MMQB Review: Really Loud in Seattle Edition

Peter King summed up what he felt was a pretty uneventful Week 1 of the NFL season last week in MMQB. He reiterated that trading Anquan Boldin to the 49ers (which again, it was a tough decision, but Peter himself had written about the potential for the Ravens to purge veterans this past offseason so I'm confused as to why he was harping on the issue) wasn't the Ravens best offseason move, gave us a Quote of the Week that he admits probably isn't a Quote of the Week, and didn't mention Tavon Austin once. This week Peter talks about how loud the Seahawks crowd is, talks about how Johnny Manziel is so much like Tim Tebow, and reminds us all that it is early in the NFL season and too early to make certain conclusions, followed by Peter feeling certain about making conclusions about the NFL season so far. Peter loves to do this. He loves to remind his readers not to do something, followed by Peter doing the exact same thing he warned his readers against doing.

Thirty years of covering the NFL demands you have perspective after a night like last night. After all, it’s Week 2. Arizona won in Foxboro in Week 2 last year. Peyton Manning threw three interceptions in the first nine minutes in Week 2 last year. Strange things happen in September, before true patterns develop.

It's way too early to make any definitive statements. Everyone calm down and trust Peter's veteran sportswriting presence to tell us that Week 2 is way too early to determine what's going to happen. Just listen to Peter be reasonable and adjust your reactions.

But it’s hard not to wonder this about the NFC playoff race: If Seattle wins home-field advantage, what team is going into that cauldron of sound and fury, CenturyLink Field, and winning a football game?

Peter says "fuck it," he already has Seattle going 8-0 at home and if they win four road games, what's to stop them from making it to the Super Bowl? Nothing will stop the Seahawks. So true patterns haven't developed, but Peter is pretty sure the 2-0 Seahawks are going to make the Super Bowl based on their victories over the Panthers and 49ers.

San Francisco has been a hot mess in only one place since 2012 dawned—Seattle—and no one can tell me it doesn’t have a lot to do with the crowd.

A lot of teams are a hot mess when they come to Seattle. Also, Peter just wrote "a hot mess." I'm not sure if this is Peter King writing MMQB this week or a stereotypical sassy gay sidekick from a romantic comedy, but since the first paragraphs of the column consist of the writer telling everyone what not to do and then the writer doing the same thing he said no one else should do, it's safe to assume Peter King is writing this column and not a character based on Sean Hayes.

It was so loud, Seahawks safety Kam Chancellor told me, that the Seattle defense, which normally has an edge when the crowd is going nuts, had trouble hearing middle linebacker Bobby Wagner call the plays in the defensive huddle. The defense had to use hand signals for those who didn’t hear what Wagner was saying, even in a tight huddle. But it was still a huge edge for Seattle, because obviously it was impossible for Colin Kaepernick to communicate in any way but a non-verbal one.

This is as opposed to the hand signals the Seahawks defense had to use to communicate and hear what Bobby Wagner was saying, which apparently is a verbal way of communicating in Peter's opinion.

Probably the most amazing thing is the place was louder after the 60-minute weather delay, and after halftime: It got to 136.6 decibels in the third quarter, 16.6 decibels louder than the sound generated by a jet engine on an open runway.

It was very, very loud and this obviously had an effect on the 49ers. I mean, it had to have had an effect. Let's hear from Richard Sherman,

“It was electric,’’ cornerback Richard Sherman, the star of the show, told me from Seattle. “You could cut the energy in the stadium with a knife.

Hmmm...I think our Stanford-attending Richard Sherman is mixing his metaphors a little bit. I think it's silence that is supposed to be cut with a knife.

“This wasn’t the Super Bowl tonight,’’ said Sherman. “We haven’t won anything yet. We have to act like we’ve been here before. This was just another game, to tell you the truth.’’

You can cut Sherman's truthfulness with a knife.

