Tweets From Last Night

It's Tuesday and TMQ doesn't come out until midday when I won't have much time to cover it today, so I figure we might as well do something a little different and cover some new blood for this site. This post is about more than just Tweets from last night, but I liked the title and I generally like the web site I semi-stole the post's name from, "Texts from Last Night." It's a fairly amusing site, though I in no way believe any of the texts are real. They are like Bill Simmons' mailbags except instead of funny letters to get in Bill's mailbag, people send funny texts to see if they can get on the site. Explaining that took up about three more sentences than it should have. Basically I am going to feature some articles by journalists I don't normally write about here and see if I dislike them enough for them to stick around.

-I named the title the way I did because I was going to cover several Tweets that Peter King has made this weekend. Also, when you look at people Peter is following, you can see that Brittany Favre is among those he follows. Somehow this managed to shock me, I don't know how. I should figure if he is obsessed with Brett, the rest of the family gets the Fatal Attraction-esque obsession as well. Stupid me. I don't know how old she is, but from the Tweets she is sending out, I can't imagine Peter would have any reason to follow what she is saying. So I chalk it up to his Favre obsession.

No. Just straight vodka.@Only1Steets. Were you drinking cough medicine when you made your picks? Lions over Vikes? Jets over Pats??

9:55 AM Sep 17th from web

Kudos to Peter, but it does suck for "Only1Steets" that his disbelief in the Jets being able to beat the Pats has been made so public.

Weird Fine 15. Had no idea who is number one. I'm sure you'll all have plenty of opinions for me ... And young QBs get plenty of cyberink.

about 11 hours ago from web

The Fine Fifteen is so weird this year. It's not like the other NFL seasons when after the second week of the season has been completed it is incredibly clear who the best teams in the NFL are (I wish sarcasm went over better on the Internet, it sounds much funnier in my head). Suffice to say no one knows who the top teams in the NFL really are after two weeks so Peter shouldn't be worried he doesn't know either.

Come on. Dal rush: 29-247. You can't be serious. @FITZjr. Giants at 5 really? You know it's inevitable that you'll have to put them at 1.

about 8 hours ago from web

Peter thinks there is no way he can put the Giants at #1 in his Fine Fifteen. They gave up so much rushing yardage to the Dallas Cowboys on the road is his reasoning. That's not nearly as impressive to him as beating the Detroit Lions and Cleveland Browns, which is why Minnesota is #2 in his Fine Fifteen. Just like yesterday, beating Dallas but giving up a lot of yardage is not impressive but beating two of the worst teams in the league is impressive to Peter because Brett Favre plays for the team.

Ha! If they were smart, they'd take Tebow. @siddfinch. Who do you think the Browns take with the number one pick next year? :)

about 7 hours ago from web

Just when I think Tim Tebow-mania can't get any worse, Peter King says the Browns should take Tim Tebow as the first pick in the 2010 NFL Draft...over Sam Bradford, Colt McCoy, Jevan Snead. This doesn't include non-QB's like Best from California, (my personal favorite) Suh of Nebraska, Okung, Eric Berry and Taylor Mays. I really hope this is a joke. Not that I don't think Tebow will serve some use in the NFL but his running style may not serve him as well in the NFL and I am not sure how well he can play the QB position to transition to the NFL as a starter. He probably can, but I personally would not take him first in the NFL draft. I don't know why I just explained myself because it is dumb to even joke about Tim Tebow being the #1 pick. I guess with the media's infatuation with him, I actually believe someone would try to draft Tebow first.

Yes. His name is Scott Pioli. @gavingrace. Do Chiefs fans have any reason for optimism?

about 7 hours ago from web

I have never heard of his player. What position does he play?

Is it good or bad when a team's hopes are supposed to be attached to the General Manager? I know he is supposed to bring in talent to make the team better...but he is the General Manager and not a player. It would be more comforting if there was a player or two that would make the Chiefs feel better for the future coming from Peter's Twitter responses.

How did Matt Cassel do on Sunday you ask? 24-39, 241 yards, 1 TD, 2 INT's. Not bad but the Chiefs still lost to the Raiders. Obviously we are not going to know after one week whether he was worth that big contract or not.

