has burned through McNabb in much the same way that Bill Parcells burned through Joe Morris.
   
6. Steve McNair - Ever since his last year or so in Tennessee it was obvious the injuries had taken their toll and his body was no longer able to function at the top levels needed of an offensive field general. Each year he's been in Baltimore, he's looked progressively worse.
   
7. Trent Green - Five simple words - "time to hang it up." Green was a solid quarterback for a number of years, and a stat machine, but he hasn't been the same since the concussion last year in KC, and he's on the way to an early case of dementia or Alzheimer's if he comes back. The future is now in Miami, and Trent Green is not a part of it. If Green is the opening day starter next season for the 'Phins, then Wayne Huizenga needs to do the good people of Miami and Trent Green a favor and fire himself, sell the team, and leave it in the hands of someone not running it into the ground.
   
8. Brian Griese - Marginally better than the man who started the season for the Bears, but has never won anywhere, why does anyone really think that he's going to be a significant improvement over Grossman. He has all the physical tools, he's just never had the head.
   
9. Rex Grossman - Possibly the biggest head case starting regularly at QB over the last season and a half, Grossman, like Griese, has the physical tools, but has yet to show he has the head to use them with anything approaching consistency. Grossman has alternately been the best or the worst quarterback in the league, and there was/is never any telling which Grossman was/is showing up for the game.
   

Not even on the map -

1. JP Losman - It's hard to be on the map when you lose your job to a rookie that couldn't win games in college. Losman has a lot of potential but has been wildly inconsistent since being anointed the Bills starting QB (remember, he didn't outplay Bledsoe, he was cheaper and more mobile...really an indictment of the Bills ability to put together a solid offensive line).
   
2. Vince Young - Teams are defending Young the way they defended Michael Vick, forcing him to be a quarterback and look for receivers from the pocket. The result has not been pretty for the second year QB. I believe I mentioned some time ago that this was what defenses were going to do to him. Until he can consistently burn teams from the pocket, we'll be watching the second coming of Michael Vick (sans the off-field issues).
   
3. Alex Smith - Going the wrong way fast. Is there a possibility that the 'Niners will be looking for their QB of the future for the second time inside of five years in the next draft or two?
   
4. Cleo Lemon - Sure, Lemon has a higher QB rating than either Young or Smith, but what matters more? The ability to put up decent passing numbers, or the ability to help your team get into the win column? And now he's on the verge of being benched.
   
5. Tavaris Jackson - Has just been brutally bad whenever I have seen him. If weren't for the running game, this team would be down with Miami.

I'm sure I'm missing someone here, but this is the list as I see it - for example I don't have any of the Panthers QB's. But that is a whole separate issue.

Let the arguing begin.

Pats spend off-weekend relaxing, Shula calls bye tainted.

It was either that or, "Shula notes Pats failed to win over weekend, unaware they were on their bye."

Currently the AFC East is a hotbed of perfection. Possibly for the first time in the history of the NFL, the same conference is hosting two teams in pursuit of a record with a goose-egg. The Patriots are 9-0, with their toughest competition likely coming from the Steelers, and maybe the Giants.

The Dolphins, the one-time paragon of winning with a 14-0 regular season back in 1972, are fighting for another perfect season - they're seven losses away from 0-16. Of course the perfect season that the 'Phins is a dubious honor to say the least.

Miami likely has four chances out of their final seven games to avoid becoming the first non-expansion team to go an entire season without a victory, and the first team since the NFL expanded to a 16 game slate. Those four games? A rematch with the Jets (1-7), and games against the struggling Ravens (4-5), Bengals (3-6), and Eagles (4-5).

I have my doubts that Miami can go into Buffalo and beat the Bills, or go to Pittsburgh and beat the Steelers, let alone go to New England and pull out a win there.

Sure, there's a reason for the term, "any given Sunday," and an upset could happen. However, I'm guessing that the Dolphins will be the underdog in every game remaining on their schedule, so even if they beat the Ravens, it will technically be considered an upset.

U-G-L-Y

Last night the Chargers won ugly, the Colts lost ugly, Tony Dungy coached ugly (that time-out to argue a penalty was mind-bogglingly stupid, and ended up costing the team at the end of the game), and the Colts special teams - from top to bottom - were ugly.

Vinnie Iyer at the Sporting News was busy trying to put the best spin possible on this loss from the Colts standpoint. He notes that the Colts should not be counted out because of two losses in a row. He's right about that. What he is wrong about is that Manning played like a champion - in spite of playing poorly.

The Colts lost because of a variety of reasons - Manning being one of them. Special teams (Adam Vinatieri left six points on the field), and, as previously mentioned, Dungy and some poor coaching decisions.

When a quarterback throws six interceptions, you can't absolve him of responsibility in a loss.

What this did remind me of - the old argument about swapping the teams of Brady and Manning to see how well each would have done. I seem to remember a couple of years back (2004) that the Patriots went 14-2. Their leading wide-out was David Givens with 874 yards. Reggie Wayne already has 870 with seven games left. Leading receiver for Pats tight ends that year was Daniel Graham with 364 yards, if Dallas Clark (405 yards) remains out, Ben Utecht could still top 300 yards receiving. Joseph Addai (pace for 1400-1500 yards) is comparable to Corey Dillon (1635).

Manning was brutally bad - and the argument that the Colts O line is banged up. The Patriots were starting former Tampa Bay practice squader Russ Hochstein whom Warren Sapp famously said couldn't block Tony Kornheieser. The team started corners Randall Gay and Earthwind Moreland, and used wide-out Troy Brown as their nickel corner. In spite of losing weapons to an injured defense, losing protection (line-men), and losing Ben Watson for all but one game of the season, the Brady never looked as bad as Manning did yesterday.

I think we have our answer as to who does the most to elevate his team to the next level.

* Asterisk, and I'm not talking the European comic book character

"The Spygate thing has diminished what they've accomplished. You would hate to have that attached to your accomplishments. They've got it.
"I guess it will be noted that the Patriots were fined and a No. 1 draft choice was taken away during that year of accomplishment...
"That tells you the seriousness or significance of what they found. I guess you got the same thing as putting an asterisk by Barry Bonds' home run record."

-Don Shula, New York Daily News, November 11, 2007

Welcome to the NFL's version of Grumpy Old Men.

Sure, Shula doesn't directly say that the Patriots accomplishments should have an asterisk next to them - but he comes as close as possible to saying it. Sure, the intention was there to cheat - but the camera man was nailed pretty much in the first quarter of the first game of the season, giving them no opportunity to cheat.

Yes, he backed off that statement later in the week, but still referred to the theoretical undefeated season that the Patriots are possibly on their way to as "tainted."

Let's really consider the implication of Shula's statement - he implies that a team caught violating NFL rules in order to gain a competitive edge should, in essence, come with a footnote in the record books.

Herein lies the questions that creates -

Does that mean that the 1972 Dolphins deserve an asterisk? After all, the Dolphins were penalized a first round draft pick only a year earlier for tampering by a much more lenient commissioner than the current for hiring Shula away from the Colts. In Shula's words, that tells you the seriousness of the offense.

This doesn't consider the fact that the '72 'Phins played the weakest schedule of any champion during the Super Bowl era (opponent winning percentage of .365), and had an average margin of victory around 15 points. Patriots opponents through the bye have had a winning percentage around .480, and the average margin of victory has been in the neighborhood of 23 points. Maybe one, or both of the above deserve to be noted in the record books.

Pittsburgh Steelers offensive lineman Steve Courson, a key member of the team opening holes for Franco Harris and protecting Terry Bradshaw, admitted in 2000 to steroid use on a team where rumors of use were wide spread. Courson noted certain players that would not touch them, like Jack Lambert, but he in no way absolved everyone. Without knowing how long, or how pervasive the steroid culture was in the Steelers locker-room, then don't we as fans, have to assume - like some have suggested about the Patriots - that all of the Steelers titles were tainted?

Former Raiders coach John Madden famously said, "Everybody says the Raiders cheat...OK, we cheat. So, what are you going to do about it?" Does that mean that there should be an asterisk next to everything that the Raiders accomplished under Madden? Not only is it an admission that the team cheated, but he dared anyone to do anything about the fact that his team cheated.