Sherman went to his coaches to ask if he could shadow Anquan Boldin in certain schemes. Normally, Sherman is the left corner. Period. He moved around to shadow Buffalo’s Stevie Johnson some last season, but mostly he stays left. “The coaches said it was fine,’’ said Sherman. “Sunday night football, everybody is watching, so watch this. I had him when he was split out, when he was in the left slot, right slot. Didn’t matter.’’ Sherman covered Boldin on about 75 percent of the snaps. Last week the Niners receiver caught 12 balls for 208 yards. This week: one for seven yards.

And I really, really thank you Richard Sherman for sparing us another week of "The Anquan Boldin Chronicles" where Peter tries to figure out exactly why the Ravens traded Boldin for a sixth round pick.

“It makes me feel good—like I can execute a game plan the way it’s called,’’ Sherman said. “But no, I’m not surprised.”

Yeah, but we all know that Anquan Boldin is worth $6 million per year as the 12th highest paid wide receiver, getting paid more than Steve Smith, A.J. Green, Wes Welker, Jordy Nelson, Vincent Jackson, Hakeem Nicks and Julio Jones (granted Green, Nicks and Jones are still in their rookie contract seasons).

The Seahawks’ front never let Frank Gore breathe. San Francisco backs ran 11 times and gained 13 yards. They’d better figure a way to run it by the time of the rematch Dec. 8 in Candlestick.

Absolutely, they should figure out a way to run the football before December 8. Because the 49ers play no meaningful games before December 8 and the winner of the December 8 rematch between the Seahawks and 49ers will determine who wins the Super Bowl, if not the fate of humanity.

They know the truth, and the 49ers do too: If the road to the Super Bowl goes through Seattle, it’s going to be the biggest disadvantage in recent football history for the road team.

Yeah, possibly, but it's not like there are 14 other games left in the season to be played and there are other teams who could have a better record than the Seahawks even if they do end up with a better record than the 49ers.

Manziel, in his third year of eligibility at Texas A&M, could declare for the 2014 draft if he wants to come out, which seems likely. (He can also stay in and play the 2014 college season, and 2015 as well.) But Manziel, to many teams right now, would be undraftable because they’re scared of his mood swings and off-field questions.

Plus, Manziel tends to throw the ball up into traffic unnecessarily. So while sometimes this works, like it did once in the Alabama game on the fantastic play where he got away from approximately 29 Crimson Tide defenders to complete a prayer of a pass for a first down, it also can be a drawback when Manziel throws a stupid interception at a bad time, like he did in the Alabama game. He's like a shorter, more fame-driven Brett Favre (and calling someone more fame-driven than Brett Favre is saying a lot). All it takes is one team to think he is a future star and he will go in the first round.

But it only takes one team out of 32 to fall for him. And some team will, unless he self-destructs between today and draft day.

I just wrote that. I've watched Manziel play a few times and I would be much more worried about the risks he takes on the football field then his behavior off the football field if I were an NFL team. Scampering all over the field and then throwing a pass up for grabs works in college football, but it may not work so well in the NFL.

The MMQB’s Greg A. Bedard was in College Station Saturday, and he’ll report the Manziel story for us tomorrow. I can’t wait to read what he thinks of the kid, and what the pro football men in his rolodex think. As I said on NBC Sunday night, Browns assistant GM Ray Farmer scouted the game. Hmmmmmm. Johnny Dawg Pound!

That would be great if the Browns went from an extremely mature quarterback in Brandon Weeden to a quarterback that many scouts consider to be an extremely immature quarterback.

The NFC East does not. Most of us think the NFC’s a better conference, right? It’s not acting like it. The AFC was 4-0 in cross-conference games Sunday. The NFC East went 0-4, three of the losses coming to the supposedly weak AFC West: Denver over the Giants, San Diego over the Eagles, and Kansas City over Dallas.

And because the NFC East isn't very good then obviously the entire NFC conference can't be as good as "we" thought it was. After all, the NFC East is the only division that matters in the entire NFC.

