Sean Jensen writing for Bleacher Report, though he doesn't write for them as a full-time gig, has an article about how Teddy Bridgewater is ready to play well for the Vikings after sliding on draft day. Jensen of course has quotes from Mike Mayock in the column on Bridgewater. Mike Mayock, if you don't recall, is the draft expert who had Bridgewater as his #1 quarterback prior to Bridgewater's Pro Day. Then Mayock thought Bridgewater had a bad Pro Day and ignored absolutely every piece of game film he had seen on Bridgewater and all of his prior opinions on that game film to bump Bridgewater down to tied for 5th in his quarterback rankings.
Mayock's February rankings.
Mayock's late March rankings.
Mayock's May rankings.
So Bridgewater fell pretty hard in Mayock's opinion, which has happened to other draft prospects, but not always for the reason Mayock knocked Bridgewater down. He gave no other reason other than Bridgewater had a bad Pro Day. That's it. Maybe it makes sense to some people, but not to me. It's like loving an NBA prospect, but because he couldn't dribble around chairs and wasn't shooting the ball well in a private workout you would ignore everything you have ever seen on tape of his play and drop him down the board. I don't think it makes sense. Would an MLB scout ignore a prospect whose play he loves because that prospect doesn't hit well in batting practice on a certain day? It just seems like the height of idiocy to ignore all this volume of information Mayock had in favor of one day where Bridgewater looked bad in a completely scripted workout.
So anyway, Mayock still isn't giving Bridgewater credit and thinks Norv Turner is who makes him look good. That's partly true for every rookie QB, but give the quarterback a little credit. Andrew Luck looked good as a rookie partly because he had good coaching, Cam Newton looked good because the offensive coordinator played to his strengths during his rookie year, it's just that good coaching is essential to a quarterback's development. Still, the rookie QB has to get a little credit and Mayock doesn't seem to want to give Bridgewater any.
In March, before the University of Louisville’s pro day, NFL Media draft analyst Mike Mayock rated Teddy Bridgewater his top quarterback of the 2014 class.
Then Bridgewater had a bad Pro Day and Mayock was all, "Fuck this, he looked terrible on this one certain day. I will ignore all of the other information that caused me to rank him the #1 quarterback and start to drop him down the board because he isn't good at scripted workouts."
Mayock arrived at that evaluation based on extensive study of
Bridgewater’s play at Louisville, where he spearheaded a 12-1 record
last year and posted impressive statistics, most notably throwing 31
touchdowns against just four interceptions.
BUT DID BRIDGEWATER DO THIS IN A CONTROLLED ENVIRONMENT WHERE EVERY MOVE WAS SCRIPTED, THERE IS LITTLE ROOM FOR FREELANCING, AND IT DOESN'T AT ALL REPLICATE REAL GAME SITUATIONS? NO, HE DIDN'T!
That was—in Mayock’s eyes—until Bridgewater’s 30-minute workout cast doubt on his 39 collegiate games.
When put that way, it sounds really silly.
"A pro day is set up where you’re practicing 60 or 70 throws for a
month, with the same receivers," Mayock told Bleacher Report. "It’s
really a simple process, and every quarterback gets an A.
I have a few questions about this:
1. What's the point of a Pro Day if it is a useless process? Is it just to make sure a quarterback can follow a scripted workout? If so, I get that, but the NFL isn't a scripted league. There's no script a quarterback can definitely follow during a game.
2. If it is assumed that every quarterback will get an "A," then doesn't that mean a quarterback who has a bad Pro Day is already set up for failure? Anything less than perfection is considered failure. Even in an environment where perfection is "easy" this seems like forcing high expectations on a quarterback.
3. Why would a simple process where everyone gets an "A" somehow override everything Mayock saw on game film? Was the fact Bridgewater didn't look good in a scripted environment lead Mayock to believe everything he had seen on film was a lie? That's a lot of lies over a multi-year span of time.
"I’ve never seen a highly rated quarterback have a pro day that was that
bad," said Mayock, who later dropped Bridgewater behind Manziel and
Bortles. "That was unchartered territory for me. I felt like Teddy
Bridgewater was the most difficult quarterback evaluation I’ve done in
the last 10 or 12 years."
See, Mike Mayock didn't just drop Teddy Bridgewater down in his rankings for no good reason. He dropped Bridgewater down in his rankings for one reason, but he really struggled with this reason. It was so hard to ignore all logic that the game film showed Bridgewater may be a good NFL quarterback and base an entire evaluation on a scripted workout.
