It Takes Three Columns To Replace Peter King

I am no longer in denial. I miss Peter King's MMQB. I miss knowing I can wake up on a Monday and have some elitist idiocy and excessive Brett Favre mentions that I can mock. It gets my week off to a great start and life is just not the same without him rambling on about a conversation that he had with Mark Sanchez about how great the Jets will be this year. It takes three columns on this Monday to replace Peter.

Overall, the replacement MMQBer's have been pretty bland, but this week's MMQB written by Steve Sabol did contain a few points of interest to me.

One question I'm asked more than any other is: Who is the greatest player in NFL history? I can't answer it. It's like asking me to name my favorite noodle in a spaghetti dinner. It's tough to name the top 10 players, even the top 100. But at NFL Films, we're taking a crack at it anyway.

Airing in September is our latest project for the NFL Network called The Top 100: The NFL's Greatest Players. The players were selected by a vote of 85 panelists, which consisted of Hall of Fame selectors, coaches, general managers, owners, scouts, journalists, TV analysts and statisticians. Ranking the great players is, in a way, like rating the saints. Is St. Peter better than St. Paul? Would you pick St. Mark over St. Matthew? Our show won't end any arguments, but it will certainly start some.

I am glad Steve Sabol got this opportunity to write MMQB and have thousands of people read what he says...then takes time to pimp out his upcoming show in the very first paragraph. So he turns MMQB into an advertisement for his show. That's nice. I know it may be a great show, but is it really worth putting it as the main topic while you are a guest columnist?

I don't have anything against Steve Sabol but his MMQB had an entire feel of "the good old days were better than football today." It felt like I was reading a column by a 85 year old man who hasn't watched football in the last twenty years. Sabol's MMQB definitely has a late 1980's feel about it to me. I am not sure anyone present day players (like after 1990) got mentioned except for Adrian Peterson and maybe two other players. This column could have easily been written in 1990.

The first half of MMQB consists of Steve Sabol making up categories and picking players who are the "best" in those categories. Just as a note on what I was talking about when I said this column feels like it was written by an 85 year old man, the "winners" of these categories are all old-time football players. The most modern player or person in these category winners is Walter Payton...and he last played in the NFL in 1987.

Most Photo-Dramatic Face: Larry Csonka

His nose was so bent and re-bent he had to breathe through his ears.

This is an example of his "awards" explanations. You can understand why I didn't feel the need to cover this.

Then, as always, the "Ten Things..." comments get somewhat interesting.

1. I think Adrian Peterson's fumbling problem -- he did it more times last year than any other running back -- is an outgrowth of what makes him so effective. He runs more viciously than any back in the league.

So what is the "outgrowth" that makes Chris Johnson, Steven Jackson, Thomas Jones, and Maurice Jones-Drew so effective? All of them had more yards rushing than Adrian Peterson. They had 9 fumbles while rushing the ball among them to Peterson's 6 fumbles while rushing the ball, which doesn't include the postseason. Do they not run viciously? I think Adrian Peterson is becoming slightly overrated as a running back. He seems to have this perception among many in the media as the obvious best all-around back in the NFL and that isn't quite true. There are running backs who don't fumble as much and have a better per carry average than Adrian Peterson. He got the 4th most carries and had the 6th most rushing yards last year.

Peterson is a great running back, but I don't think he is the best in the NFL and I don't think his fumbles can be excused by just saying he runs more viciously than any other running back in the NFL. It's simply not true. He may run hard, but so do other running backs who play in the NFL.

Adrian should watch some film of Jim Taylor, the Packer Hall of Famer. Like Peterson, he perceived every play as an examination of his manhood. He spat, elbowed and battled his way to five consecutive 1,000-yard seasons in the 1960s, and he fumbled less than any top back of his era.

So it is possible to run hard without fumbling? So the fumbling isn't an outgrowth of him running hard, but is an outgrowth of him just fumbling a lot? So the above excuse about "running hard" was all bullshit?

5. I think the obscurity into which 49ers running back Hugh McElhenny has fallen is both puzzling and shameful. I couldn't believe he wasn't selected as one of our Top 100! He ran with a style and kind of joyous plan that made his long runs delightful to watch.

He probably fell into obscurity because he wasn't that good of a running back when compared to today's players, he played in an era when there weren't many great athletes playing football and he ran for a total of 5,281 yards in his career...or 2,047 more yards than Chris Johnson has after two years in the NFL. Basically he was an athletic, white running back who was good in his time.