Nobody brings up the fact that the Denver Broncos were in violation of the salary cap both years they won the Super Bowl (last time checked, spending more money than the other teams that are staying under the cap would create an unfair competitive advantage). In addition to that - Mike Shanahan had the gall to send someone to San Diego to tape practices from a hill adjacent to the Chargers practice facility. This isn't like some sideline taping, this is paying extra for a hotel and airfare to illegally scout an opponent's practice.

The Colts? Nobody outside of Indianapolis is buying the CBS glitch excuse. Bettors point out that the network would benefit from closer spreads in the final score by keeping ratings higher throughout the game. Sites from other teams have questioned the validity of the NFL's findings. This doesn't even take into account the fact that Bill Polian, the Colts general manager, pretty much had the way the rules of the game were enforced, because the teams he put together were unable to get over the hump in the playoffs without the extra help? Does that deserve an asterisk?

Under current rules, the Cowboys dynasty of the mid-1990's would never have been able to maintain any sort of continuity in regards to winning because players like Michael Irvin, and Nate Newton, just to name a few, would have constantly been suspended for their criminal activities - and this doesn't even take into account the coach (Barry Switzer) getting nailed trying to bring a hand-gun on a plane. Should that be a footnote?

This is just the tip of the iceberg of what has happened over the last 40+ years in the NFL. I haven't even touched on things like the Detroit Lions gambling scandal in the 1960's, rumors of steroid and amphetimine use with the Cowboys of the 1970's, and countless other little and big scandals throughout the history of the NFL.

Where do the footnotes end? Why doesn't camera-gate go away like all the previous scandals?

One simple reason.

We live in the information age. Like me, everyone has an opinion, and anyone with access to the Internet has the ability to keep any story alive.

Ten years ago, this story would have been dead already. For those of you who don't believe it would have been, once again, check out the Broncos issues and how long those were a big deal. Now, we have news 24-7, and producers that pander to what they think sells.

And let's face it - scandal sells. Even one that was put to rest months ago.

Running it up...

Through out this season there has been a lot of the Patriots running up the scores on teams. Let's really look at this, game by game. One quick note before breaking down the games - Through the Redskins game 20 of Brady's 30 TD passes have come in the first half. The first half! Almost 70 percent of the team's aerial damage was done long before the fourth quarter even started. As a matter of fact, only six of those td passes came in the fourth quarter and five of those were with more than eight minutes on the clock. Only once (the sixth game) was the touchdown thrown with less than 8 min - v the then highly regarded offensive machine in the Bengals (a 14 point lead became 21 with 3:18 on the clock when Brady completed to Moss in the end zone). It wasn't until more recently that everyone realized the Bengals just aren't that good on offense this year. -

Jets, 38-14

With two minutes left on the clock, the Patriots were up by 17 points. A quick touchdown followed by an on-sides kick could put the ball back in the Jets hands with well over a minute left and down only by ten. So, was Heath Evans running the ball in with two minutes remaining running thee score up, or was it icing the game?

However, in this case, with two minutes left, I will grant that this can be considered running up the score.

San Diego, 38-14

The Patriots have been knocked for passing late in games when the contest is out of reach. In this game the team played the highly regarded, then "most talented" team in the league. With 3:18 left, the Patriots ran the ball in from three yards out with career back up Sammy Morris. Like the Colts and the Bengals, the Chargers were expected to have a high octane offense coming into this game. With close to three and a half minutes left, and weapons like Antonio Gates and LaDanian Tomlinson on the other sideline, no coach would consider a two score game out of reach.

Running it up? No. Sealing the deal? Yes.

Buffalo, 38-7

Yeah, they ran it up in this game. There was no reason to throw the deep pass into the end zone to Moss in the fourth quarter already up 31-7 against a team that showed no signs of life after the first quarter. The Pats certainly could have just started handing the ball off and have Matt Cassel in by the start of Q4.

Cincinnati, 34-13

See the introductory paragraph. Against an offense initially considered to be potent, making the game a three score game with more than three minutes left was just prudent. I seem to remember the Colts engineering a 24-point comeback on a Monday night not long ago with only a little more time than 3:18 left on the clock.

Running up the score? I think not.

Cleveland, 34-17

Running it up? Not even close. With a minute left and the Browns in possession of the ball, the Pats had a ten point lead. One big play and an on-side kick and the Browns could be one touchdown, or one field goal away from a tie game - or even one score from winning with possession of the ball. Instead, the Pats D forces the turnover and Randall Gay runs it into the end zone to open an insurmountable lead with about 40 seconds left.

Dallas, 48-27

Outside of the Redskins, these guys have been some of the biggest whiners about the Pats running up the score. Of course going into the fourth quarter Dallas trailed by only a touchdown. Brady lofted his final touchdown pass with more than 12 minutes to go. With ten to go, Dallas kicked a field goal to make it a two score game again. Sure, with four minutes to go, Gostkowski kicked a field goal, increasing the lead to 14 points.

What everyone seems to get upset about is that the Patriots rushed for a touchdown with 19 seconds left. What nobody mentions is that Dallas could have let the clock run out, but Wade Phillips called a time out in hopes of getting the ball back. What nobody mentions is that the vaunted Dallas defense couldn't keep a running back signed off the Patriots practice squad just days earlier out of the end-zone.

Running it up? Borderline at best. When a coach is trying to get the ball back for one final score, you don't just take a knee and give it to his team, you make the team earn it. Dallas couldn't earn it. So, no, I don't put this in the "running it up" category.

Miami, 49-28

After what happened to the Patriots in the playoffs last year, I don't buy this as running it up either. Think about it - you go into the locker room with a 35 point lead. You call off the dogs in the fourth quarter only to see your lead shrink by 14 points in less than five minutes in the stadium that has been your team's personal house of horrors since you took the job. Suddenly that 21 point lead with more than ten minutes left looks kind of tenuous.

What do you do? You slot your A-team back into the game and put one final nail in the coffin - which happened with more than eight minutes left.

Washington, 52-7

In fairness to the pundits, Belichick ran the score up in this one. After this game there was a lot of speculation about payback. Of course no one mentioned that this score probably was payback - the only other time that Belichick faced Gibbs as head coaches was back in 1991, Belichick's first year coaching the Browns. Gibbs' Redskins put a 42-17 thrashing on big bad Bill's Browns.

The pundits are right, coaches should beware of payback. Just ask Joe Gibbs.

Running the score up? Yeah...yeah they did it in this one. Somehow, I don't feel too bad about it.

Indianapolis 24-20

If not for 13 points gifted to the Colts by the refs on imaginary pass interference calls, there would potentially be talk of the Patriots late scores as running it up. Yet, against an explosive offense like Indy's, shouldn't a team try to score as much as possible?

The bottom line - as football fans we might be witnessing something historic with the Patriots. The team might be on the way to an undefeated season, along the way they might set all sorts of offensive records - points scored in a season, touchdowns by a quarterback, yardage by a quarterback, most consecutive games throwing three touchdowns by a qb, average margin of victory, and those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

If the team does so, they will prove to be the most dominant team of all time. The 1972Dolphins can put any spin they want on it, but on their way to their Super Bowl, they faced only one winning team during the regular season and their opponents had a combined winning percentage well below .400, and an average margin of victory of 15.3 points. The Patriots have faced four teams with winning records including likely playoff contenders Dallas and Indianapolis. The Pats have faced teams with a winning percentage of .479 - close to .100 points higher than the foes of the Dolphins, and the Patriots are beating that higher quality competition by close to a 23.1 point margin.

Somehow, this team has become the bad guys of the NFL. Excellence is a sin. Nobody vilified the high scoring Vikings or the "Greatest Show on Turf" Rams. We live in a society in which all participants in youth sports are given trophies, actual competition with a goal of winning is avoided because it might be psychologically damaging to our children. Is it any surprise now that when a team excels, that it gets bashed for trying to be the best?

Ultimately, these guys are paid to play at the highest level. If they themselves have a problem with teams scoring on them, then stop them. It's what they're paid to do.

Weekend musings...