His slide was reminiscent of another top-rated quarterback: Aaron Rodgers in 2005, who went No. 24 overall.
I'm surprised Mike Mayock didn't see Aaron Rodgers throwing to some kids on a playground shortly before the 2005 draft and was disappointed in how the football was rotating, so he dropped Rodgers from the best quarterback in the 2005 to a projected undrafted free agent.
Against the Falcons, Bridgewater completed 19 of 30 passes for 317 yards
and ran five times for 27 yards, including one for a touchdown. He
didn’t have any turnovers in a 41-28 Vikings win.
Great job, Teddy Bridgewater! Wait no, that's great job Norv Turner!
"You couldn’t expect that," Vikings offensive coordinator Norv Turner said of Bridgewater’s strong debut. "Everything had to go right."
That wasn’t an accident, Mayock said.
You mean it's not an accident because Teddy Bridgewater performed well in games during college, so the fact he performed well in a game in the NFL isn't a surprise? Because that's the direction I would lean in this situation.
"The game plan that Norv put together and Teddy executed was as good a
game plan as you could have for a rookie quarterback making his first
NFL start," Mayock said.
Yes, be careful not to credit Teddy Bridgewater too much. In fact, let's just not credit him at all. It's easier that way. I'm not going to overreact and say Teddy Bridgewater will be a great NFL quarterback based on one performance, but at least credit him for a good performance. I would wonder if that's too much to ask, but it's clear that it is too much to ask.
All Bridgewater had to do was walk on the field and the game plan would execute itself. It's that easy!
Mayock, though, noted there were circumstances that dramatically helped Bridgewater.
Like being without the best running back in the NFL? Having his starting tight end injured? Or was it the fact the Vikings were without their starting right guard? I'd love to hear Mayock talk about how Bridgewater stepped into circumstances that dramatically helped Bridgewater the week before when he relieved Matt Cassel against the Saints. I'm sure Bridgewater had a huge advantage that Mike Mayock could immediately identify.
I don't know how losing his 1st and 3rd best offensive weapons are circumstances that helped Teddy Bridgewater, but then again I'm also not looking to make excuses for why Bridgewater really sucks.
First, the Falcons’ 31st-ranked defense couldn't stop the run and
couldn't pressure the rookie quarterback. The Vikings gained 241 rushing
yards on 44 carries, along with four scores.
This turned out to be a positive for the Vikings, but Bridgewater still managed to throw for 300+ yards. Obviously Bridgewater threw for so many yards only because the Vikings running game was so strong. The reality is either way Bridgewater still had to execute in the passing game.
In addition, according to Mayock, Bridgewater’s first 10 passes were
within 11 yards of the line of scrimmage, many of them quick screens or
checkdowns to his running back.
Working hard to discredit Bridgewater isn't he? Matt Ryan averaged 7.3 yards per attempt and Bridgewater averaged 10.6 yards per attempt. Maybe Bridgewater's receivers were able to take the short passes and run for more yardage, but the bottom line is Bridgewater was able to recognize when to checkdown to his running back. After all, of the 19 completions on the day 4 of them went to the running back or the fullback, so it seems Bridgewater was checking down a lot...except he didn't checkdown a lot.
I won't argue that Bridgewater played outstanding and is the sole reason the Vikings won, but he did what he had to do win the game in his first start as a rookie and Mike Mayock is working hard to make it seem like events conspired to help Bridgewater play well when that's not the case. Mayock says many of the first 10 passes were within 11 yards of the line on checkdowns to his running back, yet running backs only caught 4 passes on the day.
By my count, 3 of the first 10 passes were to running backs. I don't know, maybe that's "many," but if Mayock worked as hard to fairly evaluate Bridgewater prior to the draft as he is working to discredit Bridgewater, then maybe Bridgewater wouldn't have fallen so far and quickly on his board.
"Point being, Norv gave him a bunch of opportunities to be successful
early," Mayock said. "He got comfortable, and he got confident.
Which is Norv Turner's job as the offensive coordinator and it's Bridgewater's job to execute that game plan, which he did. Give him some credit rather than inventing or working hard to find reasons other than Bridgewater's performance why Bridgewater played well against the Falcons.
"It’s a phenomenal situation [for Bridgewater]," Mayock said. "Norv has
seen everything, and he’s quarterback-friendly, and he puts quarterbacks
in places where they have opportunities to succeed. It’s a great place
for Teddy to develop."