These old time players were great in their time, but the fewer games played "back in the day" and the lack of athletes in the NFL make their numbers appear to be inferior to today's NFL players.

7. I think many coaches today magnify turnovers and use those plays as a reason for losing.

I think there have been multiple studies that have shown the correlation between a team losing the turnover battle and losing the football game. Reducing turnovers is the best way to win a game. I don't think this is magnified too much. It's pretty well known that teams which turn over the ball a lot have a harder time winning a football game in general.

By turnovers, they mean, "My staff did everything right, our game plan was sound but our players screwed up."

Which is exactly what happens. It is not the staff trying to shed responsibility, but just stating the truth.

In 1979, the Steelers led the league in turnovers yet won the Super Bowl. In 1981, the 49ers had six turnovers in the NFC Championship game but still beat the Cowboys.

So two instances where a team had a lot of turnovers and still won the game are supposed to show us that turnover margin is an overrated statistic? This is idiocy to try and convince me that turnovers don't matter because a team won a NFC Championship once with six turnovers and the 1979 Steelers led the league in turnovers and still won the Super Bowl. These are outliers to the rule, not the rule.

In today's era -- with the salary cap and free agency -- you can't build super teams (like the '62 Packers with 10 Hall of Famers or the '79 Steelers with nine) that dominate all phases of the game. Those days are gone. Everybody has flaws. Each year we have four or five really good teams, but no great ones.

Read this sentence again. Who wrote this sentence? Steve Sabol or Joe Morgan?

a. The best advice I can give to aspiring filmmakers is get a good opening and a good ending and get them as close together as possible. I think everything today is too long. Movies run over two hours. High Noon, the greatest western ever made, ran 84 minutes. TV opens and teases are overproduced, overcut and repetitive.

How much of an old man does Steve Sabol seem like?

He hates anything not made or produced before the late 1970's! "Gone With the Wind" was 224 minutes long, all of the "Godfather" movies are long, and "Citizen Kane" was 119 minutes long. Some movies are too long, that's true, but it doesn't mean the best way to make a movie is to make it short.

b. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller influenced how I live my life. It taught me to approach every problem, no matter how difficult or disheartening, as a potential source of humor. The world belongs to those who can laugh at it.

The film version of this movie was 122 minutes long. IT WAS TOO LONG! SHORTEN THE MOVIE! I WON'T GO TO ANY MOVIE THAT WILL REQUIRE A BATHROOM BREAK!

c. My aggravating/enjoyable travel note: The only thing I dislike about my job is the travel. The planes are dirty, often late and the service is lousy. I have travel anxiety. I call it tripidation.

The jokes Steve Sabol uses in MMQB makes Peter King look like Richard Pryor.

-The second article today involves Jay Mariotti and what has become his daily verbal pounding of Tiger Woods.

The scariest sentence in the entire column comes in the biography of Jay Mariotti:

Jay Mariotti is a national columnist for FanHouse. He also is a daily panelist on ESPN's "Around The Horn". Mariotti was the lead sports columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, is a member of the Baseball Writers Association of America, and is a Hall of Fame voter.

Jay Mariotti has a Hall of Fame vote and is a member of the BWAA. If anyone ever wonders what is wrong with the Hall of Fame voting and the BWAA in general, look no further. Here is a part of the problem. Writers like Jay Mariotti have a vote that actually means something.

The title of this epic and resounding column is "Time To Ignore Tiger, Focus on Real Golfers." It's an interesting title considering on 7/16 Mariotti wrote a column called "Old Course Soothes Woes of Tiger, Daly" and later on 7/16 wrote a column called, "As Winds Bury Woods, Vuvuzela Fever Returns."

Basically, Jay Mariotti will do anything to put "Tiger Woods" in the title to his columns to get the pageviews. Also, because Mariotti has been continuously writing about Woods, he is the one who needs to ignore Tiger and focus on other golfers...but that doesn't necessarily help his pageviews increase.

Out along the ropes on the 14th hole, grown adults still were running and jostling for viewing space Saturday, even as Tiger Woods continued to shrink in relevance and golfing girth. They followed him by the thousands, not concerned that he has become a non-contending wannabe and that a third-round duel between two legitimate challengers -- including Paul Casey, an ENGLISHMAN trying to win THE BRITISH OPEN -- was much more compelling.

