Gregg Easterbrook Calls For Brett Favre To Be Benched, Later Dies In Unexplained Home Accident

Gregg Easterbrook has really done it now. He's called for Brett Favre to be benched. Doesn't he know that ESPN loves Brett Favre and would love to have him commentate on the NFL after he retires? If Lord Favre gets his feelings hurt by this there will be consequences for Gregg. Severe ones.

As he seems to have done of late, Gregg starts off TMQ with something I agree with, and then pisses me off with his NFL observations and assumptions.

Brett Favre is one of the best quarterbacks ever, has won a Super Bowl, holds most of the NFL's passing records ... and should be benched.

(The sound of Gregg Easterbrook's front door slowly creeping open and two men with gloves and ski masks on enter the house)

The Minnesota Vikings have lost six of their past eight games, dating to last season's NFC Championship Game. Favre has thrown more interceptions than touchdown passes this season. He is the league's 29th-rated passer, trailing Chad Henne, Shaun Hill and Alex Smith. And when he left the game Sunday at New England, the Vikings' offense perked up.

(The two men carefully walk over to where Gregg Easterbrook is sleeping on the couch, tired from writing TMQ. The two men take a peek on the computer at what Gregg wrote in TMQ, take an hour to read the entire thing and realize no one can take this man seriously and leave the house)

I don't defend Favre very often, but the Patriots seemed to be playing a pretty soft defense at the end of the game on Sunday. The Vikings were down 10 at that point, but he still looked good. Coming into a game in relief is very different from starting a game.

The megabucks offensive line isn't performing well. The Williams Wall is playing like the Williams Partition.

Ba-da-(self-inflicted gunshot)

Game tied at 7 at the end of the first half on Sunday, Brad Childress went for it on fourth-and-goal from the New England 1, a defensible decision. What play did he call? The same play that failed on fourth-and-goal at the 1 in the Vikes' loss to Miami.

Running plays are different from passing plays in that they are about the offense line getting leverage and relies on good blocking from the offensive line as well. A team could essentially run a variation of the same running play over and over and it could work as long as there is good blocking the defense in kept off-balance. It's not like a passing play in that way. So, what I am saying is that it isn't a big deal about Adrian Peterson running the ball using similar play that didn't work on the goal line in the Miami game, and that play not working again. Perhaps they should have changed the play up a little bit, but I think you run the ball at this point.

Just as in the Miami loss, backup tackle Ryan Cook reported as an eligible receiver, giving the Vikings an extra lineman; Cook and the fullback went right as extra blockers ahead of Adrian Peterson's run off-tackle right; the play was stuffed, same as against Miami. Bill Belichick just doesn't miss cues such as, "Cook reporting at the goal line means off-tackle right."

Gregg says this even though anytime Mike Vrabel catches a touchdown pass he informs us that the defense should be looking for him to get the ball. Granted, Vrabel has caught touchdown passes in the past, but there's a chance the Patriots would see the formation the Vikings were in and assume Peterson wasn't running the ball and instead it would be a fake. Possibly Brad Childress was banking on the Patriots thinking he wasn't going to run the same play twice in two weeks in a goal line situation. Possibly he was also banking on knowing he has Adrian Peterson to get the ball in the end zone. He thought wrong.

Then trailing 14-10 late in the third quarter, Childress ordered a punt on fourth-and-1 from midfield. Sure the fourth-and-1 try failed in the first half, but that was then, this is now!

Gregg just gave another instance when the Vikings could not get 1 yard when they needed to and now he mentions a second time when the Vikings couldn't get 1 yard previously in the game, but he still doesn't understand why the Vikings didn't go for it? Perhaps because they knew they couldn't get that one yard and had given up only 14 points through 3 quarters?

Favre isn't throwing well, and Minnesota's underwhelming offensive line can't protect his 41-year-old body. Tarvaris Jackson holds slightly fewer records than Favre, but he's a mobile quarterback, which may be what Minnesota needs at the moment.

I'm not a Vikings fan so I haven't seen too much of Jackson, but I do agree with this. Tarvaris Jackson hasn't knocked my socks off in the past, but he's never gotten a full season to show if he deserves the QB job or not. He played pretty well in 2008 when he got the chance to start in 9 games. Obviously Favre was the best choice to start last year, but this year I question whether that is true anymore. I know there has been talk that he needs Sidney Rice back, but I would be interested to see what Jackson could do with Rice in the lineup as well.