My surprise team of the first eighth of the season? Miami (2-0).

But of course it is too early in Peter's opinion to draw any permanent conclusions on which teams are the real surprise of the 2013 season.

And did you notice Ryan Tannehill bested Luck Sunday?

No, but I noticed that the Dolphins as a team beat the Colts as a team.

Andy Reid is 2-0 too … and he returns to the scene of his prime Thursday night. “Listen, you know me,’’ he said over the phone from Arrowhead Sunday after the 17-16 win over Dallas. “I haven’t thought about that stuff. I don’t get caught up in it. All I know is it’s a short week and we’ve got to get ready to play on the road in a hurry.” Uh, come on. You’re returning to the place you coached 14 years. Thursday night. Prime time. E-A-G-L-E-S! EAGLES! Sound familiar?

How dare Andy Reid treat this like any other game and not feed into the hype of his return to Philadelphia! The NFL is no fun to watch if there can't be storylines that go along with the game being played.

Good for Mike McCoy, who thinks before he snaps. So the Chargers had a 21-point lead with 21 minutes to play Monday night and blew it, losing 31-28 to Houston. Same old Norvy Chargers, right? “I went back and watched the tape,’’ McCoy said Sunday from Philadelphia. “I tortured myself. I went back and forth over the plays we called, wondering what we should have done. In this business, you know every time a play doesn’t work, you say, ‘I should have called something else.’ And after I examined all those plays down the stretch, you know what? I wouldn’t change a single one. I have faith in my coaches and what we called. We just had to play better, and that’s what I told my team.”

So basically Mike McCoy is saying he didn't make any mistakes in his play-calling and the responsibility for the loss is totally on his players. I can buy how players need to take responsibility for their actions on the field, but a coach saying he wouldn't change a single play down the stretch doesn't sound like a coach I would want to play for.

"Oh no, I did everything right.  You guys just need to execute better," has quickly become Rivera-speak that actually means, "I don't know exactly what went wrong, the players should have won the game for us."

On Sunday, reclamation project Eddie Royal scored his third, fourth and fifth touchdowns of the season (Eddie Royal—he still plays?), Philip Rivers threw for 419 yards, and San Diego, on a short week, stunned the Eagles 33-30. Heck of a job preparing his team by McCoy.

But the Chargers won the next game, so clearly McCoy's strategy of doing everything perfectly and telling his players to execute better worked. Coach of the Year candidate?

The anatomy of a win. In Buffalo, coach Doug Marrone told E.J. Manuel at the two-minute warning of the fourth quarter, with Carolina up three and driving for an insurance field goal, that he was going to burn all three timeouts. “You’ll get the ball back, down six, with about 1:40 to go, and you’ll have to go the length of the field with no timeouts, okay?’’ Marrone told Manuel. His rookie quarterback was fine with that.

I'm guessing the conversation went more like this. "I'm going to burn all my timeouts. The defense will hold Carolina to a choice between a field goal attempt and going for it on fourth down. Ron Rivera will go for the field goal and then the Carolina defense will give up a touchdown. In fact, I'm not going to even call plays when you get the ball back on offense. Just do whatever the hell you want and draw plays in the grass. Trust me, we have this game won."

Here came the heavy rush. Two Carolina defenders messed up the coverage on Stevie Johnson, leaving him wide open. Touchdown. Buffalo wins, 24-23.

Actually one player, Josh Norman, messed up the coverage. He was told to switch off on his man by a teammate and Norman decided it would be best to ignore this. And of course Ron Rivera didn't want to use one of his timeouts in order to sort out this confusion or, you know, see what offensive set the Bills are showing and then adjust to that set forcing the Bills to call another play or stick with the one they have knowing Carolina has seen the formation. Doing any of those things would involve coaching which apparently Rivera doesn't believe is his job. His job is to motivate the players and then tell everyone after the game why the game was lost. 2-14 in games decided by seven points or less. It will be 2-20 before the end of this season at this rate.