49,413 followers. I am taking a poll: What should I do for my 50,000th follower? What can I give away? Any ideas?

about 7 hours ago from web

Promise to quit following Brittany Favre on Twitter. That would be a first step as a gift I would want if I were a follower of Peter.

-Apparently Jerome Bettis feels the need to start becoming a "journalist" and start write articles for CNNSI. He has some thoughts. Unfortunately none of his thoughts involve how fortunate he is that Ben Roethlisberger got a hand on Nick Harper's ankle in 2006 in the Divisional Playoffs which allowed everyone to forget Bettis' horrible fumble on the goal line moments earlier. I wanted to hear his thoughts about this like, "I didn't think running backs could choke in big moments until I realized I had just choked by fumbling." Or his thoughts on how he landed a broadcasting job like, "why did they put me on television? Is it simply because I am loveable and slightly overweight or that I smile a lot? Doesn't anyone know I have no broadcasting skill?" I digress...

Patriots-Jets was fantastic, but Falcons-Patriots will be a barometer game if I ever saw one. We all think New England is a much better football team than they've shown over the past two weeks, but we're not really sure. Is this a team that's getting by on its history?

"Getting by on its history?" Are they coming to midfield for the coin flip and showing off their Super Bowl rings in hopes the other team will immediately forfeit? The Patriots needed a near miracle to beat the Bills and got beaten by the Jets on Sunday. They are barely even "getting by" at this point and certainly their history of winning Super Bowls has nothing to do with this.

I don't know if this is supposed to be analysis but it's not very good analysis. Yesterday in the MMQB Review I stated that I thought Belichick gave Sanchez a false sense of confidence so he could destroy the confidence every other time they play each other and yesterday Ty Warren (I think) said the Patriots didn't plan anything really difficult on defense because they thought they could stop the Jets with what they were doing. So basically Sanchez may in for a shit storm next time they play.

So this is a barometer game for both franchises. If Atlanta wins, it validates them as a legit football team. If New England wins, they're still on top.

The first two games the Falcons won against playoff teams from last year does not validate them as a legit football team in Bettis' eyes? So if they beat a New England team they are a legit team at that point? Even though New England struggled the first two games of this season? This doesn't make sense, the Patriots had a 11-5 record last year just like the Dolphins and the Panthers had a 12-4 record, so why would the Patriots be the benchmark for the Falcons? Sounds to me like Bettis is letting New England's history affect his perspective a little bit on this game.

Personally, I'd bet on the Patriots pulling it together, but they'll have to overcome a defense that's changed too much. Man, could they use Richard Seymour to make a few plays right now. Was cutting him loose a mistake? I think we'll know for sure after this game.

This one game will define whether trading Richard Seymour was a mistake. The other 13 games for this year are merely exhibitions where the Patriots can give up 200 yards rushing in every game and it doesn't matter...because they beat the Falcons.

If there was any progress last year, before Kiffin was fired, it's evaporated. Russell doesn't look like an NFL quarterback. And that blame falls on the organization.

Yes, it is definitely not JaMarcus Russell's fault he stinks as a quarterback. It's not like he showed up for camp overweight last year, has consistently shown poor work habits in learning the playbook and doesn't seem dedicated to becoming an NFL caliber quarterback. It's not his fault at all, it's completely the organization's fault. Maybe someone tell Russell to wake up and realize his chance his almost over. Or maybe Tom Cable should punch him in the face.

So now you have a player who hasn't met his potential, and you have coaches who can't develop players.

I agree with the second part and I think Russell has met his potential and that's the problem.

Titans should have paid to keep Jim Schwartz.

Maybe Tennessee should have put some of the millions of dollars it saved by letting Haynesworth go towards paying Schwartz like a head coach.

