Turkeys
That teams must travel to either Detroit or Dallas every year for a so-called tradition is kind of unfair. At the very least the Bye schedule needs to be altered such that the two teams traveling for these games get the previous Sunday off. I’d also like to see the Thanksgiving games rotated around. Maybe give the championship game losers from the previous season the hosting duty.
Erratica
Can the Bucs’ loss on Sunday be completely blamed on Gramatica? Not really. The offense sputtered and the defense (again) let the Panthers march to the winning score late in the game. But I’ll tell you this, watching Tim Brown short arm a catchable rebound on the hail Mary shows me that he’s now fully useless as a player. That’s the playoffs Timmy! Go get the damn ball. Jump. Lay out. Whatever it takes, just go catch that touchdown so we can go to OT. I’m through with Tim Brown. He’s no good at punt returns and he’s become timid at the WR spot. Cut him loose and put Charles Lee in the line-up. He’d have gone after that ball.
And now, Gramatica. He’s a goner. Whatever magic he had before was evaporated over the last season and three-quarters. Bookended by poor performances against the Panthers Mar-teen has (hopefully) played his last game as a Buccaneer. What can be done to restore a kicker’s confidence? Of all the spots on an NFL roster the kicker is the most fragile, both physically and mentally. The guy needs to go and we need someone who can hit 95% of his 40 yard or less kicks.
Thursday’s “Games”
Man, what the hell were the Bears thinking? Who wears jerseys like that? They got what they deserved for wearing those horrible uniforms. But I guess they were much more in their game that the hapless Lions. Criminy. On NFL Countdown Sunday, Boomer noted that since they signed off the previous Sunday that Peyton Manning had thrown 10 touchdown passes. That guy is ridiculous. Maybe Dungy finally can see what happens with a pretty good offense. It’s obvious that a stellar offense can mask a poor defense. But the opposite is not true. If you have a great defense you must also have, at least, a competent offense.
The way the Colts are built right now is great for a fun regular season. But this will not be enough to allow them to hoist Vince. They will eventually meet a team that has a defense that can at least slow them rovi and an offense that can hang with them in a shootout (Steelers, Patriots anyone).
Game Break
Fox Sports has
picked up the BCS package for the 2006-2009 seasons. I’m with
Mandel on this one. The Plus One bowl thing is just a horrible idea. If we’re not going to establish a playoff then let’s just go back to the way it was.
The “smoking gun” that kicked off all of this nonsense was Penn State accepting a major bowl bid in something like October and then proceeding to lose four games or something to that effect. So then we got the lovely Bowl Coalition. Where each of the top bowls would retain a conference champion tie-in, but then would select opponents based on their finish in the Coalition Poll (which was just the average of the writers’ and coaches’ polls). The Bowl Coalition gave way to the Bowl Alliance (eh?) which performed just about as well as the Coalition. After these plans failed miserably (mostly due to the Rose Bowl not being part of the deal) great thinkers like Roy Kramer came up with The Bowl Championship Sep;&n. And the rest is history. I could go on and on, and have on many occasions, about the turd that is The BCS.
Let’s go back to 1991 and the old days. It is not as if the heated debate has ended with the advent of the new systems. So why “officially” screw teams? Let’s go back to the roots of the game and give teams the screw job as nature intended, via the grossly over-valued “human” polls alone.
McNabb Prepared To Fail
On the Fox pregame show this past Sunday Pam Oliver was interviewing Donovan McNabb and the question of “greatness” came up. And almost immediately he stated that winning championships is not necessarily the measure of greatness. Sure Donny. Keep thinking that. Ask Dan Marino if he’d trade in a couple of records for a Ring. Or if Bradshaw would give back a Ring or two to hold some records. Look at Peyton Manning, successful pro quarterback and likely hall of famer. Also a great college signal caller. I wonder if he’d like to have beaten the Gators and won the SEC once or twice during his run.
Winning championships is the only measure Donovan. If the Eagles never win the Super Bowl with McNabb what will be their legacy? Will it be the many seasons of playoff appearances? Will it be the dominating regular season performances? Or will it be that they could never win (heck, just getting to the Bowl would be a start) the big game? Ask Jim Kelly or Thurman Thomas or Bruce Smith that question.
I think that the way he answered that question is why the Eagles will never achieve greatness with him at QB. Here he is in week 12 of the season, and he’s basically talking about the possibility that they won’t make it to the Super Bowl again.
Kicked In The Nutz
Playoffs Baby! The mighty Thunderers are over .500 for the first time this season at 6-5-1 after defeating Deez Nutz 60-32. Of course, there are still two weeks left in the regular season, so I haven’t clinched anything yet. But I’m in 8th place with only one tough game left. Talk about pressure.
Head Ball Coach
For whatever reason Butch Davis, now the
former head coach of the Cleveland Browns, has been mentioned as a candidate for the Gators HBC job. Eh? Not only was he a former Hurricanes coach, but he’s Butch Freakin Davis for cripes sake. Though, from what I hear he can recruit like a son-of-a-gun. And there is talk that Urban Meyer may jump ship to Notre Dame (from wherever he is at the time) should the job ever become available. Then Bobby Petrino has reportedly taken out of the running by Louisville’s AD. Machen made a big mistake by insisting on this “process”. When Spurrier made that comment that he’d be interested that should have been the beginning of the search. Talk to Steve and see what’s what. If it wasn’t going to work out with him, then start the
process. I would prefer that some progress be shown at this point. And I’d really like to report in next week’s edition that the Gators have a new HBC. But with Machen and Foley it appears that it might be until after the bowls before we hear anything.
Update: Ty Willingham
fired by Notre Dame. So much for Urban Meyer.
Running Items
WTF?
An NFL team scores 48 points, and
loses?
Oh Ricky
He’s baaaack. Ricky Williams will serve a four game suspension at the end of this season and return for next year. The question remaining is what will the Dolphins do with him? I vote for bars of soap stuffed in socks and then applied liberally. Then trade him.
Breath Of A Salesman
Two sets of parody ads are floating around right now.
First, Bud is sticking it to Miller with the referee spots. This time the refs are shown “confiscating” the Buds for their own later consumption.
And Netzero has hit back with parodies of those recent AOL ads (like the one with that mom on the table). Funny stuff all around.
Super Bowl XXXIX
Steelers vs. Seattle
Like I said in a comment to last week’s edition, I’ll just rotate through the NFC division leaders for a couple weeks until someone (anyone) decides to take this thing and run with it.
Next Week: Urban Renewal? Roasted Falcon? Thunderers and Lightning?