Welcome to the Animal Shelter...

Peter King had it right - the Patriots won yesterday in the fourth quarter on 13 key plays, twelve of them came from the Animal Shelter - Wes Welker, Donte Stallworth, and Randy Moss - the other was a great catch-and-I-won't-be-denied-run by scatback Kevin Faulk.

Welker, Stallworth and Moss all made big plays, with Stallworth and Moss catching deep balls to set up touchdowns from Welker and Faulk. Why the "Animal Shelter?"

Stallworth generated almost no interest in the free-agent market, Moss was had for a fourth round draft pick, and Welker, Miami's leading receiver last year and an undrafted free-agent, was tendered the minimum offer from the 'Phins. Like the dogs at an animal shelter, these were the unwanted, and now they're the best receiving corps in football and an integral part of why the Pats are heading into their bye week at 9-0.

Those top three receivers are likely to account for more than 3,600 yards combined at the end of the season. Moss already has 924, Welker is at 651, and Stallworth is at 453. That translates into a season long pace of 1643 for Moss, Welker projects at 1157 and Stallworth at 805 (a total of 3605). That doesn't include another estimated 1300, to 1400 yards in receiving from the rest of the team.

While it's likely that the aerial show will experience some drop-off as the team begins to fight the elements in Foxboro, the idea of a 5,000 yard passing season is not completely out of the realm of possibility. With struggling teams like the Jets, 'Phins, and Eagles still on the schedule, don't be surprised to see a whole bunch of dismantlings a la the first eight games of the season.

What should bother the Colts when they watch film this week, after handed a loss by the Animal Shelter, is that this is what is going to show up on the film - Brady had an off day, throwing at times away from the open man and into coverage. They will see a game in which at least one of their touchdowns was aided and abetted by a phantom call by the referees. They will see a game in which they had to carry their "more physical" defenders off the field twice in the final minutes. They will see a Peyton Manning, circa 2004 instead of circa 2006.

Anyone else hearing strains of that classic "Welcome Back" by John Sebastion.

See you boys in the Razor in January.

Double Standards...

Isn't it time to drop the modifier "fighting" from the now 1-8 Fighting Irish?

Right about now I would like to hear about Ty Willingham filing a lawsuit against the Irish for his dismissal. To wit - in Willingham's three seasons, the Washington alum was fired with an aggregate record of 21-15, with only one losing record (5-7 in 2003). Willingham was dismissed after a 6-5 regular season. Currently, Charlie Weiss is presiding over a 1-8 regular season, putting his current record at 20-12 with three more losses likely on the schedule.

If they fired Willingham after a winning season just for missing a bowl game, not giving him an opportunity to develop the talent he recruited (does the name Brady Quinn mean anything to anybody?), why should Weiss get the same benefit of the doubt as he guides the team to what is likely to be a one win season?

As much as I hate seeing anyone play the card, personally, I have to believe that race played a part in this with Willingham being the only African-American head coach in the history of Notre Dame.

Caveat Emptor

Buyer beware.

Everyone has something to sell. Everyone. Me? I'm trying to sell the idea that I might indeed have a clue as to what I'm writing about...not everyone buys, particularly not my wife.

At least retail is honest about it. For the rest of us...well, let's just say you have to pay closer attention to what's being sold...

Let's go through some of the people and groups making sales pitches out there -

Scott Boras/Alex Rodriguez - A-Rod is the car that Boras is trying to sell. He's like a Jaguar- a sleek, pretty bauble of a car with a 12 cylinder engine that has a tendency to crap out on you at the worst possible moment. In 2004 when the Yankees needed a $30 million bat to save them from Mo Rivera's struggles, A-Rod disappeared like J.D. Salinger from the public eye.

Buyers need to beware of the slick, used-car salesman Boras, and his shiny toy of a product, A-Rod. Consider - even in a (contract) year in which A-Rod set career highs in RBI's (156), OBP (.422), and slugging (.645), hit the second most homers (54), and third highest batting average (.314), Boras is going out of his way to get potential buyers to NOT look at his client's post-season failings in that same career year - in a year in which A-Rod led the league in RBI's, he knocked in one in this year's post season.

So during a season in which A-Rod averaged an RBI per every 3.7 at bats, he had one in 15 during the postseason. Even adding in the 8 he had during the 2004 playoffs, this is what he has done in baseball's second season since then - 9 RBI's in 94 at bats, or one for every 10.4 at bats. For his career he has knocked in a run for every 4.9 at bats in the regular season, that has dropped off to one for every 8.6 at bats in the postseason, a number that has gotten progressively worse with each passing season.

This doesn't include the following facts that I have mentioned in other posts - for the first three seasons after A-Rod left Seattle, the team averaged in the vicinity of 10 more wins per season; after he left Texas, they averaged eight more wins per season; the Yankees have average almost four fewer per season, decreasing from 111 wins per year to 94 this year. And, here's the kicker, he has failed to help any team he has been on advance to the World Series. Buyer beware.

The first half of the Patriots schedule - What they are trying to sell? Professional football. How? By complaining that the Patriots are doing things they shouldn't be...like scoring a lot. The people who need to beware? The fan-bases of the Jets, Dolphins, Cowboys, Chargers, Bills, Bengals, Redskins and Browns. Really, the fans of the Cowboys, Jets, Dolphins, and Redskins in particular.

Those teams, those four mentioned at the bottom of that last paragraph, were the ones that started the complaints of how the Patriots are playing offense this year (well, the Jets complained about something else, and maybe they should be more worried about what's happening on the field than on the sideline - if this were European soccer, they and the Dolphins would be well on their way to playing in a semi-pro league). One Redskin, who shall remain unnamed in this post, accused the Patriots of disrespecting the game in an effort to deflect attention from the fact that what the Patriots really disrespected was the Redskins highly regarded defense.

As just about every former coach, player, and most pundits have said - there's no mercy rule in the NFL, if you don't like a team scoring on you, then do something about it. Rolling over and playing dead when you get down by a couple of touchdowns is what really disrespects the game.

Buyer...beware.

The National Press - The national press, in an effort to build up this weekend's game between the Pats and Colts, are trying to sell the Patriots as the evil empire with the merciless coach who won't take his foot off the pedal once he's driven the opposition into the ground. The Colts are the perennial good guys of the league with the owner doing everything he can to make a stadium happen in his host city, and the brilliant, but nice head coach in Tony Dungy.

Let's look at some of the facts in this - yes, the Patriots are running the score up on people and annihilating their opponents. However, it's not like the Colts under Dungy have never done this. The following was ganked from the Boston Globe's Eric Wilbur, via Dave at The Coffin Corner -

W, 49-14
W, 41-10
W, 41-9
W, 51-24
That quartet of one-sided scores comes to you courtesy of the 2004 Indianapolis Colts from a November-December period during which Peyton Manning and Company annihilated the Texans, Bears, Lions, and Titans, respectively. And, you know it's funny, I don't remember one person whining about them running up the score.

Tony Dungy, the good-guy coach in all of this, did not call off the dogs. Dungy has also publicly associated himself with groups that have well known anti-gay stances (but I suppose that's okay, because everyone knows that on one is gay in the locker room). Focus on Family, the group with which Dungy is most closely associated has been referred to by a number of people as "rabidly anti-gay." Last I checked, Bill Belichick has never aligned himself with any hate groups that hide behind a thin veil of legitimacy by claiming to be family advocates.

Let's look at Jim Irsay - still public enemy number one in Baltimore. Still the only owner that gets more of a rise out of Baltimore fans that Peter Angelos. For those who have forgotten, Irsay, the so-called nice guy owner, packed the Colts up in the dead of night and broke his lease with Baltimore County in an effort to move the team to Indy. Irsay did this against league wishes. Yeah, he's a good guy.

I have no personal issue with the Colts on the field. Manning is a supremely talented quarterback (please take a cue from Brady and cut back on the public endorsements - its annoying enough to make me look forward to seeing you get your head handed to you). The team is talented. However, the general manager and owner have whined whenever things didn't go their way, the head coach is a bigot, and the press is selling a serious double standard here.

Once again...buyer beware.