I'm not disagreeing, but just give Bridgewater a little credit rather than chalking up all of his success to either: (1) Great circumstances that somehow fail to include Bridgewater was missing two of his top 4 offensive weapons, (2) a game plan that Mayock acts like would just execute itself no matter what Bridgewater did, and (3) checkdowns to the running back, as if a rookie quarterback taking what the defense is giving him is a bad thing.
That's the thing about evaluators like Mike Mayock. Even when presented with short-term evidence he may be wrong, he's not going to back down. He will protect his reputation and past opinions rather than just say, "During this one game, Bridgewater looked good." He just doesn't want to even give the slight appearance he could be wrong, so he refuses to give Bridgewater credit, ignores any setbacks Bridgewater may have faced and gives Norv Turner the credit for the performance of the Vikings' offense.
Norv Turner was at Louisville's pro day, along with Mayock, and three
NFL head coaches. Representatives from 29 NFL clubs were present.
After the workout, Mayock approached Turner, whom he admired and respected.
Mike Mayock probably went up to Norv Turner and said, "Boy that offensive coordinator for Louisville really put Teddy Bridgewater in a position to succeed. There's all that top-shelf talent on the offense and notice how Bridgewater doesn't force throws where he shouldn't and manages the game. What a wimp, am I right? It's so clear the Louisville offensive coordinator deserves much of the credit for Bridgewater's success."
"I asked him what he thought because he’s a veteran," Mayock said,
recalling his conversation with Turner. "He’s been around forever. He
said, 'Mike, it wasn’t that bad. Everything is correctable. It’s no
problem.'"
And then Mayock thought about all 39 games he watched Bridgewater play in college, took the well-respected opinion of the offensive coordinator who has "seen everything and he's quarterback-friendly" and then completely dismissed it because dammit, those Pro Days that don't mean anything really meant something this time.
Turner didn’t address his conversation with Mayock on Tuesday after the
Vikings' practice, but he bristled at the negative perception of
Bridgewater’s performance during his pro day.
Oh, so this horrendous Pro Day that Bridgewater had wasn't universally thought to be so terrible? So at this point, Mayock has ignored all of the tape he saw of Bridgewater, ignored the opinion of a well-respected quarterback-friendly coach, and decided this one Pro Day is representative of the type of quarterback Teddy Bridgewater will be in the NFL. I have no idea why, but it's a special kind of stupid who takes the #1 quarterback on his draft board and drops him to the #5 quarterback for having a bad Pro Day. If Mayock liked Bridgewater, what does a Pro Day matter? It's all on the tape and it wasn't a universally accepted idea Bridgewater's Pro Day was so terrible. In fact, the same guy who Mayock thinks is a play-calling genius, Norv Turner, thought Bridgewater didn't have a bad Pro
"First of all, because someone said [Bridgewater] had a bad pro day
doesn’t mean he had a bad pro day," Turner said. "I didn't think he had a
bad pro day.
Yeah, but Mike Mayock only wants to pay attention to your opinion when it suits his needs. Norv Turner is a genius offensive coordinator when Mayock wants to discredit Bridgewater's performance, but when Mayock disagrees with Turner's evaluation of Bridgewater's Pro Day then he doesn't think Turner is all that smart. Norv Turner is brilliant when his actions support what Mike Mayock believes.
"Then when you watched the tape, you said, 'Hey, he’s going to be an outstanding quarterback in this league.'
Mike Mayock did watch the tape. That's the stuff he chose to completely ignore in favor of basing his evaluation on one bad day Bridgewater had.
Added an AFC general manager, who spoke on the condition of anonymity:
"It wasn’t that bad. Everyone wanted to script it for TV so it was like a
reality show. That’s not a real workout. It’s a circus."
Yeah, but a quarterback should get an "A" for it and Mike Mayock did NOT see an "A" performance. Plus, Bridgewater was only good against the Falcons because Norv Turner is a genius whose opinion is brilliant until Mayock decides it's not brilliant.
"There are certain things—I don't care who you are and how long you’ve
been doing it—that you can’t teach," Turner said. "He’s got a
naturalness about him that you’re not going to teach."
Yeah, but...the bad Pro Day. What about that?
The Vikings have had a tumultuous start to the 2014 season. Perennial Pro Bowl running back Adrian Peterson
hasn't played since child-endangerment charges surfaced last month, and
the Vikings have lost several other key players, including tight end
Kyle Rudolph.
Mike Mayock things losing good players helps Teddy Bridgewater out because it forces Norv Turner to be more creative in his play-calling. So really, it's an advantage to Bridgewater that these two players are out.
Yet Bridgewater was widely praised for his performance against the Falcons.