Football is a team game. For the good of the team, Favre should head to the bench.

Will never happen. Favre will never bench himself or accept that he has gotten benched. He may sit out a game due to injury, but as long as he is on the roster, he wants to be the starter. I think we all know this...unless anyone forgot his reaction to Aaron Rodgers being the starting QB in Green Bay a couple of summers ago after Favre had "retired."

Or maybe there's just no way any team can defeat the Saints in New Orleans on Halloween night. There were more Halloween costumes in New Orleans than at the rest of the league's games combined.

This comment shouldn't annoy me, but it does. It's an exaggeration. This may or may not be true, but I can just see some moron reading this and relaying how New Orleans had more Halloween costumes than any other NFL game combined like it is the truth. These are the things I worry about. Gregg is a gateway drug to idiocy.

For four years, I have resisted writing anything about Grant, of whom I am very proud for many reasons having nothing to do with sports. I didn't want to boast -- actually I did want to boast, just thought it ill-advised --

(cough cough) Peter King.

But across the United States, men and women engage in games at small colleges where the crowd can see the players' faces, where an a capella group sings "The Star Spangled Banner" from the middle of the stands and where dogs frolic among the tailgaters -- where sportsmanship, not money, is the first concern.

In other words, these things happen at a school 95% of the population hasn't heard of. Not that it is a bad thing of course. It's just easy to lecture about sportsmanship being important over money in college football when you don't have an experience at a college where you see what the money brought in by the football program does for the athletic program.

If only all college athletes could say they had been privileged to play at a school where academics and integrity mattered more than the final score.

If this happened then college football would not be as popular and the NFL probably wouldn't be as popular as well and Gregg Easterbrook wouldn't write his TMQ. So maybe academics and integrity over the final score isn't a terrible thing after all.

Sweet Play of the Week: The slant is a staple of football. Even high school teams that attempt five passes a game throw the slant because it arrives fast, and a properly thrown slant is nearly impossible to defend.

Unless the linebacker drops back in zone coverage into the passing lane where the slant is thrown. Since Gregg seems to believe all teams play simple coverages that are only man-to-man in his world this could never occur in his world.

The risk is that the defensive back will "jump" the slant and not only intercept the ball but do so in the flat with momentum going the opposite way. Indianapolis lost the most recent Super Bowl when New Orleans cornerback Tracy Porter jumped a Peyton Manning slant for a pick-six.

So even though a slant is perfectly thrown, if the defense jumps the route then the pass could be intercepted. So a perfectly thrown slant is not impossible to defend?

Cornerback Justin Tryon, shipped out by the Redskins, started for Indianapolis. TMQ thinks his nickname should be "Two Garments Only." Get it?

Justin "Two Garments Only" Tryon? Leave the shitty, corny jokes to Rick Reilly please.

The Colts sent in the field goal unit on fourth-and-goal from the Houston 1-yard line late in the third quarter. Normally high-percentage football says go for it in this situation. If you fail, the opponent is pinned at his goal line.

But Houston had beaten the Colts in the first game of the season. Wouldn't going for it here show the Colts teams the coach is going for the throat and losing to the Texans is unacceptable? Shouldn't the Colts be punished by the Football Gods for being chicken here? That's how it works in every other situation like this.

In this case the kick made sense because it put the home team ahead by 17 points, more than two touchdowns.

Well, that and the Colts won the game. Gregg bases all of his criticisms based on the outcome of a play. If that play works and didn't affect the game, it was a good move, if it doesn't work out then Gregg criticizes the move. Gregg loves to use hindsight to base his entire opinion upon.

What happened on the snaps before the game-over punt? Houston entered with the league's fifth-ranked rushing offense, Indianapolis entered with the league's 28th-ranked rushing defense. Yet at money time, the Texans went incompletion, short pass, short pass, punt.

What happened is the Texans had to make up 13 points in the middle of the fourth quarter so they couldn't afford to get 5-6 yards on each play with the clock running by trying to dominate the Colts with the running game. The Texans had to score quickly, not have a 6 minute long drive.