Along with Bill Plaschke's idea the Dodgers should have bought Casey Blake, Greg Maddux and Manny Ramirez instead of trading prospects for them, comes the second non-realistic based idea of this month. I am pretty sure Schwartz would not have passed up the opportunity to be a head coach in the NFL to be a highly paid defensive coordinator. Call me jaded but you would have to be stupid to turn down a job as a NFL head coach if that is really what you want to do...even if it is with the Lions. The Titans could have offered him a ton of money and I still think he would have taken a head coaching job if it was offered. Not only would it have been stupid for Schwartz to pass up the opportunity but why would a team want to try and hold back a guy who deserved to be a head coach in the league by offering him an absurd amount of money?

Also, there is no salary cap for coaches so really the fact they saved money when they lost Haynesworth has nothing to do with Jim Schwartz. I am sure Jerome Bettis knows this though...

Ex-players think of the Hall in those terms: game changers. That's why I admire another guy in this class, Eddie George. Though he wasn't the first tall guy -- Eric Dickerson was before him -- he certainly helped break the mold for guys like Brandon Jacobs.

Eddie George should be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame? I really don't think so. He seems like a great guy but he doesn't deserve it. This is the problem when athletes start writing their opinions down, pretty soon everyone deserves to be in the Hall of Fame because that athlete likes that guy or if that guy gets in the athlete writing the column would probably get in as well.

How about an 0-2 team I like? Tennessee, easily. With their personnel, they'll turn this around. Maybe not against the Jets this week, but their schedule gets easier down the line.

So Bettis sees the Titans bouncing back even if they lose to the Jets this weekend and go 0-3 because they have an easy schedule? Let's see...they have to play the Colts twice, the Texans again, then the Pats, Bills, Cardinals, Dolphins, and Chargers. It's not that difficult but I wouldn't call it easy.

I caught some flack for trashing the Steelers' line and running backs last week, but a lot of those things happened again. The defense was good, not great. They ran a little better and protected BenRoethlisberger a little longer for most of the game.

He shouldn't have caught flack for trashing the Steeler's line, he should have caught slack for changing his opinion on the Steelers offensive line depending on who he is talking to.

In Steelers Digest he said something different about the Steelers offensive line. So which one is the truth? Is he a person who panders to his audience or does he write semi-controversial things in order to get pageviews?

-Mike Lupica thinks the new Cowboys stadium is all about Jerry Jones' ego. Really, who should know about what people do in order to inflate their ego any more than Mike Lupica would? His body is 10% water and 90% ego. Even Lupica's picture says, "Look at me and dare to not call me an asshole. I dare you."

Really he writes nothing of interest in that part of the column. It's in his "quick thoughts" at the end of the column that interested me.

Don't you wish Ichiro could come here and play, just for one season?

By "here" I am assuming Lupica means "New York," and by this entire sentence I think he means, "I would want him to play in New York because a great baseball player isn't considered a great baseball player until he plays for either the Mets or Yankees. Seattle is so far away and I am not even sure it is even in the United States. Only the great athletes play in New York."

No, I don't wish Ichiro could play in New York for one season because it is not such a great place that nearly every baseball player has to play there at some point.

Has there ever been a player as great as Ichiro seen this infrequently outside his home city?

What the hell does it matter? Is Lupica looking to have dinner with Ichiro? If this is indicative of the thoughts his columns contain, I want no part of this, meaning "I will pay better attention to him so I can make fun of him more often."

Serena Williams should not just have lost her match against Kim Clijsters for the way she behaved at the end, she should absolutely have lost her chance to play for the women's doubles championship with her sister on Monday afternoon.

Oh that makes sense. The real only fair way to punish Serena would be to punish her sister, Venus, by forcing her to forfeit the championship doubles match and punish the doubles team they were going against by not allowing them to compete for the championship. This would definitely show Serena the error of her ways.

Speaking of Broadway, if you missed Sebastian Arcelus playing Bob Gaudio the first time around in "Jersey Boys," you better get down to the August Wilson Theater and see him now.

Possibly Mike Lupica should invite Peter King to this event. It sounds like it would be right down his alley, as long as they allowed coffee in the theater and they don't have to stay at the Mariott while in New York.

Here's my question: Did Peter King steal these types of thoughts from Mike Lupica or did Lupica steal it from King? Peter's thoughts in his MMQB are phrased an awful lot like what Lupica writes here. Maybe it's a coincidence.