Mayock knows Norv Turner deserves all the praise. All Bridgewater had to do was go out and execute the game plan. That's the easy part, executing a game plan against an NFL defense.
I'll let this whole "Mayock loved Teddy Bridgewater until his bad Pro Day" thing go at some point. Not today. It's still nonsensical to me. Mayock loves Bridgewater until a bad Pro Day and then he's all of a sudden the 5th best QB in the draft?
Showing posts with label minnesota vikings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label minnesota vikings. Show all posts
Thursday, October 9, 2014
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
8 comments MMQB Review: Late Night Football is a Revelation Edition
Peter King told us last week in MMQB that he thought Greg Schiano deserved a chance to save his job, so the Buccaneers should release Josh Freeman immediately. Well, they released Freeman so now Schiano gets to prove he isn't a wanna be Saban/Belichick and can actually coach now that the terrible distraction named "Josh Freeman" is out of the way. Peter also brought the term "precocious" back in describing Lane Kiffin and hopefully this is a one week cameo of this word and Peter will discontinue using it forever after this past week's MMQB. This week Peter talks about Tony Romo, semi-defends Schiano, decides he will just let his readers vote for who should be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, kills space in MMQB so it can be as bloated as possible and on his way to attending Game 1 of the ALDS thinks he can smell a liar. Peter also really, really like 2am football apparently, though I doubt he would like it if he had to write MMQB after a 2am game every week.
Now that was a really fun day of football and sidebars to football. A day plus, really, including tension in the Black Hole at 2:32 Eastern Time this morning. The highlights:
Josh Freeman wasn’t an unemployed quarterback for long. As Mike Florio reported on NBC late Sunday night, Minnesota GM Rick Spielman signed him to a one-year contract, and he’ll report to the Vikings today. Minnesota is coming off its bye week, and has a home game with Carolina Sunday afternoon. Freeman did the one-year deal for a strategic reason: He wants to be a free agent next March, able to sign with any quarterback-needy team before the lucrative 2014 quarterback draft happens in May. (More on the filthy-rich prospective QB crop lower in this column.) For now, Christian Ponder and Matt Cassel will have company in the quarterback meeting room,
I'm shocked, astounded is probably a better word, that the Vikings have brought Josh Freeman in to compete with Matt Cassel and Christian Ponder. Ponder "led" the Vikings to a playoff berth last year and this is how he gets treated? He's a winner who only knows how to win games. Just look at the 2012 Vikings team that Ponder "led" to the playoffs, what other quarterback could have done that?
I do have questions about this though...because Cassel played well in Week 4, does this mean Freeman will be the #3 quarterback? Obviously he will for the time being, but when Cassel beats the Panthers next week in Minnesota and doesn't play terribly, or does play terribly, is he going to be replaced by Ponder or Freeman? If Cassel isn't replaced by Ponder then does that mean Ponder will be the #3 quarterback eventually? I guess my point is the Vikings probably would not have signed Freeman if they planned on him being the #3 quarterback and sitting on the bench. It feels like a "throw it against the wall and see what sticks move," except what sticks could conceivably put Christian Ponder as the #3 quarterback.
The Vikings are only 1.5 games out of the NFC North lead,
The Vikings have played four games. Being 1.5 games out of the NFC North lead after four games is not good.
We all saw the pass Tony Romo, with 506 passing yards in a 48-48 tie very late in the Denver-Dallas game, threw. And he shouldn’t have thrown it. Denver linebacker Danny Trevathan stepped in front of rookie tight end Gavin Escobar and made an athletic interception at the Dallas 24. Eight plays later, as the clock ran out, Matt Prater kicked the winning 28-yard field goal. It follows the Romo pattern, of course, of throwing the ball to the other team in a vital moment...just saying it’s not fair to rip Romo when he’s played the game of his life, and when Manning made the exact same mistake just a few drives earlier, throwing one to Morris Claiborne is a tense time.
I think Romo gets too much shit too, but I think the point isn't that Romo didn't play well, but that he was due for one big screw up in the game at a crucial time. I absolutely agree the game was lost due to the Cowboys defense, but I think the criticism of Romo is due to the fact he threw the interception in a tie game on what would be the last Cowboys drive of the game. Manning did throw an earlier interception, but it wasn't on what would be the game-ending drive. The criticism of Romo seems to be less about his performance and more about the fact many people felt they knew he would make a mistake and it was only a matter of time...then he made the mistake everyone was expecting him to make.