Reader Gabriel Woytek of Moab, Utah, notes the Jersey/B offense, which starts eight first-round draft choices -- Mark Sanchez, D'Brickashaw Ferguson, Braylon Edwards, Damien Woody, Dustin Keller, Nick Mangold, Santonio Holmes and LaDainian Tomlinson -- was shut out by a Packers' defense that started Tramon Williams, Cullen Jenkins and Frank Zombo, all of whom were undrafted.

I hate this shit. Does reader Gabriel from Utah also know the Packers defense has highly drafted players on it as well? The Packers defense has four first-round draft picks and a second-round draft pick.

Wasn't it just two weeks ago Gregg went on and on and on and on about how the Packers switch to the 3-4 defense was ill-advised because teams had figured it out? Wasn't he talking about the Packers being a Super Bowl favorite and criticizing the Packers defense for not playing well? I guess he has nothing to say about this after the Packers shut out the Jets. This is one thing that really, really annoys me about Gregg. He unfairly criticizes a team or player then never follows up and mentions that team is playing well and he was off-base in his criticism.

Packers leading 6-0, the Jets faced second-and-8 on the Green Bay 35 with 4:33 remaining, Jersey/B holding all its timeouts. There's no hurry here -- in fact, ideal strategy is to run and advance the clock, in hopes of taking the lead with a touchdown but leaving Green Bay little time to reply. Instead the Jets went incompletion, incompletion, incompletion. In addition to losing possession, the third-down and fourth-down incompletions were deep attempts when a short pass for a first down would have been just fine.

Well why didn't the Jets fucking think about that? All they had to do was pass the ball short for a first down? Stupid them! I bet Mark Sanchez never looked to his short receiver(s) to see if they/he were open! If only Gregg Easterbrook were here to tell teams such nuggets of advice like, "try to get a first down," because NFL teams aren't as smart as Gregg and wouldn't be able to independently think of such things.

I like how Gregg just assumes the Packers didn't have the short receivers covered. I bet Green Bay didn't even cover the short passes at all either. It was probably just an easy first down to get.

Jersey/B regained possession on its 23, without any timeouts but still with 3:50 showing -- plenty of time to call anything in the playbook. LaDainian Tomlinson rushed for five yards. Then the Jets went incompletion, sack, incompletion, and soon Green Bay kicked the icing field goal. Though the Jets are a run-oriented offense with an oft-confused sophomore quarterback, six of the team's last seven calls were passing plays -- none completed -- when there was plenty of time on the clock to rush. Ye gods.

On their own 23 yard line there isn't a lot of time to run the ball. Smart teams will throw the ball to where they get in better field position with plenty of time on the clock before they start slowing down the offense and taking time off the clock by running the ball. I don't know how many timeouts the Jets had, but if they run the ball and then want to throw, that involves getting different personnel on the field potentially...which takes time to do. So running the ball and then getting off the next play could easily take 30 seconds, which is longer than a team would want to take when they have to go 77 yards with less than four minutes left to get a touchdown. There was not time to run the ball during this point in the game at this spot on the field.

Then there's the fake punt, an action TMQ normally likes. Jersey/B ran the fake on fourth-and-18 from the Jets' 20. There's little chance of success on fourth-and-18.

Two weeks ago Rusty Hodges of the Browns ran 60+ yards for a touchdown on a fake punt.

Last week, the Science Cheerleaders danced on the Mall in Washington, D.C. Imagine how public reception of evolutionary theory might have differed if Darwin had glamorous scantily clad cheerleaders!

Was Gregg dumped in high school by a cheerleader or something? What's his juvenile fascination with them?

Since November is here, the Christmas Creep item is shutting down. Here are three good ones on which to finish:

Praise all things wonderful this is done for the year. It's fine to do anything Christmas-oriented on November 1, but on October 28th...what madness is that?

Jeff Shero wrote a few days before Halloween, "I own a restaurant in Altoona, Pa. Every day, I drive past one of my competitors, whose marquee sign since September has read, 'Book Your Holiday Parties Now.'

This company wants to book the parties weeks in advance? Why would a company want to be able to rely on certain revenue streams like that? That's not how you run a business, by maximizing the amount of money you get for the amount of space you have. A good business books its parties only a week in advance of a holiday so that way there isn't any interest and the space goes unfilled.

We had a recent wave of warm weather here in the mountains of central Pennsylvania. The result is that in addition to the holiday party message, the board now also says, 'Patio Open.'"