Then Peter recommends a couple of books, because where else would be a good place to get a book recommendation?

The Fine Fifteen

Oh yes, NFL teams randomly placed in order of strength until 15 NFL teams have been listed.

2. Seattle (2-0).

4. New Orleans (2-0). Unimpressive win at Tampa Bay,

Because the Seahawks win at Carolina by five points was just so impressive the week before.

5. Miami (2-0). Excellent start for the Dolphins, with two road wins. Miami has had the best defense in football over the first two weeks, with nine sacks and foes completing just 53 percent of their passes.

The Dolphins beat the Browns. That's not incredibly impressive. I'm guessing much of this ranking is based on the Dolphins beating Andrew Luck (not the Colts team, but Andrew Luck) this past weekend. Either way, Peter is so impressed with Miami's 2-0 start he doesn't put either Indianapolis or Cleveland in his Fine Fifteen. So Peter is impressed that Miami beat two teams on the road that he doesn't think are average .

7. Chicago (2-0). Jay Cutler hung in after a bad interception. Matt Forte hung in after an ugly strip-fumble by the Vikes. This is an imperfect team, but the Bears play in an imperfect division.

This is as opposed to which NFC or AFC division that is perfect?

12. Green Bay (1-1). Amazing Aaron Dept.: Rodgers is averaging a 406-yard, 3.5-touchdown-pass day through two weeks. And he did his part of it Sunday after undergoing a massage/neck-maneuvering from club medics before the game.

If this were Brett Favre he would show post pictures of him getting the neck massage and then talk about how bad his neck hurts, but be very clear it would not affect his performance on the field, though his neck hurts like super-bad and he probably shouldn't be playing, but he will play because he's tough so please give him attention for how tough he is.

13. New England (2-0). Most advantageous opening schedule in recent league history: Two rookie quarterbacks to start—including Geno Smith having to go on the road in a short week—followed by a mini-bye (the Pats had the three-day weekend off) and a team with some civil war issues (Tampa Bay) coming up Sunday. In Foxboro.

So this isn't really a 2-0 record for New England, especially since the Patriots have been at full strength on offense for both of these games and all.

Offensive Players of the Week
 
James Jones, WR, Green Bay. The enjoyable thing about watching Jones play is that he’s not just a deep threat who runs all the vertical routes in the Packers playbook and juts out of bounds. He’s a physical receiver, and his 11-catch, 178-yard day—not exceeded by a Packer since 2004 (Javon Walker, 11 for 200 from Brett Favre) showed Jones as the complete receiver he’s become.

I like Jones, but he is 29 years old and has never had more than 784 yards receiving in a season. I think Peter is using the term "complete receiver" a bit loosely here. Also, this "complete receiver" had zero catches and zero targets against the 49ers defense in Week 1. Do "complete receivers" completely disappear against good teams?

Goat of the Week
 
Greg Schiano, head coach, Tampa Bay. The choice Schiano had to make with 70 seconds left in the fourth quarter and a 14-13lead over New Orleans, with a 4th-and-3 at the Saints’ 29, in a game in which neither team had any timeouts left: He could have punted and pinned Drew Brees at the, say, 10-yard line with 64 seconds left. Brees would have needed maybe 60 yards to get into Garrett Hartley field-goal range.

I can't believe I'm going to semi-defend Greg Schiano, here goes...

Peter is assuming this punt would be downed at the 10 yard line. If the punter kicks it into the end zone then the Buccaneers have netted 17 yards and Schiano has passed up the chance to put three more points on the board to gain seventeen extra yards. In fact, I think punting is the worst option here. The Buccaneers should have gone for it, kicked the field goal and then very, very last punted the ball.

