Quick Slants – Week 4
Paraphrasing Yogi Berra, nobody knows nothin’ about the NFL.
How else do you explain Atlanta?
After being sabotaged by their Virginia Tech alumni (first Mike Vick, then DeAngelo Hall), they looked to…dare I say…veteran QB Joey Harrington, who put up his second superior outing in a row, and they soundly beat a very good Houston team.
I’d like to say that this whole Harrington thing won’t last, but then I said that last week, didn’t I?
This just in: Osi Umenyiora just sacked Donovan McNabb again.
How does any sane, rational person explain Cleveland’s victory over Baltimore?
The Ravens led in every statistical category imaginable, except the one that counts in the standings: the final score. Cleveland has now beaten/exposed two teams that came into Browns Stadium with superior reputations, both of whom are on the verge of implosion after losing to the Browns. Derek Anderson has a stranglehold on the QB position, which looked to be Brady Quinn’s at halftime of Game 1. Somebody must have showed young Kellen Winslow Jr. some footage of his old man going to work, because he is arguably the premier tight end in football right now.
Nobody knows nothin’.
The Jets can’t get out of their own way. Last season, they were the darlings of the NFL. Eric Mangini was being touted as another great coach from the Belichick tree. They were scrappy, resilient, and tough. This season?
The most noise they’ve made is about the Patriots using a video camera to pick off their defensive signals…and I think we all see how that’s been working out.
The Bills go to a kid who was doing a great job of warming the bench in Buffalo after a career of warming the bench at Stanford, and he already looks waaaaay better than the guy they’ve been spoon-feeding for the last four years.
Bills receiver Lee Evans was shocked to find that the brown object that Trent Edwards repeatedly threw into his hands was in fact the football he’d always heard of, but had never seen while J.P. Losman was mucking things up behind center.
This just in: Osi Umenyiora just sacked Donovan McNabb again.
The Lions beat the Bears to death in the fourth quarter. The fourth quarter.
Usually, it’s the Bears doing the beating and the Lions doing the dying in the fourth. I mean, who can forget Marty Morninghweg winning the toss in overtime in Chicago and electing to kick?
This time, it was the Lions defense slapping the Bears around, and the Bears throwing the football into enemy hands.
Apparently, it doesn’t matter who quarterbacks the Bears, whether it be Kyle Orton, Rex Grossman, or Brian Griese, because whoever coaches them up ain’t doing it. And it sez so right here that this current Bears coaching staff is so inept at handling QBs that they could take Dan Marino, circa 1984, and mess him up too.
Nobody knows nothin'.
By the way, the guy that will embarrass them this weekend, Brett Favre? Remember, he was once a fat, out-of-shape, no discipline alcoholic with the Falcons before he became a Hall-Of-Famer with Green Bay.
But then, his coach in Atlanta was Jerry Glanville.
His coach in Green Bay was Mike Holmgren.
I ain’t saying Lovie Smith is a Jerry Glanville…but certainly ain’t a Mike Holmgren when it comes to the most important position in football.
This just in: Osi Umenyiora...okay, you get the point.
How distracted is Andy Reid in Philly? He was at the game, standing right there on the sidelines, watching as his offending, er, offensive coordinator (the benighted and aforementioned Morninghweg) did absolutely NOTHING to plug that gaping hole called Winston Justice at tackle.
The Giants had 12 sacks in that game, and it could have been 100. Rumor has it that McNabb went to the line of scrimmage, barked out signals, pointed at Umenyiora and said “Please, God, somebody block that man tonight!” before having the ball snapped…for all the good it did.
The problem here is two-fold. On the one hand, the Eagles played a right tackle in Winston Justice who could be replaced by a folding chair, the result being a marked improvement in quarterback protection…after all, at least the defensive end would have to check his headlong rush long enough to step over the chair in question. Umenyiora, no kidding, ran straight through Justice at least three times without so much as slowing down.
It sez so right here that the tape at the finish line slows runners down more than Justice slowed Umenyiora down on Sunday…but that’s only half the problem.
The other half of the problem is that Donovan McNabb is still broken. Very broken. You’d think that a guy under that much pressure would move a bit more in the pocket to avoid it, but McNabb currently runs slower than service at the DMV.
And the Eagles have absolutely no chance as long as McNabb is playing pop-up target behind center.
And this from a team that some internet blowhard picked to win the division.
Nobody knows nothin’.
So, uh, how much better are the Patriots than everyone else right now?
So much better that grown men who ought to know better are opining that they might be a legitimate threat to run the whole table and finish the season at a staggering 19-0.