So not only did this business attempt to maximize profits, but the owners of the business were unable to control the global climate? How are they still in business without the ability to control the world's weather and have it coordinate perfectly with what holiday is approaching?

Texas views itself as the center of football culture, yet the Boys' football IQ is low and seemingly falling lower every week in Dallas' excruciating 1-7 streak (counting January's playoff loss).

Or they could also be 2-7 if you want to count the playoff victory from last year. Or the Cowboys could be 13-14 if you want to count their record from last year. They could also be 22-21 if you count their record the season before that. I think I will stop the arbitrary tallying of the Cowboys record at this point because you get my point.

Dallas also starts first-round draft choices at both cornerback positions, and Sunday the Boys' secondary was torched by a quarterback who'd been demoted a month before. Mike Sims-Walker ran past highly paid cornerback Mike Jenkins, who ignored him; safety Alan Ball, who was busy making the high school mistake of "looking into the backfield,"

Alan Ball? I believe he is a 7th round draft choice, otherwise known as a person who would be lauded by Gregg if he did something positive. Notice how Gregg points out the draft position of the Cowboys defenders, except for the 7th round pick. Gregg loves to pick and choose when to compliment highly drafted and lowly drafted players in order to mislead his audience into believing most highly drafted players stink and lowly drafted players do not.

It's also entirely possible Ball wasn't looking in the backfield, but had man coverage on the running back or tight end. But of course I am sure Gregg perfectly understands the defensive scheme the Cowboys were running even though he rarely shows any understanding of things like this.

It's election day -- get out and vote. If you don't vote, then promise never to complain about the decisions made by government.

Everyone should vote. I agree with that, but I have always been somewhat annoyed by people who say things like this in this specific way. I almost didn't vote because I am just tired of American politics. I care, I really do, but local campaigning is just a series of commercials telling me why I shouldn't vote for the other candidate and not why I should vote for that candidate.

I vote, but the idea if the government fucks everything up I couldn't complain because I didn't vote is somewhat dumb to me. It's like saying, "Hey we may be incompetent and waste your money, but you didn't vote so you can't complain about this. We will gladly take the sales tax and various other taxes that you pay though." I think even if a person doesn't choose his leaders because he/she puts money into the system they should be able to complain...of course if they are going to complain they should also try to do something about it rather than complain and be inactive. So voting would be putting your money where your mouth is.

No one complains or cares about the things that bother me anyway. I shouldn't have to pay (check or cash only) to have my driver's license renewed. I am required by law to have a license to operate a car. It is fine to charge me when I get my license, but why do I have to pay to have a license I am forced to have and renew by law? I'll be glad to pay for it when I get it and I will be glad to get it renewed on time, but I shouldn't have to pay for the luxury of being forced to get my license renewed. Again, no one cares about these issues, probably because I am stupid for even thinking about these things. There are many minor annoyances like this that bother me, but aren't sexy enough to campaign for office on. Ignore my social rant and I probably should have edited this out...I think I will move on now.

TMQ noted a month ago that Division III Amherst College, an elite academic college, operates a blur offense quite like Oregon's. Saturday, Amherst put up 10 touchdowns with a time of possession of just 26:26, besting Tufts University, 70-49. Tufts gained 671 yards on offense and lost by 21 points! Tufts merely used a no-huddle hurry-up, not a blur, and that was the difference.

I don't think Gregg has ever understood the difference in the hurry-up offense and the blur offense. The extreme differences Gregg sees in these two offenses may not exist.

How did the hapless Bills get the Chiefs to overtime? Though Kansas City has the league's No. 1 ranked rushing offense and Buffalo has the league's 32nd-ranked rushing defense, when Kansas City faced third-and-1 with 1:36 remaining in regulation, Chiefs' offensive coordinator Charlie Weis called a pass, incomplete. And it wasn't a home run attempt to win the game, but rather a rinky-dinky short pass attempt.

Why would the Chiefs offense try a high-percentage short pass on third-and-one rather than a low percentage deep pass? Unless they were actually trying to get the first down of course.

It was Halloween, yet cheerleaders of the Cowboys, Jets, Chiefs, Rams and Niners (San Francisco was home team of record for the London game) did not sport naughty Halloween costumes. What's up with that? The Chargers, Saints and Colts cheerleaders were in Halloween costumes, and the Chargers, Saints and Colts recorded important wins.