Of course that duel wasn't compelling enough for Jay Mariotti to write a column about it. He wrote about Tiger Woods instead.

Others just wanted to be voyeurs, consumed by his personal misery and the systematic demise of his once-impenetrable game when they should have been doing something more productive, like ordering the greasy fish and chips.

Or they could be writing a column about Tiger Woods like Jay Mariotti does. He's such a hypocrite at times.

Who ever thought an obscure golfer from South Africa, nicknamed "Shrek'' by his friends for the gap in his front teeth, would stand on history's doorstep as Woods takes another tumble toward post-scandal oblivion?

No one! That's who! The official Vegas odds of "A golfer from South Africa who looks like a Dreamworks character because he has a gap in his teeth will win the British Open while Tiger Woods will have two good rounds and two bad rounds" was 1,484,983,000 : 1.

This was right behind the odds of "A golfer from America will fall in the lake while in fourth place get bitten by an alligator, miss two straight birdie putts, and then lose fourth place to a golfer who had eggs and bacon for breakfast."

He did slam a couple of clubs, though, talking bitterly to himself and forgetting his hollow vows to be "a better person'' and "make my behavior more respectful of the game." At this point, does it really matter how he behaves if he isn't even contending for majors?

So Jay Mariotti brings up Tiger's bad behavior and how it doesn't gel with his previous statement that he would curb this bad behavior and then asks if it is really worth bringing up?

In his previous three majors, he succumbed to someone named Y.E. Yang at the PGA Championship,

Asians are supposed to suck at golf! Jay thinks Tiger should only lose to a guy named Y.E. Yang if it is a karate competition.

For now, until further notice, let's concentrate on the players who deserve our attention.

Look for another column about Tiger Woods from Jay Mariotti in the next week.

We can tell. Especially when he is juxtaposed against the man who used to win the majors, Eldrick Woods, who is miserable and about to fade from the radar screen.

He will fade as soon as sportswriters stop talking about him in order to increase their pageviews.

Do yourself a favor, as I am, and devote your attention span to Louis Oosthuizen.

Whoever he is.

Do yourself a favor Jay Mariotti, and quit being a hypocrite. Using Tiger's name in the title of your columns to get people to read it. If Tiger is such an old story then why the hell is he all over Mariotti's column after Oosthuizen won the tournament and AFTER Mariotti said we shouldn't focus on Tiger anymore.

From Mariotti's article on 7/18 (you can see how Mariotti devotes his time away from Tiger):

-Like no one we've seen since, well, Tiger Woods in his pre-scandal prime,

-Woods is lost in life, with no better chance of reviving his decaying golf game, it seems, than saving his marriage.

-Alas, he found one on No. 14, falling short of the spotless 2000 record of the golfer formerly known as Tiger Woods,

-He found another way to stay loose: laughter. Does Tiger Woods remember laughter?

-The game, they understand over here, is bigger than a fallen celebrity who suffered his worst four-round finish in a major in six years. And to think Woods switched putters for the first time in more than 10 years. How did that work out?

-"One of the worst putting weeks I've ever had," he said.

Oh, really?

"I'm not going to win all of them. I've lost a lot more than I've won," said Woods, still in denial as his major-less streak stretched to 25 months after his new putter abandoned him. "I'm glad I'm done. You just can't play and expect to win golf tournaments if you have nine or 10 three-putts for a week. No one can win doing that. I've got to clean that up before I tee up again."

Is that a threat? Or a promise?

A sport ruled by one man for more than a decade is swirling in surrealism now. Suddenly, people we've never heard of -- Graeme McDowell, Louis Oosthuizen -- can win majors and leave Woods and Mickelson choking in their fumes. It may not be good for ratings and pizzazz.

This was the column Mariotti wrote about Oosthuizen won the British Open. It sure sounds like Mariotti has devoted his attention span to Oosthuizen since he wrote significant portions of his column about Tiger Woods. Mariotti sure seems infatuated with a guy who had faded from his radar screen.

-Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley both did not like LeBron's move to the Heat.

I feel like I keep harping on this point, but it is obvious now it was a planned move by these three players to end up on the same team. Whether the plan works or not, who really knows right now? It is obvious there was some collusion and even tampering (at least in my opinion) in this situation. I know some people feel like hypocrites because they complain athletes too often go chase the money, which is something LeBron didn't do (even though there is no state income tax in Florida so that helps out his decision in leaving money on the table). I have no problem with what he did. He is a free agent and outside of any rule breaking he is free to sign a contract with whichever team he would like.