Flipping the calendar page

'Tis the Day of the Dead, November 1, a holy day of renewal in Mexico's particular brand of Catholicism and time to remember the past while moving on. And that has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of this post...I just wanted to mention that today was the Day of the Dead. Hats off to ya, Mr. Romero.

The first item I wanted to address today is the report that Martina Hingis is retiring from tennis amid allegations of cocaine use which include a positive test of both A and B samples taken during her recent run at Wimbledon. Hingis, of course, denies the allegations, and even hired a lab to perform a test, clearing her name. Unfortunately, even if she is telling the truth, there is doubt in as much as her money paid for the test clearing her name. Would the lab get paid if it didn't clear her.

Honestly, I've always liked Hingis. Admittedly, I'm not much of a tennis fan, but I was always surprised that she didn't land the endorsement deals that Anna Kournikova did. Hingis is an attractive woman that was at the top of the tennis world at one point -arguably the best player over a one year span in the women's game.

Unfortunately, I have a problem with the way she is responding to this - enough of a problem that I think it's likely that she's been caught with the straw up her nose. This is what she said when the report hit the wire -

"I find this accusation so horrendous, so monstrous that I've decided to confront it head on by talking to the press," she said. "I am frustrated and angry. I believe that I am absolutely 100 percent innocent."

She believes she's innocent? Believe? No, when you are innocent, you don't tell somebody you believe you're innocent like you're waiting for proof to the contrary. You state unequivocally, "I am innocent, and these allegations are ridiculous."

There's just something about this that doesn't pass the smell test from her end.

Some other quick hits -

We'll know within the next week whether or not Pacman Jones will be returning to football this season. Tomorrow the Titans' problem child will meet with Roger Goodell in order to state his case for reinstatement. Considering some of the bone-headed, potentially contract-cancelling issues he engaged in with professional wrestling, there may be some issues. Goodell might also look at the fact that Jones has kept off the police blotter favorably. It should be interesting, to say the least.

Speaking of police, is there any doubt that the issues in Andy Reid's personal life have had an impact on the way he runs the Eagles? For the first time in years, Reid's Eagles look horrible, and about as unlikely to make the playoffs as the Jets, Dolphins, Bengals, or Rams. All of this has coincided with a series of drug issues tied to both his sons. Could this be the first step towards an unceremonious exit from the league for Reid? It certainly would be if he were a player and the same thing were happening.

Reality check

From Redskins defensive lineman Phillip Daniels about this past weekend's 52-7 thrashing at the hands of the Patriots - "That's running up the score, there isn't any other way to look at that. C'mon, man, you're going for it on fourth down and you're up by 38 points. You're throwing the ball late in the game. Most teams just run the clock out to get the win. They don't think like that, but I guess it's our job to stop them. You can't do anything about it, just go out and play defense and try to stop them."

Daniels went on to say that he talked to Belichick after the game, accusing the Patriots coach of having no respect for the game, and saying that coaches like Bill Parcells and Bill Walsh would never have run up the score that way. Part of the point being that the old-school coaches wouldn't run the score up on anyone.

Let's take a quick look at a sampling of what Walsh did during his tenure (1979-1988) with the 'Niners (gotta love having the NFL Record & Fact Book) -

Beat the following by the following scores -
Minn, 1988, 34-9
Seattle, 1988 38-7
Tampa, 1986 31-7
Wash, 1985 35-8
Dallas, 1981 45-14
Dallas, 1983 42-17

Average margin of victory in just this cross-section? 27.2 points per game (ppg).

And of course his protege, George Seifert annihilated the Broncos in the Super Bowl in '89 (the year after Walsh retired from coaching) 55-10, after beating the Rams (30-3) and Vikings (41-13) in the playoffs. Average margin? 33.3.

Speaking of Dallas, how about the old-school coach Tom Landry -

San Fran, 1980 59-14
Seattle, 1980 51-7
Denver, 1980 41-20

Average margin? 36.7.

As for Parcells -

St Louis, 1985 34-3
Phoenix, 1988 44-7

Average margin? 34.

Gibbs himself ran up the score on the Falcons in a 1985 contest to the tune of 44-10 and again in 1991 with the result an impressive 56-17 for an average in those two contests of 36.5 ppg. And this doesn't include the 42-17 thrashing Gibbs put on Belichick's Browns in 1991.

People are talking a lot right now about payback for running up the score. Belichick has a long memory, and I think Gibbs just got that payback. It's a bitch, ain't it.

As for Daniels...know your football history before shooting your mouth off, fool.

Champions and looking forward...

"Dustin Pedroia and Jon Lester are doing something Alex has never done - play in a World Series game," said Peter Gammons last night about newly minted free-agent Alex Rodriguez. "It might be a little bit of a 'buyer beware'. Because, again, he has never played in a World Series game - maybe there's a reason."

Think about that statement from Gammons - the so-called best player in baseball has never helped a team get to the World Series. Never.

On a night when the Sox clinched the World Series in a sweep for the second time in four seasons, A-Rod's agent Scott Boras announced that the Yankees third baseman was opting out of his contract. Never mind that there was no reason this announcement couldn't wait until this morning. In a clear effort by Boras to, in some way, keep the focus on his client rather than the World Series, A-Rod and/or his agent engaged in a classless move there, making the announcement during game four. Gammons himself referred to the incident as a complete lack of respect for the game of baseball.

Let's face it, the best thing to happen to the Red Sox in the last five years was the MLB Player's Association nixing the contract renegotiation between the Red Sox and the would-be Red Sox short stop. The Sox would have sent Manny Ramirez - the Manny of the almost .500 post season batting average - for A-Rod, who has been brutally bad during baseball's second season. Where would the Sox be with A-Rod's anemic post-season bat in the middle of the line-up instead of ManRam's?

I'm guessing, as Red Sox fans, the Nation would still be waiting for the first World Series title since 1918.

Once each of his previous teams, the Mariners and the Rangers, rid themselves of A-Rod, those teams averaged somewhere around eight more wins per season for the first three seasons after Rodriguez's departure. The Yankees averaged 96.75 wins per season with A-Rod. The three seasons prior to his arrival? 99.67. Sure, a drop-off of three games per year isn't huge, but it's still a drop off and when combined with the following fact, it's a serious indictment of what his impact on a team really is - for the three seasons he played for the Rangers, Texas won 73, 72, and 71 games respectively (the Yankees won 101 his first season with the team, a total down to 94 this season), but for the first three seasons after A-Rod left the confines of Arlington, the Rangers 89, 79, and 80 games respectively - an average improvement of eight games per year.

Theo - stay the hell away from A-Rod! Let the Giants go get him. Resign Mike Lowell...hell, move Lugo to third. Whatever you do, don't sign A-Rod.

As for Lowell - congratulations to the World Series MVP. I'm glad you won, man, considering you probably won't win AL MVP in a season where you picked up the slack for an ailing pair of sluggers in Big Papi and ManRam. You might have been the most important piece at the plate for the BoSox this season. I hope to see you back again next year. If not, then thanks for one incredible run from a guy that the Marlins thought was done and was a throw-in in the Beckett deal.

I said it before and I'll say it again - hey Curt, thanks again, big guy. It's been almost a century since we had two titles in baseball and you were integral to bringing us two this decade. Good luck wherever you end up next year - you're never going to have to pay for another drink anywhere in Red Sox Nation again.

It was tough to see Okajima run out of gas those last two games, but what a way to crank through the Rockies in game two, when the Sox were hanging onto a one-run lead. It didn't feel like anyone on the roster failed to contribute. Hell, Bobby Kielty, the late-season addition on the bench for the stretch run, hit a pinch-hit game winning homer. The Red Sox rookies, Jacoby Ellsbury and Dustin Pedroia sparked the top of the line-up.

They were clicking on all cylinders for four games, and now it's time for the amphibious vehicles to drive the Sox through the Back Bay.

The Monster of the Mid-Way...

Somewhere along the line the Patriots signed a career back-up line-backer away from the Pittsburgh Steelers and he became the best 'backer on one of the top defenses in the NFL.