I know Gary Kubiak said last night Schaub is his quarterback, and the Texans will do everything they can this week to get him mentally ready for the boos at home, because they’re coming. The Rams will come to Reliant Stadium, and it’s got to be Schaub’s last stand. He looks like a shell of himself.
It seems Matt Schaub has acquired "Jake Delhomme Disease" where a once competent quarterback who succeeded by making key throws and taking care of the football just can't stop throwing the football to the opposing team. There is no cure.
How the Texans do this week in performing mental rehab on Schaub will go a long way in determining whether they can salvage the season.
It's not like the 49ers have a crappy defense or anything of course. I'm sure that doesn't make the Texans feel any better, but the 49ers are a really good team. The 49ers win is mostly due to them going for it on fourth down two weeks ago (right Gregg Easterbrook?) and has very little do to with their actual talent of course.
Dungy joins the chorus. As respected a voice on the NFL as I know, NBC analyst Tony Dungy, said last night on TV that Washington owner Dan Snyder should change the name of his team.
I like Tony Dungy, but I feel like Peter respects his voice more than a lot of other people respect his voice and opinion. Dungy has become one of those guys whose opinion is supposed to hold more weight because we have been told his opinion holds more weight. Basically what I am saying is I don't give a shit about Dungy's opinion because I don't think his opinion should hold more weight than anyone else's opinion. The President of the United States says the Skins should think about changing their name and did so in vague and mealy mouth terms, so when Dungy has an opinion on the subject I'm not sure the fact he is voicing an opinion makes me get all hot and bothered because he's so respected. I keep hearing how respected Dungy is and I think that more than anything makes him respected.
“The Redskins nickname is offensive to Native Americans. In 2013, we need to get that name changed.”
Well, that is a persuasive argument so I can see how Dungy's voice is so respected. The way Dungy phrased those two sentences completely changes my opinion.
Last night, the attorney for the team, Lanny Davis, was strident to me in saying people were taking President Obama’s statement too far—and he’s right. “What is a sizable group?’’ he said. “In 2004, the only sampling of Native Americans [on this issue] was taken in an Annenberg Poll. Nine of 10 said they were not offended by the nickname.
Obama's statement meant nothing. It's so vague it almost had no meaning to the listener other than to say, "If a lot of people are offended they should maybe change the name." That's really not saying anything definitive, nor should Obama say anything definitive. He's got better things to do.
By the way, the super-duper respected Dungy didn't say anything else about the Skins nickname. He simply said it's offensive to Native Americans and it should be changed. As usual, while I like Tony Dungy, I fail to see what makes that opinion so respected other than we are supposed to feel like Dungy is respected.
With the Chargers driving frantically just inside the two-minute warning of the fourth quarter, rookie Raiders corner D.J. Hayden made the biggest play of his young career. He darted in front of San Diego wideout Keenan Allen in the end zone and intercepted a Philip Rivers pass, securing the 27-17 Oakland win with the first interception of his NFL career.
At 2:32 this morning on the East Coast.
That's a late game, but it's not that late on the West Coast. Either way, Peter liked it, and with a respected voice like Peter King liking Monday Morning Football I see no reason why the NFL shouldn't schedule a Monday Morning Game every week. We'll see if Peter continues to like Monday Morning Football when the 49ers and Broncos play at 11:30pm EST on a Sunday evening. I'm guessing Peter won't like Monday Morning Football when one of the best games of the week takes place at that time and he can't write parts of MMQB until the game is done.
At 3 a.m. Eastern, I polled my Twitter followers, asking them if they’d like to see a weekly very late Sunday night game. More football! Let’s gorge on football!
By 7 a.m., 127 of you morning people had responded. Voting yes: 91. No: 36.
This is what is known as using a biased sample size. The same people who would vote in this poll are the same people who stayed up for the very late Sunday night game.
But as several of you tweeted, if I held that vote at noon on Monday instead of 3 a.m., I’d get a heck of a lot more no votes.
You would also get a lot more votes against a late Sunday night game since many of the people didn't vote because they were asleep when the poll was taken. Peter already does passive-aggressive whining about having to stay up late to do MMQB, so I can only imagine how much he would whine if he had to write about an 11:30pm EST NFL game every week.
One interesting refrain: Many of you said, in effect, the league should get rid of the Thursday night game and hold one of these late jobs after NBC’s Sunday night game is over.
I'm not a diehard fan of the Thursday night game, but I think holding a game this late on Sunday night is a terrible idea. People are idiots and the same people who think getting rid of the Thursday night game and having an 11:30pm EST game on Sunday night is a good idea are also the same people who will bitch about the government shutdown and then re-elect the exact same representatives back into office who shut down the government.