Or he could have the August waiver signing from Buffalo, Rian Lindell, try a 47-yard field goal. If Lindell made it, the Saints would have had to drive for a touchdown to win the game. If Lindell missed it, the Saints would get the ball at their 37- and need 30 yards to be in field-goal range. Schiano decided to try the field goal. It was shanked. Brees went 54 yards, sweatlessly, to the winning chip-shot field goal as the clock expired. Bad decision by a coach under fire.

I agree, he should have gone for it on fourth down as opposed to letting the football get back into Drew Brees' hands. Punting doesn't seem like a great option to me in this situation.

“If we’re not starting fast, it’s my fault. Put that on my shoulders. I’ll take it. We’re not starting fast because of me.”

—Washington quarterback Robert Griffin III, and truer words this season have not yet been spoken. Griffin’s team has fallen behind in the first two games 33-7 after 32 minutes, and 31-7 after 38 minutes.

I guess after a season of building Robert Griffin up it's time to start tearing him down now. After all, it's his fault the Redskins defense has given up 30+ points after 30+ minutes in both games this season.

We will all debate now whether Johnny Manziel will be a good NFL quarterback. I feel strongly he’ll be playing on Sundays, almost certainly beginning in 2014 after the first NFL draft for which he’ll be eligible … of course, barring the kind of off-field immaturity Manziel has been sometimes known for while at Texas A&M.

I believe strongly that Manziel will be playing on Sundays also. All it takes is one team to like him enough to draft him. It's not exactly going out on a limb to say Manziel will probably be taken in the first round, especially since we've seen quarterbacks like Tim Tebow taken in the first round recently. All it takes is one team.

I may be damning Manziel with faint praise here, but stylistically as a college player, he has some things in common with Tim Tebow.

(Peter King reclining in his chair talking to himself with his dog Bailey at his feet on Sunday evening) "How can I slip a Tim Tebow reference into MMQB this week?"

(Bailey barks and whimpers because Peter is accidentally spilling a pumpkin latte on his head out of Peter's well-worn recyclable Starbucks cup)

(Peter King) "Great point, Bailey! I will compare Johnny Manziel to Tim Tebow since they are both white and both played quarterback at SEC universities. Nevermind Manziel is smaller than Tebow, has a more pure traditional motion, is a better passer, a completely different runner and really has nothing in common with Tebow. Let's go for it!"

Manziel can make people miss more, and he’s by any measure more accurate.

Other than his throwing style and running style, Manziel is the exact same quarterback as Tim Tebow!

But there is one thing they definitely don’t have in common: Tebow’s second game against ‘Bama, in the 2009 SEC title game, was mediocre; Manziel’s second game against Alabama, after the Tide worked all offseason to be ready to stop him, was a success—despite two turnovers. He threw for 211 more yards in his second game against Alabama than in his first.

Both players played Alabama more than once! Has anyone seen Tebow and Manziel in the same room at the same time? Are we sure they aren't the same person?

So basically these "things in common" that Manziel has with Tebow are exactly what I stated. They both white, mobile quarterbacks who played at SEC universities. 

You can say a 6-1, 210-pound quarterback (or whatever Manziel is) will have trouble lasting in NFL. He may. But it’d be because of his off-field nonsense, not what he’d do on the field, in my opinion. Just watch Russell Wilson. Watch a more pocketed Drew Brees. Small guys can play. Especially small guys who put the fear of God into Nick Saban.

At no point in this part of MMQB did Peter explain one thing that Tebow and Manziel have in common. At this point, I think it's fair to assume Peter is just simply mentioning Tebow out of habit or his analysis of Tebow being like Manziel is epically terrible.

“I would like to see Carroll and Harbaugh have a rage-off at midfield during halftime.”

—@ChrisWarcraft, author and former Vikes punter Chris Kluwe, watching Pete Carroll and Jim Harbaugh on the sidelines during the first half of Seahawks-Niners.

Chris Kluwe is so clever. His cleverness has shades of Tim Tebow.