It’s one thing when an idiot like me says that they could do it. It’s another thing entirely when guys like Peter King and Paul Zimmerman of Sports Illustrated bring the subject up. That’s nearly 100 combined years of football wisdom daring to utter the words undefeated in the same sentence as the name Patriots.
And it’s not like we didn’t know that the Patriots were going to handle the Bungles, but man did they make it clear that they were playing at another level. They didn’t just beat Cincinnati, they summarily dismissed them.
The scary part is that Randy Moss hasn’t been this quiet since he was in the womb, even though Tom Brady doesn’t look to Moss any more than he looks to anyone else…Brady just puts it where Moss can catch it all the time.
The result is that one doesn’t have to have a “Randy Ratio.” One doesn’t have to tailor 40% of a given offense to Randy Moss if Tom Brady can maximize the 10 plays he might call for Randy in a given game.
And it doesn’t hurt when you can plug in the backup RB and still get a 100 yard rushing night.
Meanwhile, literally and figuratively on the opposite side of the field, the Bungles were busy imploding on semi-national cable t.v. Chad Johnson lost his mind when he went after Carson Palmer, as though Palmer has done anything but make Johnson look good. Palmer is only the finest Bengals QB since Kenny Anderson wore the black and orange many years ago, and Johnson had better shut his famous yap before he ends up like a nerd at the prom: all alone and surrounded by bullies.
Nothing wrong with the Cowboys. Nothing at all. Sure, they’ve slapped the dead around this season, but that’s what good teams do to bad teams (see: New England v. Cincinnati). Dallas can flat out score with anyone in football, including the vaunted Patriots, and they look like the preemptive favorites to represent the NFC in the Super Bowl.
(And not to continue to beat a dead Bear, but the Cowboys found and developed Tony Romo right around the same time that the Bears drafted Rex Grossman, and, after both had been with their teams for the same amount of time, Romo was ready to play when Drew Bledsoe’s warranty finally ran out. See, down in Big D, they have this funny idea that the quarterback kinda matters…unlike the Bears, whose franchise QB played his last game before a hillbilly truck driver from Memphis changed music forever.)
An open letter to San Diego Chargers GM A.J. Smith:
Dear Soon To Be Unemployed,
Norv Turner? Really?
See, it’s like I said: nobody knows nothin’.
How else do you explain Atlanta?
After being sabotaged by their Virginia Tech alumni (first Mike Vick, then DeAngelo Hall), they looked to…dare I say…veteran QB Joey Harrington, who put up his second superior outing in a row, and they soundly beat a very good Houston team.
I’d like to say that this whole Harrington thing won’t last, but then I said that last week, didn’t I?
This just in: Osi Umenyiora just sacked Donovan McNabb again.
How does any sane, rational person explain Cleveland’s victory over Baltimore?
The Ravens led in every statistical category imaginable, except the one that counts in the standings: the final score. Cleveland has now beaten/exposed two teams that came into Browns Stadium with superior reputations, both of whom are on the verge of implosion after losing to the Browns. Derek Anderson has a stranglehold on the QB position, which looked to be Brady Quinn’s at halftime of Game 1. Somebody must have showed young Kellen Winslow Jr. some footage of his old man going to work, because he is arguably the premier tight end in football right now.
Nobody knows nothin’.
The Jets can’t get out of their own way. Last season, they were the darlings of the NFL. Eric Mangini was being touted as another great coach from the Belichick tree. They were scrappy, resilient, and tough. This season?
The most noise they’ve made is about the Patriots using a video camera to pick off their defensive signals…and I think we all see how that’s been working out.
The Bills go to a kid who was doing a great job of warming the bench in Buffalo after a career of warming the bench at Stanford, and he already looks waaaaay better than the guy they’ve been spoon-feeding for the last four years.
Bills receiver Lee Evans was shocked to find that the brown object that Trent Edwards repeatedly threw into his hands was in fact the football he’d always heard of, but had never seen while J.P. Losman was mucking things up behind center.
This just in: Osi Umenyiora just sacked Donovan McNabb again.
The Lions beat the Bears to death in the fourth quarter. The fourth quarter.
Usually, it’s the Bears doing the beating and the Lions doing the dying in the fourth. I mean, who can forget Marty Morninghweg winning the toss in overtime in Chicago and electing to kick?
This time, it was the Lions defense slapping the Bears around, and the Bears throwing the football into enemy hands.