It’s an interesting concept, but one I doubt that would have any chance of happening. Just thought it was novel, and quite a few of you night owls enjoyed it.
It's a great novel idea. It's not an idea that needs to happen every week of the NFL season.
The quarterback market will be rich next May.
The other day at The MMQB, our college football guru, Andy Staples, did his weekly list of the top 50 draft prospects. He had nine quarterbacks rated among his top 32 picks.
AND WHEN HAVE NFL DRAFT BOARDS IN MID-OCTOBER EVER BEEN WRONG?
When I asked Staples to do this list weekly during the college season, I told him to put underclass players in if he thinks they’ll be declaring for the draft. Thus Louisville quarterback Teddy Bridgewater, a junior, in. Thus UCLA redshirt sophomore Brett Hundley, out. Staples’ gut tells him Bridgewater comes out and Hundley stays in school.
Hundley probably should come out this year, but if there are really that many quality quarterbacks coming out it makes sense to wait until next year. Of course if he wants to land in a good situation then maybe he should come out this year and hope to get drafted by a team that isn't QB-needy for another season or two.
That doesn’t mean nine quarterbacks will go in the first round, obviously. That won’t happen. But the big numbers at quarterback, assuming players like Manziel and Bridgewater and Oregon redshirt soph Marcus Mariota do come out, could be very good for teams like Minnesota and Oakland.
I'm notoriously terrible at evaluating quarterbacks, but I think Marcus Mariota is violently underrated (yes, "violently" underrated and I have no idea what this means). I would take him over Manziel and quite possibly Brett Hundley as well.
The Vikings and Raiders could exit 2013 doubting Christian Ponder/Josh Freeman (and Freeman could want to play elsewhere) and Terrelle Pryor as their long-term quarterback answers—but they may not be ready to pull the plug on them for good. The market might be so good that teams thought not to be in the market (Philadelphia, Dallas, Denver, Cincinnati and Houston, for example) could see a highly ranked guy on their board sitting there in the third round and think he’s just too good a player to pass up.
Okay, well not every NFL team can draft a quarterback. Peter just listed seven teams who could draft a quarterback and he hasn't even gotten to the Eagles, Jaguars, or any surprise team who could draft a quarterback (Bears, Titans, Cardinals) early in the draft.
This road scout said the most intriguing prospect he’d seen this season was 6-5, 235-pound LSU quarterback Zach Mettenberger, who he said has improved a lot under new offensive Cam Cameron.
Wow, a quarterback who improved playing under Cam Cameron. Now that is saying something.
And so you want to be a Hall of Fame voter …
Well, you can’t.
Yeah, I know I can't. Don't be a dick Peter and brag about your ability to vote for the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
This week, The MMQB will give 10 of you a chance to make your best case for a player you believe belongs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Nominate and support your favorite candidate in short, 250-word essays, and we’ll run the best ones Friday on The MMQB.
I am surprised Peter didn't ask the readers to write their nominations in haiku form. Let's see if I can make really, really persuasive arguments for some coaches and quarterbacks to be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Quarterbacks—Drew Bledsoe, Randall Cunningham, Doug Flutie, Trent Green, Steve McNair, Phil Simms.
All six should be in the Hall of Fame. McNair and Cunningham under the "Tony Dungy Rule" that Peter introduced last week, where neither player has the statistics to necessarily make it, but they opened up chances for today's black quarterbacks to play in the NFL. Forebearers should all be admitted. Come one, come all...except Akili Smith.
Bledsoe played for the Patriots. He should be in.
Doug Flutie taught the world what scrappiness could do for a team and was the forebearer of quarterbacks who didn't look like a quarterback, but they had heart and grit. He should be in.
Trent Green- He and Peter King are text buddies. Of course he should be in.
Phil Simms- He was a winner at the quarterback position for a large market team, plus he's such a great broadcaster. He's in.
Coaches—Bill Arnsparger, Don Coryell, Bill Cowher, Tony Dungy, Tom Flores, Jon Gruden, Mike Holmgren, Jimmy Johnson, Chuck Knox, Buddy Parker, Richie Petitbon, Dan Reeves, Lou Saban, Marty Schottenheimer, Clark Shaughnessy, Dick Vermeil.
Arnsparger has a great name. He's in.
Don Coryell is the forebearer (Tony Dungy Rule) of modern offenses that utilize an athletic tight end. He's in.