I really do appreciate Kevin Durant though. He quietly signed an extension with the Thunder and is staying with the team he was drafted by. He didn't turn it into a six-city bid contest or talk about how he doesn't know what he will do when he becomes a free agent. He signed a contract and went on with his life.

The main problem I have with James, Bosh, and Wade's move to the same team is that I don't think it is a good long-term move for them. They may get their championship, but only Wade will not have the stigma that he needed to team with other great players to do it. That's what Barkley and Jordan are saying.

"There's no way, in hindsight, I would've ever called up Larry (Bird), called up Magic (Johnson) and said, 'Hey, look, let's get together and play on one team,'" Jordan said during an interview on NBC after playing in a celebrity golf tournament in Nevada (photo right).

In fairness, both Magic and Larry Bird had enough help on their team to win a championship. Jordan is the only one who would have had to go to another team to play with Hall of Fame-type players. Still, I think it is better for the NBA and better for each great player's legacy to try to get through each other to win an NBA title.

"Things are different," Jordan said. "I can't say that's a bad thing. It's an opportunity these kids have today. In all honesty, I was trying to beat those guys."

I think that is the difference and what will end up hurting LeBron James. I can't help but think he is going to have the stigma that he had to join up with his rivals to win a championship rather than going through them in route to the NBA title. Even if James win seven championships with the Heat, it will be stated that he didn't do it as the clear leader of the team. Maybe I am wrong and James could certainly play the Magic Johnson role on the Heat, but when someone is naming the Top 10 NBA players of all-time, James may not be as high on the list as he could have been...or not on the list at all.

Maybe it is admirable he has given up personal glory for the sake of winning a championship, but it is also seen by many as the easy way out. Sports fans hate few things more than athletes who never live up to their potential because of their own doing.

While many believe that move has elevated the Heat into the team to beat in 2010-11, others aren't quite so sure, particularly since James will have to share the ball much more with his new teammates than he did during his time with the Cavs.

The Heat are getting quite a supporting cast together around those three guys so I do see them winning a championship. I think James will be able to share the ball more for a period of time, but won't it eat at him that he isn't considered the best player on his own team by some? This is a guy who was on the cover of Sports Illustrated in high school, had a campaign with Nike where he was essentially considered a basketball Jesus and the fans were "witnesses" to his greatness, and he has won two straight MVP awards.

He had an entire television show based around his free agent decision. His ego is huge. I know James has stated he doesn't want to take all of the shots in a game or have the team rely on him to score, but I am sure he also likes that his team relies on him in many ways that the Miami team won't. Or at least he will find he liked this.

In an interview last week on a Miami radio station, TNT analyst and former NBA star Charles Barkley criticized James' move to Miami.

"He'll never be Jordan," Barkley told radio station 790 The Ticket. "This clearly takes him out of the conversation. He can win as much as he wants to.

This move will work out very well if James is fine with this statement being true. He'll never be Kobe Bryant in some people's minds either. I hope he will be fine with this. Bryant had a decent supporting cast over the last two seasons but he certainly didn't have another player like Dwyane Wade on his team. I see LeBron thinks he is fine with this, but I don't know if he will be.

More importantly, is Dwyane Wade fine with sharing the spotlight. He did it with Shaq, but it was well-known that Shaq was a sidekick and Wade was the superior player. Now Wade is the second-best player on his own team. How will that sit with him?

Barkley later added, "LeBron, if he would've (stayed) in Cleveland, and if he could've got a championship there, it would have been over the top for his legacy, just one (James' being the Cavs' big star) in Cleveland. No matter how many he wins in Miami, it clearly is Dwyane Wade's team."

Here's the rub (in my opinion)...it is Dwyane Wade's team, but if it becomes LeBron's team how will this affect Wade? He's the one who recruited these guys and sacrificed his free agent status as well to have them join him in Miami. There's no doubt the Heat will be a great team, but I feel like we could have another Shaq-Kobe showdown coming. It could conceivably be worse because Wade and James can control the ball and drive to the basket, while Shaq needed the ball passed to him generally to score. Either Wade or James will need to reduce their ego short-term and long-term for this to work.

Short-term this is an awesome team. Long-term I think it will hurt LeBron's legacy and either Wade or LeBron will have to be fine with being second banana. I just don't know if that will happen.