For all the talk about Adalius Thomas coming to the team (and don't get me wrong, it was an important signing), Vrabel has been a beast. In yesterday's 52-7 thrashing of the Secondstrings, I'm sorry, I mean Redskins, Vrabel caught a pass for a touchdown, accounted for 11 tackles, three sacks for 20 yards in losses, and forced three fumbles - one on each sack.

Vrabel currently leads the team with 7.5 sacks (a pace to get 15 for the season), and is second on the team with 42 total tackles (Tedy Bruschi leads with 49).

Marketing faux-pas...

One last note before I get some sleep because my two-month old is finally napping...

The autumn after the NFL cancelled NFL Europe, the league played their first ever regular season game on European soil in order to expand the game's fan base. After watching yesterday's exercise in tedium at London's Wembley Stadium, a place where NFL Europe abandoned for lack of interest, the NFL did itself no favors and likely garnered no new fans.

From a marketing stand-point, why would the NFL even pick a Dolphins team that has been moribund for about half-a-decade in an effort to bring new fans to the table? And why London?

Originally the World League of American Football, and eventually NFL Europa, the league slowly, but surely migrated from London, to Scotland, to Germany. Why didn't this happen in Germany? There's already a fan base there, there are NFL ready stadiums there, and this would have been a great bone to throw to a German fan base that set an attendance record for NFLE this past spring.

Yes, I get that the idea that it's about growing the sport - but start with where there's already a foothold. Grow that fan-base a little more, ensure its loyalty, then move onto the more fringe areas.

And, fergodsakes, send them two quality teams.

Rapture!

Exposed!

Welcome to post 300. Nothing special, just some thoughts on Sunday...

The NFC East is a division of frauds.

The Giants, the second best the division has to offer, barely scraped by the winless Dolphins in London with a 13-10 victory. The Eagles scored more than 20 for only the second time all season en route to their third victory of the season against four losses. The best the division had to offer dropped their contest with the Patriots by a 21 point margin.

Then there are the Redskins.

The trash talking Redskins. The Redskins that kept saying during the week that the Patriots had never faced a defense like theirs. A defense that had given up only 88 points through six games - an average of 14.7 points per game.

Today they were lit up to the tune of 52 points.

It was the fourth worst loss in the history of the Redskins - 52-7.

This is the division that most pundits think that will represent the NFC in the Super Bowl.

Right now the division doesn't even qualify to be called the not ready for prime-time players. In two games against potential playoff contenders, the Patriots have combined to score 100 points.

100!

In the two games Tom Brady has passed for eight touchdowns, and quarterbacks have accounted for a total of 11 touchdowns (including rushing). Sixty-six points came from the QB position, twenty-two from the kicker, six from the defense, and six out of the running backs.

This was against a top ten defense.

I said it in a previous post, I don't feel that the 'Skins have put together that ranking against tough competition - and I think that, like the rest of their division, they've just been exposed.

On the brink...

Of a Rocky Mountain winter...

The problem with Cinderella stories is that at some point the clock strikes midnight. Somewhere in Colorado a bell tower has chimed for the eleventh time, the twelfth chime is only seconds away.

The Rockies' offense showed signs of life for the first time during the World Series last night. Unfortunately, for the second time in three games Colorado's pitching didn't show. Through three games, Colorado has scored a total of seven runs to the Red Sox 25.

With Jon Lester on the mound, the Rockies have their best chance of taking a game from the Sox...but only if they get the pitching performance from their starter and bullpen that they got in game two. Otherwise, the celebrations will begin from Abington to Yarmouth.

It will be the second time this decade that the Sox will have won MLB's championship - the only team that will be able to claim multiple World Series wins since the start of the century in 2001. It gives me a warm fuzzy that the Sox will have won two titles since the last time the Yankees won one - and boy is that franchise looking dysfunctional right about now.

For Yankees fans that think next year is going to be the year, get a reality check - they are carrying an aging, prone to break-down, erratic first-baseman/DH in Jason Giambi. They have a left-fielder in Johnny Damon who's another year older and also having his share of health problems, they might have issues retaining their best catcher in Posada who had a career year heading into free-agency. The Bronx brain-trust plans on pulling Chamberlain out of an already undermanned/overworked bullpen and into the rotation - and all of this is just the tip of the ice-berg.

Get used to the following term in New York - rebuilding.

As for Colorado - there's a lot of young talent over there. If this year wasn't just the serendipitous convergence of career years, the Rockies should contend for some time to come. Like a bad horror film villain, they'll be back.

Lateral movement on the brink of defeat...

This has to be seen to be believed...Division III Trinity U. puts the nail in the coffin in the last 30 seconds for one helluva come-back.

Stern problems on the brink of irrelevance...

David Stern has officially sunk the NBA to a new level. After years of issues and accusations about games being fixed to get the best match-ups in the play-offs and finals it has come out that more than half of the NBA's 56 officials have violated the league's anti-gambling statutes.

Stern's reaction? He has decided that the rule is too out of date and needs to be changed.

Rather than remove the doubt that he could have up to 30 officials that might have been involved in fixing games, Stern has decided he wants to accommodate the officials' collective penchant for visiting casinos. Then to compound matters, Detroit Piston center Rasheed Wallace hits the press with the following rant -

"I still don't think they (Cavaliers) beat us, we beat ourselves," Wallace said. "And I think we also fell victim to that personal NBA thing where they are trying to make it a world game and get (television) ratings. They wanted to put their darling in there (the NBA Finals) and they did, and look what ended up happening.
"This game ain't basketball anymore, it's entertainment," Wallace said. "It's starting to get like the WWF. There ain't no real wrestling anymore either. It's all fake."

Yeah, this has been a good off-season for the NBA (note the sarcasm). After managing the league to unprecedented popularity in the 1990's Stern is now managing basketball into the ground - above and beyond the image problems caused by players like Allen Iverson, the infamous Portland "Jailblazers," and the thugs involved in the incident in Detroit a few years ago (author Jeff Benedict, writer of the book Out of Bounds: Inside the NBA's Culture of Rape, Violence & Crime, said in 2004 that 40 percent of NBA players have criminal records - that's two players out of every starting five in the league, not including the bench). This is who the NBA is trying to market to people who have to pay on average $51.00 to get a seat to a game.

Not exactly a great group to market to the people that can afford half-a-C-note to go see a game (and that doesn't even include parking, so think more like $70.00, $75.00 per game).

What do you suppose the over-under is on when the NBA starts to feel like the NHL?

D-Fence

Living in the greater Washington, DC area I am hearing a lot about how this weekend is going to be telling for the Patriots. I remember a couple of weeks ago a lot of people talked about how the Cowboys were their first real test. The Dallas D was not up to the task.

All the people saying this is going to be a tough game for the Patriots point to the Redskins 5th ranked defense as to why. Sports writer Kevin Blackistone said Washington is, "the best defense they will be facing all year."

What none of these people are doing is looking at who Washington has done this against -

Miami (0-7) - 15th in yardage (333.1 ypg), 12th in scoring (22.3 ppg)

Philadelphia (2-4) - 8th in yardage (349.3 ypg), 21st in scoring (19.3 ppg)

NY Giants (5-2) - 9th in yardage (347.7 ypg), T-6th in scoring (26.7 ppg), (beat Washington 24-17)

Detroit (4-2) - 16th in yardage (328.5 ypg), 10th in scoring (23.3. ppg)

Green Bay (5-1) - 11th in yardage (339.3 ypg), 9th in scoring (23.7 ppg) (beat Washington 17-14)

Arizona (3-4) - 12th in yardage (337.0 ypg), T-14th in scoring (21.0 ppg)

Currently the Patriots are first in both categories with 432.9 ypg and 39.9 ppg. The 'Skins haven't faced a team like this yet. They haven't face receivers, an O-line, or a quarterback playing on this level yet.

The only winning team that the 'Skins managed to beat? Detroit, whom I still don't buy as legit. The two teams that beat them still came within a score of their average ppg. The teams they have beat each have major problems - the Eagles barely have a passing game, Miami barely has wideouts and is pitiful on defense, not to mention issues at quarterback. And of course Arizona has its own images at quarterback.

The Patriots have none of those issues.

Let the games begin.