Bill Cowher has won one real Super Bowl and three Super Bowls in the minds of NFL fans desperate to have him coach their team. He should be in after winning four Super Bowls, one real and three only in the mind of desperate, coach-needy teams.
Dungy is the forebearer for black coaches and the forebearer of the Tony Dungy Rule.
Tom Flores was the forebearer of Hispanic coaches like Ron Rivera. Of course he's in (Flores, not Rivera...the only hall Rivera should be in is the atrium outside an NFL team's facility waiting to interview for a job after this season).
Jon Gruden, well this guy is the best. If I had to choose one head coach to make the Hall of Fame, it would be this guy.
Holmgren/Johnson/Reeves/Knox all seem like they were great coaches so they should be in.
Buddy Parker, the booster from "Friday Night Lights" should be in the Hall of Fame for all he helped East and West Dillon do in achieving state titles. Wait, that was Buddy Garrity? Either way, Buddy Parker sounds like a jazz musician so he's in.
Richie Petitbon is a coach I get confused with Rich Kotite. For that, Petitbon should be in the Hall of Fame.
I think Lou Saban and Clark Shaughnessy are names Peter King made up to make his readers feel stupid. I'm not falling for it. They are both out.
Marty Schottenheimer wasn't a clutch coach who couldn't win a playoff game. For that...he's in. No Hall of Fame would be any good without Marty Schottenheimer in there to annoy sportswriters who would complain about his lack of playoff victories while they easily vote Dungy into the Hall of Fame. Schottenheimer was the forebearer of playoff choking coaches and led the way for coaches like Marv Levy and Dan Reeves who just couldn't win the Super Bowl.
Dick Vermeil is in because I don't want him crying if he doesn't make it.
Then Peter interviews the authors of "League of Denial," Steve Fainaru and Mark Fainaru-Wade about their book and the upcoming documentary. I guess this has a place in MMQB. It has more of a place than other topics Peter gives attention to in MMQB. Oh, and I also love how Bud Selig gets ruined for putting his head in the sand on steroids, while Paul Tagliabue took steps to cover up the effect concussions had on NFL players and gets very little criticism. Isn't it obvious now that completely ignoring and covering up a problem is worse than ignoring the problem and eventually trying to fix it? This book on concussions in the NFL makes Tags look really, really bad. It's a good thing Tagliabue is retired.
Fine Fifteen
Fifteen teams placed in random order of supposed strength.
2. New Orleans (5-0). Building a 23-7 lead and coasting is great for the confidence of a team that might have to play outdoors in January.
Well, except it will be colder in January than it was this past weekend, which has a great impact on the Saints having to play outdoors.
10. Baltimore (3-2). Good win to pull it out in Miami, but this is something John Harbaugh frets about: Last year, Ray Rice and Bernard Pierce averaged 4.6 yards per carry. This year: 2.9.
It's almost like other NFL teams don't worry about the Ravens throwing the football and are paying special attention to the run game. Peter King says if the Ravens had just kept Anquan Boldin then they wouldn't be having this problem.
11. Dallas (2-3). One of the craziest games in Cowboys history. In NFL history. Showed how great, and how maddening, Tony Romo can be in one game.
Yeah, it's so maddening when he puts up 48 points and then has the audacity to commit one turnover and the Cowboys lose because the defense gave up 51 points. Romo is such a frustrating player in how he isn't very good at defense.
12. Detroit (3-2). Calvin Johnson missed the game, out of nowhere, and it showed. The Lions played like they had a thorn in their collective paw.
See, because they are Lions they don't like thorns in their paw. This is a real thing.
15. Atlanta (1-3). Speaking of New Jersey teams you like to see coming to your place … Jets at Falcons tonight.
The Jets have a strong run defense, while the Falcons have a backup running back starting with three quality receivers ready to catch the football, which means the Falcons will try to throw the ball around the field a lot while Gregg Easterbrook complains the Falcons don't run the ball often enough.
Defensive Players of the Week
Tramaine Brock, CB, San Francisco. Call him Wally Pipp—you’ll have to Google (or Bing) that if you need to know what it means.
Yeah Peter, you are the only one who knows who Wally Pipp is because you are a more knowledgeable fan due to being a Red Sox fan. I'm pretty sure anyone who follows sports or would read MMQB on a regular basis knows who Wally Pipp is. If a person doesn't know who Wally Pipp is then he/she will look it up. It sounds pretentious to be like "If you aren't quite as knowledgeable as I am then go research it."
Suffice it to say Brock subbed for the injured Nnamdi Asomugha at nickel cornerback Sunday night, and it’s going to be tough for Asomugha to get his job back after the 34-3 beatdown of the Texans Sunday night.