-Jeff Miller thinks the USC Trojans are not as good as they used to be. Doesn't USC lose to an unranked team on the road nearly every year? What's so different this year?

Their two longest plays were runs.

Their longest pass play went to the fullback.

Everyone knows to be considered a great team your team has to have it's two longest plays both be flea flickers and the longest pass play has to go to a guy who is a wide receiver. These are the rules, I didn't just make them up, otherwise you can not be considered a good team.

No, no they haven't. The USC Trojans haven't been this one-dimensional often, this stagnant often, this unthreatening often.

Of course, they haven't been this young and inexperienced at quarterback often, either. That's hardly a coincidence.

Great. That's exactly what I was going to say also. Usually USC has an experienced quarterback running the offense, but this year with Mark Sanchez leaving for the NFL early they don't have that luxury. Maybe the real reason Pete Carroll did not want Sanchez to go pro had less to do with his immediate readiness and more to do with him envisioning the Trojans current situation with unexperienced quarterbacks.

Now that we have covered the reason the Trojans lost is because Washington has improved and they did not have their starting QB, let's move on to other topics. Nothing more to see here.

So the Trojans lost, 16-13, to Washington — a 19-point underdog, a program that went 0-12 last season and an opponent they beat a year ago, 56-0.

I guess we aren't done, even though we have reached the most likely conclusion for the USC loss. They are not really a shell of themselves, they just are young at key positions.

We need to remember Washington was also a team that gave LSU a tough game two weeks ago. Last year's statistics actually don't count for this year and neither does last year's record so it really doesn't matter how many games they lost last year. This is a little known fact.

History and the recruiting services tell us Matt Barkley or Aaron Corp or both eventually will arrive at USC.

Matt Barkley actually "arrived" last week when he went to Ohio State and put up enough points to beat them. He has a road victory as a quarterback against a top-10 team. That counts as "arriving" in my book. Unfortunately Barkley was not able to do the same on Saturday because he didn't actually play in the game against Washington. I don't like USC and I am not making excuses for them. They are young at QB and their best young QB wasn't even playing though.

Right now, given their quarterbacking youth, the Trojans are more about not losing than they ever have been since Carroll's arrival. They are asking Corp and Barkley to "manage" not "win" these games.

That's great. Can we all agree the headline of this column should be "USC is too young at the quarterback position to challenge for a National Championship this year" instead of the more controversial and pageview friendly "USC has become a shell of what it once was," which is a headline that is also slightly misleading since the reason is easily identifiable and can be solved with more experience which takes time? I think we can agree on this.

USC went up against a tough defense last week on the road and then they played really crappy against Washington on the road. This happens every year to USC in that they lose to an unranked Pac-10 team on the road.

Right or wrong, they are wildly conservative, a former passing team now a passive team.

It's not because of a lack of talent, which is what the title of this article seems to indicate is why USC is a shell of itself, but because there is talent there, just not talent with experience. So literally every single week after Matt Barkley gets more and more experience the passing game will be opened up even more and this problem is temporary? Is that a logical conclusion to be drawn? I think so.

We've all seen the Trojans at their strongest, and this team doesn't look like those teams did.

Because they are really young at the quarterback position. He is really hammering this point home isn't he?

Beyond their quarterbacks having to learn amid the chaos, the Trojans face issues with their special teams and still lack injured receiver Ronald Johnson, their most serious deep threat.

So the Trojans also have injury problems at the wide receiver position, which probably has an effect on the passing game as well. Let's see, they have a young quarterback and injury problems at the wide receiver position. This doesn't sound like USC is a shell of itself but more a team in transition at this stage of the season into a more conservative team out of necessity.

Considering the Trojans have like 6 tailbacks who could start for a number of other D-I schools, I don't see running the ball a lot as a huge problem for them.

The next nine games will provide more answers, but there's no doubt what they learned — what we all learned — on this day about the status of this USC football team:

Not Yet.

But USC is not a shell of itself, just not good enough to compete for a National Championship for a variety of reasons. All of these reasons are temporary and it's not like the school's football program is on a downward spiral.

See you for TMQ (if it's bad enough) tomorrow.