Don't go into stand-up

Miami Dolphins linebacker Channing Crowder either thinks he was being funny, or he's just a moron.

During the week preceding the 'Phins game in London, Crowder claimed that he had no idea the people in London spoke English and then had the following to say to the Palm Beach Post -

“I couldn’t find London on a map if they didn’t have the names of the countries,” Crowder said. “I swear to God. I don’t know what nothing is. I know Italy looks like a boot. I learned that.
“I know (Washington Redskins linebacker) London Fletcher. We did a football camp together. So I know him. That’s the closest thing I know to London. He’s black, so I’m sure he’s not from London. I’m sure that’s a coincidental name.”

If he was purposely being obtuse because he thought it would be funny...well, then he's still a moron.

In high school in Georgia, Crowder carried a 3.5 grade point average and was a member of the National Honor Society with that GPA. Of course he carried that GPA in a state recently ranked 41st out of 50 in educational rankings. Crowder is not listed for any academic excellence for his time at Florida, a school not exactly known for its academics.

He is, however, listed for several mind-bogglingly stupid run-ins with the law while in college - assault, fighting with the police, vandalism.

If this is willful ignorance, or a joke, then Crowder should be admonished for perpetuating a damaging stereotype.

If he was being serious, then his high school needs to be taken to task for padding his grades.

Other than a high Wonderlic (which tests football intelligence), this guy hasn't demonstrated two brain-cells firing at the same time since college. And considering what he has demonstrated since high school, one has to wonder about the quality of education he received there.

Joke or not, right now there are a lot of people who should be embarrassed - Crowder being the first and foremost among them. His father, a former 'Phins player and former assistant coach at Penn State, every teacher he has ever had, and even his mother.

If he's doing it because he feels that being smart or demonstrating knowledge diminishes him in the eyes of the kids he hung with in Atlanta, then that's just sad.

Idiot.

The Schill is gone, baby...

or
My Life With the Thrill Schill Cult...

We have very likely witnessed Curt Schilling pitching his last game as a member of the Red Sox.

Sure, we could see him again in this series, but with the way things are going, I think it's unlikely. If Matsuzaka wins tomorrow, I wouldn't be surprised to see Beckett going in game four in order to shut the door.

If it was Schilling's last game, it was a four year run for the Sox that rivals that of any Boston home-grown product in recent history (for those who forgot, Schilling did come up through the Red Sox minor league system). The man is 6-1 with one no decision in the post-season for the Red Sox with the only loss coming against the Yankees in his first start of the bloody-sock series.

He has been clutch in the post season for Boston, more so than any Sox ace in recent memory (although Josh Beckett is pretty much right there with him after this post season). He sacrificed his body for the team, at the time, possibly his career for a ring, in order to bring the World Series trophy to Boston for the first time in 86 years.

He stuck it to the Yankees in a bloody sock and on a bad ankle.

The 40-year old Schilling will always be remembered fondly in Boston for being instrumental in breaking the World Series drought for the Hub of the Universe and Red Sox Nation. But it is time to cut ties. Schilling more often than not looked old during the regular season, and the Sox have young pitchers waiting in the wings like Jon Lester and Clay Buchholz.

It is time to move on.

Thank you, Curt. You've taken us on a helluva ride.

Georgia on my mind...

The Georgia State Supreme Court this morning ordered Genarlow Wilson freed, upholding a ruling by a Monroe County judge's finding that the 10-year sentence constituted "cruel and unusual punishment." In the 4-3 ruling, the court released the opinion that the intention of the law was misapplied in the Wilson case which was to prosecute those who preyed on children, not to moderate sexual activity between consenting minors.

It's about time they got that right.

Capital punishment...

Living in the greater DC area I have heard sports talk show hosts talk about how tough the Redskins defense is. At least two defenders have indirectly said they would win because the Patriots have yet to face anyone like them. My ten cents? I have no doubt the Patriots will win. My only question is whether or not DC can keep it close. I give their defense a shot at holding the Patriots below 30. However, I don't think that the 'Skins have enough offense to seal the deal against a team like the Pats.

The 'Skins are one of only two teams in the league that has not a single touchdown among the receiver corps. That's not going to get it done.

Rocked

The first game of the World Series decisively went the way of the Red Sox in a 13-1 thrashing of the hottest team in baseball.

Terry Francona, evidently is given to understatement. "I thought the whole night we did a good job taking what [they] gave us, laying off pitches out of the zone," said the Boston manager. A good job? Every Boston starter with the exception of Mike Lowell had at least one RBI, and Lowell still doubled, walked twice and scored a run. Every Boston starter with the exception of Jacoby Ellsbury had a hit, and he still had a run scored and a RBI.

Rockies manager Clint Hurdle in his post game comments said that the Rockies are, "a no excuse ball club." Were I a fan of the C-Rocks, I would be thinking this morning that there was no excuse for that performance last night.

From the first inning until the Rockies pitching put up donuts from the sixth inning on, Colorado held the Sox scoreless in only the third inning and of the innings in which the Sox scored, only the second wasn't a multi-run inning.

A lot has been written recently about how good the Rockies pitching was this year. Several pundits said that the Rockies led the National League in ERA. As a matter of fact, ESPN's Jason Stark gives the Rockies an advantage both at the plate and in the rotation for the series.

From what I have been able to find, they were eighth out of 16 National League clubs in ERA with a 4.32 team ERA. Their hitters, however, led the NL with a .280 batting average in what is generally considered the MLB JV.

The Sox, on the other hand, led the AL with a 3.87 team ERA, and were fifth in the AL with a .279 batting average. Overall, the Red Sox had the second best pitching in the majors.

Stark even pointed out that the Rockies had more players in their lineup with more than 80 RBI's than the Sox. He didn't, however, point out that the Sox were fourth in the majors in RBI production with 829. The Rockies were fifth with 823...once again, playing in the inferior NL.

With the possibility of their mojo having been broken, even shattered last night, the Rockies might have a tough uphill fight to bring the first World Series trophy back to Colorado. I'm not saying it can't happen, but it's looking like the Red Sox are going to have the same sort of series against the Rockies they had against the Cardinals.

Sorry, Mr. Helton, maybe if the trade had worked out...

The sporting gods love irony....

Consider the following in the NFL -

The following head coaches, former offensive coordinators, were hired for their offensive acumen. These men were supposed to bring the "O" to teams that already had the defense in place -

Brian Billick, Ravens - offensive coordinator of the record setting Minnesota offense that featured Chris Carter and Randy Moss at wide receiver. Currently the 24th overall offense and head coach of team that at no time under his tenure was a top 16 offense.

Scott Linehan, Rams - Former offensive coordinator of the Vikings and Dolphins is head coach of the dead last offense in the league right now.

John Gruden, Buccaneers - The former Eagles offensive coordinator is presiding over a team that's 26th overall.

Sean Payton, Saints - This former Giants offensive coordinator currently has the 27th ranked offense.

Mike Shanahan, Broncos - Shanahan was an offensive coordinator many times over between college and the pros including previous stints with Denver and Oakland. Right now his offense is ranked 25th.

Andy Reid, Eagles - The former Green Bay offensive coordinator now presides over the 21st ranked offense.

Brad Childress, Vikings - The former Eagles coordinator was the hot commodity during the off-season coaching carousel before the 2006 season. Now there are whispers that he's already on his way out in Minnesota as his team struggles along with the 22nd ranked offense.

On the other side of the coin are former defensive coordinators Eric Mangini, Marvin Lewis, Wade Phillips, and Romeo Crennel whose teams are all ranked 20th or worse in overall defense.

Mangini, Jets - Those calling for the ouster of quarterback Chad Pennington might want to take a closer look at the Jets defense, currently ranked 28th overall.

Lewis, Bengals - The architect of the championship defense in Baltimore currently presides over the second worst defense in the league. Only the Dolphins are statistically worse.

Phillips, Cowboys - The man calling the plays on the sidelines in San Diego last year is now coaching a team with the 21st defense. Why again are so many people calling this the third best team in the league right now?