Out of the five teams that did not have their cheerleaders sport naughty Halloween costumes (if we checked Gregg's computer what are the odds there is a massive amount of cheerleader porn on there? 95%? 100%? 134%? Infinite?), three of those teams won their games, so the cheerleader's costumes didn't have much at all to do with winning the game or not. I know this is a shocking result, assuming Gregg took the time to realize this, but what the cheerleaders wear has nothing to do with how a team performs.

What drives TMQ crazy about the Secret Intelligence Service chiefs in the James Bond movies is that all three M's constantly lash out at 007, order him off investigations, revoke his license, have him arrested -- though all Bond does is singlehandedly save the world every time he's called in.

The Bond movies are works of fiction. Not real. So a fictional story that doesn't contain logic irritates Gregg. Of course we already knew this as he has told us repeatedly how unrealistic movies and television truly are.

Leading 10-8 versus Oregon, college football's highest scoring team, USC faced fourth-and-inches -- and punted. I don't care if it was fourth-and-inches on the USC 15, you're playing college football's highest scoring team, you must be aggressive to win! It took the blur offense just two snaps to pass the point where the ball would have been had USC tried for a first down and failed;

Does it really make sense to give college football's highest scoring team the ball in the red zone by a turnover on downs?

I realize Gregg knows exactly what happened after the punt, but I wish he would pretend he did not know because USC didn't know. USC did not know Oregon would be right back near the 15 yard line in two plays. Based on having only given up 8 points so far, the USC coaching staff assumed the USC defense would give up more of a fight after the punt. It was a pretty good assumption too. Punting was the smart move here and just because Gregg can point to what did happen after the punt doesn't mean USC should have known that would happen.

Brad Cone of Milledgeville, Georgia, writes, "I am definitely for a safer playing environment, having sustained at least two concussions myself while playing high school football. I worry if helmets are made safer, players will play more dangerously. The phenomenon is usually called 'offsetting behavior,' or a Peltzman effect if you are an economist -- for instance, some research indicates that safer cars caused more reckless driving."

Exactly. This is a real phenomenon and could possibly happen if NFL players feel like they are wearing safer helmets. I think I brought this up last week or at least intended to.

Karl Haake of Jefferson City, Mo., writes, "I think it's great, but the local media have been negative and calling Haley a gambler for going for it on fourth down. This article complains that by going for it -- that is, by trying to win! -- he is failing to act like other NFL coaches."

The article that complains this is titled, "Numbers back up Chiefs coach's unorthodox play calls." If Gregg read the article, which I am sure he did not, he would see the author uses evidence to show going for it on fourth down isn't a dumb thing to do. This article really wasn't a criticism of Haley at all. Maybe Gregg should read the articles he links a little bit more thoroughly.

Single Worst Play of the Season -- So Far: Trailing Jax 14-3 on the final snap before intermission, the always-wincing, ever-grimacing Wade Philips made the right decision -- to go for it on fourth-and-goal from the Jaguars' 1. The Cowboys boast of their Pro Bowl offensive linemen and two high-profile running backs; Jax came into the game having allowed the most points of any team in the league. Surely the mighty Cowboys can run for one single yard at home against one of the league's worst defenses!

I don't know what boasting of Pro Bowl offensive linemen and having "high-profile" running backs has to do with anything really. What is a high-profile running back really have to do with anything other than the Cowboys are an incredibly popular team so their running backs are well-known?

What I really want to talk about is how Wade Phillips could have put points on the board with a field goal and chose not to. Normally, Gregg Easterbrook would compliment this decision and think it is showing the Cowboys haven't given up on their season yet. Gregg would normally laud a coach who makes this choice because it reverses a losing culture. Instead, because it had a negative outcome, he makes it the worst play of the season so far.

It the snap, quarterback Jon Kitna turned the wrong way; then collided with tailback Marion Barber; then Barber collided with pulling guard Leonard Davis; then was dropped for a loss.

Not being bold and going for a field goal certainly looked a lot smarter after this play didn't it? I guess fortune doesn't always favor the bold. Needless to say, because they failed on this fourth down conversion and didn't go for the field goal to cut down the Jaguars lead, the Cowboys went on to lose.

TMQ returns on Nov. 16. By then, Brett Favre may have retired again and staged another comeback.

I'll be sure not to circle this on the calendar.