Friday, January 1, 2010

8 comments Ross Tucker Has Christmas/New Years Wishes For the NFL Loser Teams

Happy New Year to everyone. I hope everyone isn't too hung over/tired from last night. I know this is two straight weeks of only 5 posts and everyone is severely depressed about it, so I am sorry, but with the holidays and all I have to leave the attic more often to interact with fellow humans. It's clearly something that makes a pale white blogger like me nervous. Even a blog posting addict like myself has to leave the computer regularly to talk to real people. It's a new year, but don't worry, the writing on here will always be nearly average. The quality will never drop off below that level, that's my vow to you. Some of the post may not be visible to you and I can't figure out why. It looks viewable to me in IE and Firefox but from what Kent told me it didn't show up in Firefox unless it got highlighted or IE was used. I tried to fix this repeatedly, but I am still having the same problem. It's very odd, so sorry about that.

Today everyone is making New Year's resolutions and trying to stick to them. I have no such resolutions. Ross Tucker, who is one of my favorite columnists to make fun of even though he is an Ivy League educated person, has Christmas/New Year's wishes for the NFL teams that aren't doing so well this year. He is trying to provide a little bit of hope for a bunch of teams that don't feel like they have that much hope right now. I will have none of this. When I read this article the first two times I thought it may have been tongue-in-cheek but after reading it again, I don't think it is. Let's have some fun and mess with what wishes Ross Tucker has for some NFL loser teams. He calls it positivity, so I will inject some (what I call) realism in here and nitpick him a bit.

The holiday season is all about giving, so this week's column gives a little hope to the fans of teams that no longer have playoff dreams dancing in their heads.

8 comments:

KentAllard said...

Weird formatting issue: half this post was invisible to me in Firefox (unless I highlighted it), while it showed up fine in IE.

The Raiders may be optimistic, but their track record in the draft has to be making their fans cringe at what they will choose this year.

I may be in the tiny minority on this one, but I don't think QB is a key issue for the Browns, until they fix their offensive line and find some receivers. I'm not saying either of their current quarterbacks ar the answer, but there is uncertainty until they have more time to throw and someone to catch the ball. Any quarterback would look bad in the Browns' offense (Except for Matt Cassell, of course. He would already have 6,000 yards this season, because he's Matt Cassell).

Good to know Carolina just needs to push the button marked "Better Quarterback Play" and everything will work out for them. They should have done that this year.

A lot of the article boils down to "team which sucks due to a history of bad personell decisions will improve because they will make good personell decisions." this seems like shakey logic to me.

Bengoodfella said...

Shit, I'm sorry I thought fixed that problem with the post. I was having a similar problem.

It's hard to be optimistic and still be a Raiders fan. I don't have a huge problem with the Browns quarterbacks, I think they need a lot more than just a QB to fix the team though. Drafting one right now in the 1st round might be a little counterproductive. Of course Matt Cassell could do great things, that's just a given.

Yeah, you said it better than I do, because it basically does boil down to teams who have made bad personnel decisions all of a sudden making good ones.

Now, if I could just fix this formatting problem...

FormerPhD said...

The thing I enjoy "analysts" doing with respect to draft "steals" is completely ignore the fact that if you have 5 picks on the second day of the draft and 2 on the first day. The odds of finding ONE good player in the 5 picks is actually pretty good and usually every team has at least one "steal."

Basically, Knox is a good player and in hindsight wouldn't be a 5th round pick if the draft were redone, but, statistically speaking, at least one of the 5 second day picks should be at least okay. For example, Oakland hit on Louis Murphy (fourth), Cincinnati hit on Bernard Scott (sixth), the Chiefs got Succop (seventh) and those are just the late rounders I remember. Basically, if you go through most drafts, you'll find that there's a lot of good players and it shouldn't be shocking when a 4th/5th/6th/7th round pick turns out to be a good player.

That and you know what would make fans feel better about their team more than one late round pick panning out? A front office that drafts well in every round.

Unknown said...

I would add that while Hasselback is on the downside of his career, the string of injuries they had two years ago at wide out was silly. They lost their top 5 receivers I think it was before the third game of the year. Last year, more of the same, but not quite as bad, plus they lost a bunch of games to injury on defense. This year, more injuries, including Hasselback breaking a rib in what, game 1 or 2? That really is a string of bad luck, and maybe they should think about getting a new training and conditioning staff.

Bengoodfella said...

Rich, good point. If a team has a bunch of late round picks and the front office is semi-competent, they are going to hit on at least one of those picks. I used to think Carolina was good at finding late round picks, but many times it is just a fact of the matter that they have usually 4-5 late round picks, and they draft fairly well so they are going to find a good player in there somewhere.

It is always better when a front office drafts well throughout the draft. One pick shouldn't make a team feel better.

Martin, I didn't add that part in there because it was a couple of years ago and they tried to address the wide receiver problem this year. I do feel like Seattle has had more injuries than a normal team usually has, I have to admit. That receiver injury list was insane two years ago...and it hasn't helped they don't really have a backup behind Hasselbeck that is not better than Seneca Wallace. I would hire a new strength and conditioning staff also.

Dylan said...

Isn't it interesting that Steve Spagnuolo has managed to ruin two teams by leaving the Giants? Their defense is nowhere to be found, and Saint Louis...well, that one is self explanatory. Meanwhile Stephen Jackson is suffering from the Barry Sanders curse: losing the prime of his career to a talentless, perennial loser.

Anonymous said...

Falcons also did not get a break in the scheduling department when they faced 4 teams in 6 weeks that were coming off byes.

Bengoodfella said...

The Giants defense is absolutely terrible right now and I don't know why. I think he will turn the Rams around at some point...at least defensively, but right now it is funny that he has ruined two teams.

Anon, I didn't know that part about the Falcons schedule. The loss of Turner, Ryan and a couple of young guys on defense haven't helped either.