Crennel, Browns - The beleaguered Crennel has a legitimate chance of bringing the long-suffering Browns to the post-season in spite of a defense that currently ranks 30th due to a soft schedule. However, if the team fails to straighten out some the defensive failings between now and then, it's going to be one and done in the playoffs.

As for why I wrote this? The way the Patriots are going this season, Josh McDaniels is going to be the hot coaching commodity come the off-season. Of course general managers will ignore what they ignored with Brian Billick - the personnel. Does this make McDaniel a bad coach with good players?

Of course not.

However, in their quest to find their man, GM's make more out of results on the field in regards to a coach's hand in player performance in order to justify their hire. Sometimes the coach just has shinier toys to play with where they were.

Byrd-brained

The early information that's trickling out paints Cleveland's Paul Byrd as a fraud.

The self-proclaimed good Christian who says he would never cheat, said he was on a hormone treatment regimen that he claimed MLB and his team were aware of. He has been thrown under the bus by the Indians and MLB. The Indians who disavowed knowledge of his treatment regimen, and MLB who said he never had an exemption to receive hormone treatment with HGh. As a matter of fact, Indians GM Mark Shapiro said that his contact with Byrd concerning this issue began on Friday.

To make matters worse, Byrd obtained his prescription not from a medical doctor, but from a Florida dentist who was disbarred for fraud and incompetence.

Byrd reportedly spent $25,000.00 out of pocket for what he called a legitimate treatment for a pituitary problem. Personally, I'm a little surprised that the player's union has that bad a health insurance plan. Twenty-five grand out of pocket for a legit prescription? Yikes. That's one shitty co-pay he's got there.

Then of course there's the issue of the doctor who isn't a medical doctor and the fact that Byrd is evasive about when the problem was identified.

I would say, at this point, there is an outside chance he's telling the truth. Unfortunately, too much of what's coming out makes no sense - the doctor, the money, the source of the HGh, the evasiveness as to when it was determined he needed the treatment - in regards to a legitimate reason for taking the hormone.

Yankees braintrust - an oxymoron if ever there was one...

From 1977, Joe Torre's first year as a manager, until 1995 he had only five winning seasons. He was largely a mediocre manager until he was given the biggest freakin' payrolls in the history of American sport.

Since 1996 Torre has managed the Yankees to twelve straight playoff appearances and four World Series titles.

I am of the school that just about anybody could have success managing a line-up of all-stars either drafted or bought at every position. However, the last two seasons Joe Torre might have been the best manager in baseball.

As a Red Sox fan it pains me to say it, but given the Yankees pitching staff for the last two seasons, the fact that he got these yahoos to the playoffs both seasons is nothing short of amazing.

And as much as the Yankees are trying to make it appear that Torre turned them down, they made him an offer he had to refuse. He was fired. Twelve straight seasons in the post-season dance, and the man gets fired.

People that think that manager of the Yankees is the best job in major league sports hasn't taken a close look at the ownership they would have to answer to.

Rooked

On a night when Julio Lugo did everything he could to give the game away defensively, and JD Drew reverted for the first seven innings to being, well, JD Drew, Boston's rookies came up big. The AL East champions saw the rookie tandem from the far East, Daisuke Matsuzaka and Hideki Okajima, combine for seven innings and two earned runs.

Dustin Pedroia and Jacoby Ellsbury combined for three of Boston's eleven runs, with Pedroia knocking in five. In the seventh Ellsbury made a play on a ball hit to the triangle in center that normal mortals wouldn't have been able to run down, and then one helluva diving catch for the first out of the ninth. Way for the rooks to stand up and be counted.

Realistically, though, this game may well have turned on the call of a certain third base coach that might find himself collecting unemployment in Cleveland this winter.

Kenny Lofton likely would have scored from second on the hit to left in the top of the seventh inning, tying the game up. There's no telling how that might have changed the dynamic of the late innings when the Sox came to bat. That's the kind of mistake that gets coaches fired.

Instead of a tie game, the wheels fell off in the eighth as the Indians imploded.

Adjusted...

For those keeping track - through seven games Tom Brady has 27 touchdowns. The new adjustment for the pace he's on? 61 for the season.

He's gotta slow down, right?

I've heard that Roger Goodell

Wants to bring professional football to South Florida and is considering Miami for an expansion franchise. The NFL figures there's a usable stadium, they just need a team.

42-7 by the half? That's just brutal.

Everything old is new again...

Is it just me, or did the last two Sundays of NFL action feel like 2002. The following quarterbacks either started, or replaced ineffective starters during those two days - Sage Rosenfels, Kurt Warner, Jeff Garcia, Vinny Testaverde, Kerry Collins, Tim Ratay and Damon Huard. Feel like yesterday, anyone?

Getting defensive...

When your team jumps out to a 42-7 lead by half-time, normally there's not a whole helluva lot to complain about...except in this case.

After half-time it was like the Patriots defense was thinking about what movie they were going to rent when they got home on Sunday night. After largely shutting down Miami through the first two quarters, the D spent much of the third and fourth quarters on their heels, getting ripped up by bottom of the roster running backs. It resulted in 14 points given up to a struggling Miami offense.

It's the second straight week that the Pats defense struggled against the run.

Bill Belichick is going to go to town on his defense this week. They deserve it. Up 49-14, these guys should have been playing with reckless abandon. Instead, they were just playing like wrecks.

Hard hits

Last night the Sox absolutely pasted the Indians 12-2. The offense? JD Drew knocked in five runs on a night when Manny and Big Papi struggled a little at the plate. Drew! In some quarters of Red Sox Nation that might be considered the fourth sign of the impending Apocalypse. Of course none of those people care because the Sox are one game closer to the World Series.

The Indians have now gone from up 3-1, to being on the brink. Yes the teams are tied 3-3, but all the pressure is on the Tribe now. After winning three straight by a combined score of 24-11, they have dropped two straight potential clinchers by a combined 19-3.

Overall, the Indians are 12 for 64 (.188) in those two games. They were 33 of 112 (.295) in their three wins. Somebody is wilting as the heat is getting turned up.

On top of all that, the Indians are about to get slammed with a major locker-room distraction.

Now I have to wonder about the Indians' chances.

Tonight is gonna be fun.


Maxwell's Silver Hammer...

A little piece of living football history was lost yesterday.

Former Green Bay Packer wide receiver Max McGee fell off the roof of his house while prepping it for the Minnesota winter. According to reports, efforts to revive McGee by Police who reported to the scene of the accident at 5:20 PM were unsuccessful.

McGee was the unlikely hero of Super Bowl I. Hung-over from the night before (he didn't think he was going to see the field), McGee caught the first touchdown in Super Bowl history after entering the game for Packers receiver Boyd Dowler who left the game with a shoulder injury. He went on to rack up 47 more yards in the big game (138), than he had for the entire 1967 season (91).

Rest well, big guy.

It's elementary, Watson...


The pundits are calling today's Patriots game a cake-walk, a gimme. They're already pencilling in the W. Do I think they're going to win? Yes. Do I think it's going to be easy? When's the last time that the Pats had an easy game in Miami?

The former Joe Robbie Stadium has been a personal house of horrors for Tom Brady (the team is 4-14 in its last 18 visits to Miami and Brady is 2-4).


Granted, Brady has not had the weapons at receiver he has this season. However, they're going into this game without Sammy Morris or Ben Watson and even with Laurence Maroney there's a fair chance that he will at least be limited due to the groin injury. This might be Kyle Eckel's chance to show the NFL he belongs. This is also going to be an opportunity for Marcellus Rivers to show the rest of the NFL that they made a mistake by letting him languish in the free-agent market.


It's supposed to be a hot and humid one in Miami today - a good day for sprinters, a good day for wide-outs.

It should be interesting.

Whatta week

National Impact...

As my regulars know, last weekend I spent in Louisville, KY for the US Australian Football Nationals tournament in which I participated as a member of the Baltimore/Washington Eagles. Unfortunately last Wednesday I started to get sick and ended up playing with flu-like symptoms through the course of the weekend.

Last year we won the Division II title. This year we were in Division I.

On Saturday we defeated the Boston Demons and then the Orange County Bombers to extend our winning streak to 13 games going back to September of 2006.