1.  I think this is what I liked about Week 2:

These things that Peter likes have things in common with things that Tim Tebow likes.

a. The NFL Matchup Show on ESPN, which had this bit of prescience from Ron Jaworski Sunday on Washington quarterback Robert Griffin III: “His mechanics are flawed right now because of the injury.” Which is what Jon Gruden said during the Monday Night Football telecast in Week 1.

Did Jaworski ever decide whether Colin Kaepernick was the greatest quarterback in NFL history yet? I also imagine Gruden followed up his comment about Griffin's mechanics by saying,

"But, this guy...if I had to choose one NFL quarterback to start an NFL game then it would be Robert Griffin or any of the other quarterbacks currently on an NFL roster."

2.  I think this is what I didn’t like about Week 2:

b. Geno Smith’s fourth-quarter efficiency.

Right, because Geno Smith should be efficient in his second career start with offensive weapons like he has. How dare he struggle in his second NFL game when surrounded by average NFL receivers against the team that played in the AFC Championship Game last year.

f. Corner route in Buffalo. Two seconds left. Game on the line. Stevie Johnson runs into the end zone and … no one covers him. One of the two Carolina defensive backs who both turned away from Johnson to cover the inside guy, Josh Norman or D.J. Moore, should wear the goat horns this morning in Charlotte. Huge, huge mistake.

Josh Norman is the one who didn't hear D.J. Moore tell him to switch off and cover Johnson. What a dumpster fire of incompetence.

3. I think Jacksonville’s the worst team in the league, and it’s not close. It’s taken only eight quarters to prove it definitively.

But again, it's too early to draw conclusions from just two weeks of NFL play. That is, unless Peter wants to draw conclusions, at which case he is free to ignore his own advice of having perspective after two weeks and start jumping to conclusions.

Then Peter publishes a letter from Robert Klemko's 79 year-old grandmother who doesn't like the NFL's clear bag rule. She promises she won't hurt anyone. Oh well, if people will just promise not to hurt anyone I guess there's no reason to keep the rule.

6. I think the good will of the Panthers’ 5-1 finish in 2012 has vanished. Cam Newton is 13-21 as a starting quarterback,

Very true and his head coach is 2-14 in games decided by seven points or less. Also, it was pretty obvious losing was going to happen this season because Ron Rivera is incompetent and has no chance of magically becoming competent. I hope for Cam's sake he chooses an organization better dedicated to helping him grow as a quarterback when he becomes a free agent in two years. Any chance he has of excelling is being wasted with Mike Shula as his offensive coordinator and Ron Rivera as his coach.

and the Panthers played it safe at the end of regulation in Buffalo, helping the Bills rally at the end.

After all, with a mobile quarterback who is 250 pounds what are the odds you can gain one yard on fourth down?

7. I think, in the wake of one of the most bizarre endings to a football game ever (Wisconsin-Arizona State, at 2 a.m. ET Sunday), I want to perform a public service for the Wisconsin coaching staff. Read this story from The MMQB in August. It centers on Arizona Cardinals coach Bruce Arians coaching the minutiae to his young players. Never assume your players know all the rules, or will execute them properly. And remember Arians’ words: “There are no little things. The little things are all big things.” The little things cost the Badgers a game when their quarterback, Joe Stave, placed a ball down on the field, thinking he was downing it in good position to kick a game-winning field goal. But it happened so fast—even though Stave had time to kneel and put the ball down properly—that the officials and Sun Devil players weren’t sure what happened, and some ASU players flopped on the ball as the clock continued to run, and expire.

I feel like that was on the officials. Stave made it very clear he had downed the ball and then officials refused to pull the Sun Devils players off the ball, call them for a delay of game or show any urgency in getting the ball reset. I don't know how Stave could have made his attempt to down the ball any clearer outside of downing the ball and holding up a sign saying, "I have downed the ball and would like it to be reset in a timely fashion."

Stave needed to make it clear he was kneeling down and giving himself up, and it happened so fast no one could tell what he was doing. You can blame the officials, who were indecisive, but Stave has to execute the play with enough time on the clock and set Wisconsin up for the field goal.