Apparently, it doesn’t matter who quarterbacks the Bears, whether it be Kyle Orton, Rex Grossman, or Brian Griese, because whoever coaches them up ain’t doing it. And it sez so right here that this current Bears coaching staff is so inept at handling QBs that they could take Dan Marino, circa 1984, and mess him up too.
Nobody knows nothin'.
By the way, the guy that will embarrass them this weekend, Brett Favre? Remember, he was once a fat, out-of-shape, no discipline alcoholic with the Falcons before he became a Hall-Of-Famer with Green Bay.
But then, his coach in Atlanta was Jerry Glanville.
His coach in Green Bay was Mike Holmgren.
I ain’t saying Lovie Smith is a Jerry Glanville…but certainly ain’t a Mike Holmgren when it comes to the most important position in football.
This just in: Osi Umenyiora...okay, you get the point.
How distracted is Andy Reid in Philly? He was at the game, standing right there on the sidelines, watching as his offending, er, offensive coordinator (the benighted and aforementioned Morninghweg) did absolutely NOTHING to plug that gaping hole called Winston Justice at tackle.
The Giants had 12 sacks in that game, and it could have been 100. Rumor has it that McNabb went to the line of scrimmage, barked out signals, pointed at Umenyiora and said “Please, God, somebody block that man tonight!” before having the ball snapped…for all the good it did.
The problem here is two-fold. On the one hand, the Eagles played a right tackle in Winston Justice who could be replaced by a folding chair, the result being a marked improvement in quarterback protection…after all, at least the defensive end would have to check his headlong rush long enough to step over the chair in question. Umenyiora, no kidding, ran straight through Justice at least three times without so much as slowing down.
It sez so right here that the tape at the finish line slows runners down more than Justice slowed Umenyiora down on Sunday…but that’s only half the problem.
The other half of the problem is that Donovan McNabb is still broken. Very broken. You’d think that a guy under that much pressure would move a bit more in the pocket to avoid it, but McNabb currently runs slower than service at the DMV.
And the Eagles have absolutely no chance as long as McNabb is playing pop-up target behind center.
And this from a team that some internet blowhard picked to win the division.
Nobody knows nothin’.
So, uh, how much better are the Patriots than everyone else right now?
So much better that grown men who ought to know better are opining that they might be a legitimate threat to run the whole table and finish the season at a staggering 19-0.
It’s one thing when an idiot like me says that they could do it. It’s another thing entirely when guys like Peter King and Paul Zimmerman of Sports Illustrated bring the subject up. That’s nearly 100 combined years of football wisdom daring to utter the words undefeated in the same sentence as the name Patriots.
And it’s not like we didn’t know that the Patriots were going to handle the Bungles, but man did they make it clear that they were playing at another level. They didn’t just beat Cincinnati, they summarily dismissed them.
The scary part is that Randy Moss hasn’t been this quiet since he was in the womb, even though Tom Brady doesn’t look to Moss any more than he looks to anyone else…Brady just puts it where Moss can catch it all the time.
The result is that one doesn’t have to have a “Randy Ratio.” One doesn’t have to tailor 40% of a given offense to Randy Moss if Tom Brady can maximize the 10 plays he might call for Randy in a given game.
And it doesn’t hurt when you can plug in the backup RB and still get a 100 yard rushing night.
Meanwhile, literally and figuratively on the opposite side of the field, the Bungles were busy imploding on semi-national cable t.v. Chad Johnson lost his mind when he went after Carson Palmer, as though Palmer has done anything but make Johnson look good. Palmer is only the finest Bengals QB since Kenny Anderson wore the black and orange many years ago, and Johnson had better shut his famous yap before he ends up like a nerd at the prom: all alone and surrounded by bullies.
Nothing wrong with the Cowboys. Nothing at all. Sure, they’ve slapped the dead around this season, but that’s what good teams do to bad teams (see: New England v. Cincinnati). Dallas can flat out score with anyone in football, including the vaunted Patriots, and they look like the preemptive favorites to represent the NFC in the Super Bowl.
(And not to continue to beat a dead Bear, but the Cowboys found and developed Tony Romo right around the same time that the Bears drafted Rex Grossman, and, after both had been with their teams for the same amount of time, Romo was ready to play when Drew Bledsoe’s warranty finally ran out. See, down in Big D, they have this funny idea that the quarterback kinda matters…unlike the Bears, whose franchise QB played his last game before a hillbilly truck driver from Memphis changed music forever.)
An open letter to San Diego Chargers GM A.J. Smith:
Dear Soon To Be Unemployed,
Norv Turner? Really?
See, it’s like I said: nobody knows nothin’.
Labels: NFL
posted by van walker | 6:35 AM
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