We fared less well on Sunday, dropping the game we needed to get into the finals to the Denver Bulldogs. The Bulldogs, eventual winners of the Division I title, took advantage of mistakes. We did not. As such, they outplayed us and deserved the win.

A future in stand-up...

Patrick Crayton - Tony Romo's fourth receiving option behind Terrell Owens, Terry Glenn and Jason Witten - claims to not be impressed with a defense that held his offense, which until last week was a top two offense, to 20 points. He claimed that the Patriots defense only stopped them when Dallas committed penalties on third down. I guess he didn't watch the first quarter when his team couldn't manage a first down...and none of that was because of penalties on third down.

I will not say that the Pats defense was without problems, but let's face some facts here - Dallas buzz-sawed through its first four opponents, never scoring less than 34 points in a game. Then they come up against Buffalo (whose defense got smoked by the Patriots) and New England. Against each of these teams the Dallas offense could score only two touchdowns and a handful of field goals.

Makes one wonder, to use Crayton's term, whether the Dallas offense is the "real deal."

The only thing the Cowboys proved to me is that they are the best of the junior varsity circuit, and that their players need to worry about playing, not mouthing off.

One last note - Crayton was partially right - there were a lot of penalties his team committed on third down. Thing is, notice that the Patriots didn't commit them. That's what good teams do - they remain disciplined and they take advantage of other team's mistakes.

Dallas is overrated.

He should be wearing a big red S on his chest...

Josh Beckett has been Superman in the post-season.

With the way rest of the Red Sox pitching has seemed like they've been pitching batting practice, Beckett has, in essence, extended the Sox post-season run by two games. Unless someone else comes up big tonight, the Sox will finish their season in front of the Fenway Faithful.

Honestly, I think I'm okay with that.

Would I prefer to see them get another ring? Yes. But with the way this team played for the last six weeks of the season, I didn't think they would get past the first round. Everything has been icing for me since the end of the season.

Should they lose, I will live with it and likely root for the Rockies in the World Series. It's hard not to root for a team that voted a full playoff share for the widow of a minor league first-base coach.

That said, Go Sox!

A busy weekend...

So, I'm Tivo-ing the Pats game on Sunday, and will be catching up on all the relevant playoff info sometime on Monday as I am road-tripping tomorrow to the Aussie Rules Nationals in Louisville, KY.

I will have two games on Saturday, and at least one game on Sunday (possibly more depending on how well we - the Baltimore/Washington Eagles - perform in the preliminary rounds).

I will do my best to blog this weekend, but I wouldn't count on a whole lot happening. Also, welcome Indians fan Liz. Yeah, the next couple of days are going to be fun.

If you're unfamiliar, you might want to check out bitterfans.com - it's Cleveland heavy in its coverage.

The Big Tease and other thoughts

The big tease...the New York Yankees. That's what they've become. They're the Buffalo Bills of the early 1990's, the Philadelphia Eagles of the first part of this century. They have become the American League version of the Atlanta Braves.

They make it to the post-season, they just can't do anything when they're there.

And this time Yankees' fans can't blame A-Rod who batted a vaguely respectable .267 with one home-run, two runs scored, and one RBI.

By contrast, Derek Jeter, the Yankee-who-can-do-no-wrong with Yankee fans - .176, no runs, one RBI. The Yankees had five starters bat below .200 for the series with their starting first baseman at a rousing .000.

Maybe George Steinbrenner should take a closer look at the talent he forces Cashman to pursue before he cans Joe Torre. The fact that they removed Roger Clemens from the post-season roster is a pretty strong indictment of Steinbrenner's personnel wants and needs.

Bring on the Indians.

They had a bad day...

And still scored 34. The defense came up big when needed, but gave up more yardage to the Browns than to any other team so far this year. Tom Brady, however, looked distracted and frustrated the whole game.

When Brady missed his mark, it was generally his fault. Very few of his passes were dropped, and several of the times that they were (passes primarily to Moss) the receptions would have been highlight reel sort of plays.

Next week the Pats play the Cowboys who barely escaped from Buffalo with a win last night. Is this another indictment of the quality of football in the NFC, that Dallas was within seconds of losing to one of the worst teams in the AFC East?

Running on empty...

There's no other way to say this than - the organizers of the Chicago Marathon are idiots. Complete morons. And they need to keep sponsors of the event from making stupid comments to the press.

For those of you who don't know, the Chicago Marathon was run in close to 90 degree heat without adequate water supplies.

This is from the CNN report -

Organizers insisted they adjusted their plans for the heat and boosted the number of drink servings at the race's 15 aid stations to 1.8 million from 1.6 million, as well as adding misting areas, extra ice and water-soaked sponges.
"We did feel we had more than adequate water supplies out there," said Shawn Platt, senior vice president of LaSalle Bank, the marathon's sponsor.
Platt said planners did not anticipate runners would use drinking water to cool themselves when misting stations and sponges weren't available. He acknowledged many stations and sponges were set up toward the end of the route instead of early on when runners first started showing signs of fatigue.

I have been running in road races since I ran track in high school...some 23 or 24 years now, and that includes at least one marathon. I have never been in a road race where runners didn't use drinking water to cool themselves. It happens in every road race.

Now this guy Platt is a senior VP at a bank, but I guess he is not a particularly gifted mathematician. His argument is that they increased the total number of drink servings at the marathon by a total of 200,000 for the 35,000 runners. Let's run through the math on this. That's an additional 200 servings per 35 runners, or a total of an additional 5.7 servings throughout the course of the marathon. Split between the 15 aid stations? That's less than half a cup additional per runner per aid station. That means they went from 3 cups per station per runner to approximately 3.4 cups on a 90 degree day.

Part of what's amazing about this is that the organizers continue to try and defend themselves instead of coming out and owning up to the fact that they completely fucked this up.

All that glitters is not gold...

The Yankees are potentially nine innings from thinking about 2008. Nine innings and maybe just a couple of days from learning whether there will be a bidding war for their star third baseman/shortstop, or if he will just play out his contract.

Alex Rodriguez will be the pretty bauble on the free-agent market.

There is reason after regular season reason for pursuing him. A-Rod is a perennial MVP candidate and an RBI producer. This year he had better late inning production than any other time in his career.

It is not exactly a secret that Theo covets A-Rod and his production. He sees A-Rod as the successor to Manny Ramirez in the line-up behind Ortiz, and can have him bat behind Man-Ram in his final year in a Sox uniform in Mike Lowell's spot.

There is a major reason to stay as far away from this money pit as possible. It's called the post-season.

This is a man that melts in a cauldron like a wax monkey.

Since his home-run against the Red Sox in the 2004 play-offs A-Rod is more FRod (yeah, do the phonetic pronunciation for the double entendre). He is a raging 4 for 50. That's a blazing post-season average of .080.

I can't help but think that signing him away from the Yankees would essentially be the Red Sox taking the monkey of the Bronx Bommahs' collective backs (not that any of his teammates have been doing any damage - check out my last post).

Two down, one to go...

The Yankees are one game away from being swept. One game from being bounced in the first round...again.

In the first game their pitching - starters and bullpen alike - failed them. In this game their bullpen once again failed them.

More importantly, in consecutive post-seasons, their all-star starting line-up has failed them.

This is what we've seen from the Yankees starters -

Johnny Damon, 1 for 9 (.111)
Derek Jeter, 1 for 8 (.125)
Bobby Abreu, 2 for 6 (.333)
Alex Rodriguez, 0 for 6 (.000)
Hideki Matsui, 0 for 7 (.000)
Jorge Posada, 0 for 7 (.000)
Robinson Cano, 1 for7 (.143)
Melky Cabrera, 1 for 8 (.125)
Doug Mientkiewicz, 0 for 4 (.000)

That means Yankee starters are batting .o97 for the ALDS thus far. Against a team they swept in the regular season. Against a team against which New York batted .348 and outscored 49-17 during the regular season - an average of 8 runs per game to Cleveland's 2.83 runs per game.

Right now they're averaging 2 runs to Cleveland's 7 per game in the playoffs.

What was Steinbrenner's name for A-Rod again? Mr. April?

This

Is

Awesome.