He did make it clear. It is up to the officials to reset the football and control the football game by not allowing the Arizona State players to flop on the ball. To me, this was all on the officials for not controlling the game.

Then Peter starts to explain that Greg Schiano doesn't have a personal conflict with Josh Freeman, but instead he has a performance conflict with Freeman. Okay, I guess that makes more sense. It's fun to go back and read Peter's MMQB from Week 1 of the 2012 season where he talks about how Schiano has gained the respect of the Bucs players. Less than a year later many of the players reportedly don't like Schiano. I guess they don't have a personal issue with Schiano, but their issues are performance-based. You know, the Tampa Bay players want to win games.

10. I think these are my non-NFL thoughts of the week:

b. Saw something I’d never seen before, at any level of football: a timeout called at halftime. Well, almost. Army came out for the start of the third quarter, took the field, and the quarterback called a timeout.

So a timeout wasn't really called at halftime? So Peter didn't see something he had never seen before?

e. Can some doctor out there tell me why the University of Minnesota should keep Jerry Kill coaching football after his fourth seizure in three years on a Gopher game day? I don’t want to be insensitive. I’d really like to know if it makes sense to keep him on as coach.

Yeah, they should fire Kill after he had a seizure. That seems like the best possible move since Kill doesn't seem to want to retire or quit. Just fire him after he had a seizure. Brilliant.

h. C.C. Sabathia, 4.90 ERA. C.C. Sabathia, owed $96 million over the next four seasons.

If this were Dan Shaughnessy writing then he would say Sabathia can't handle the stress of playing in New York anymore and that explains his high ERA.

j. Helton hasn’t been great for five or six years, but he had a better career than you thought.

Thanks for telling me how great of a career I thought Helton had. I wasn't sure of my own thoughts, but now you have cleared them up for me.

Better career on-base percentage than Albert Pujols (.415 to .410), more hits than Mickey Mantle (2,505 to 2,415), more homers than Yogi Berra (367 to 358), more doubles than Tony Gwynn (585 to 543), better on-base-plus-slugging-percentage than Alex Rodriquez (.954 to .944),

Otherwise known as OPS.

and a better lifetime batting average than Derek Jeter (.317 to .312).

Better than the baseball player that Peter think is the best player of the last 25 years! That's amazing.

l. Coffeenerdness: One thing I don’t understand about baristas. I bring a re-useable grande cup into Starbucks and order a macchiato. Most often, the baristas take a short cup, line it up under the espresso filters, and push the button. The espresso flows into the cup, and the barista pours the espresso on top of the milk in the cup. Then the barista tosses the cup away. There are two other ways to do this—either by pouring the shots directly into the glass shot cups, or by having the shots flow directly into the cup filled two-thirds with milk. Instead, there’s a wasted paper cup. Time to issue a memo to baristas, Seattle.

God, you are an asshat for constantly telling people how to do their jobs. Maybe Starbucks insists the baristas do this. Maybe you could go purchase a machine that makes a macchiato and make your own coffee at home since Starbucks can't live up to your high standards. I hope the next time Peter goes into a Starbucks they use 10 cups to pour his coffee and then throw every single cup away in front of him.

o. I guess I have made a big mistake (my first). Never watched Breaking Bad. You know that feeling when everyone says you’ve got to watch a show, and you’re so far behind, and you throw your hands up in the air and say, “I’ll never catch up?” That’s me and Breaking Bad.

There are these things called "Blu-Ray's," or "DVD's" as is more likely the case for Peter. He can watch these DVD's/Blu-Ray's and catch up on episodes of "Breaking Bad," but I guess that's just absolutely out of the question.

The Adieu Haiku

Manziel strafes Saban.
Again. I see in Cleveland
Furrowed brows by Browns.

Good point, maybe the Browns should hire Nick Saban after they realize Rob Chudzinski is a better offensive coordinator than a head coach.