Quite a fall for Nnamdi Asomugha to go from one of the most coveted free agents of all-time (in Peter's one-time opinion) to losing his job to Tramine Brock just a few years later.
Coach of the Week
Adam Gase, offensive coordinator, Denver. For the smooth transition from Mike McCoy at offensive coordinator and offensive play-caller, for being able to bond quickly with a quarterback who clearly respects him (Peyton Manning), and for piloting an offense that’s putting up 46 points a game through five weeks.
Just one week ago Peter did a portion of MMQB about Peyton Manning and how he holds meetings with his offensive teammates where they can air out differences and talk about the previous game. Eric Decker explained that Peyton Manning is like a coach out there and it comes off when he runs these meetings. No disrespect to Adam Gase, but I have a hard time seeing him as a coach of the week when Peyton Manning is the guy he coaches. Peyton Manning probably doesn't even need an offensive coordinator at times.
I realize Peyton Manning can't coach himself, but he comes pretty close to coaching himself at times.
Goat of the Week
Matt Schaub, QB, Houston. It’s sad to watch the implosion of this productive player. And make no mistake—he’s imploding before our eyes. For the fourth straight game, an NFL record, he had an interception returned for touchdown, this one 90 seconds into the first quarter. It was one of three picks in all for Schaub. Though coach Gary Kubiak said Schaub remains the starter, it’d be a shock if Schaub can hang onto the job with one more poor performance Sunday at home against the Rams. Who, by the way, have a risk-taking secondary.
Peter calls the Rams secondary "risk-taking" I call them 17th in the NFL in passing yards allowed per game and 28th in the NFL in points allowed per game. The Rams have a very good front seven by the way, so one would think this could positively impact the Rams secondary.
Then Peter goes into his quotes of the week.
“Nobody says it’s a good law, nobody says it’s a bad law. But it’s a law.
Actually, the entire government shutdown is because some legislators say Obamacare is a good law and other legislators say it is a bad law. So "nobody" doesn't say or not say either of these things.
Did you see the Giants game on Sunday? They lost 31-7. And do you know what the Giants didn’t say after that game? ‘If you don’t give us 25 more points by midnight Monday, we will shut down the [bleeping] NFL!’ They didn’t say that! What I’m saying is: Wouldn’t it be nice if the United States Congress aspired to the maturity and problem-solving … of football players.”
—Jon Stewart last week on The Daily Show, urging our elected leaders to re-open the government and to stop using a budget debate to protest a health-care law some of the politicians don’t like.
It always disturbs me that many people get their political news from "The Daily Show." It's supposed to be comedy riffing on real life news, not real life news with a comedy slant. It's a funny show, but this isn't the best of comparisons made by Jon Stewart.
One thing largely ignored in the rush to say how wronged new Viking Josh Freeman was by the Bucs in the last couple of weeks: He’s been playing bad football going back to last Thanksgiving.
Shouldn’t we judge players by how they play? Seems like we’ve heard every excuse—coach Greg Schiano is a hands-on-your-throat, privacy-invading nutcase, mostly—for why the Bucs were losing and Freeman was playing poorly. Now, Schiano certainly deserves his share of the blame for a team that has lost nine of 10.
Here's the part of MMQB where Peter King defends his boy from Rutgers, Greg Schiano. I'm not sure a lot of people were saying that Josh Freeman deserves to be the starter of the Buccaneers anymore. Peter either doesn't understand the issue or is trying to muddy the waters to make Schiano look better than he does. Schiano could simply have benched Josh Freeman and chose not to do that. He chose to start a pissing contest with Freeman's camp by leaking that he was late for meetings and various other minor transgressions by Freeman were also revealed. It's like Schiano wanted to find cause to bench Freeman rather than simply bench him.
So I think intentionally/unintentionally Peter is missing the point. It isn't about Schiano benching Freeman, it is about him not simply benching Freeman and instead trying to make it seem like it was for cause other than Freeman's play. It doesn't shock me that Peter is not understanding the issue some have with how Schiano handled Freeman. It's not about Freeman's performance, it's about the pissing contest between Freeman's camp and Schiano.
But all of the blame on Schiano, or most on Schiano and some on second-year offensive coordinator Mike Sullivan? I’m not buying it. Freeman has to take his share of the responsibility too—a lot more than he’s been assigned in the public view so far. (Last week Roy Cummings of the Tampa Tribune documented a series of Freeman screwups, including missing the team breakfast and being late for the bus on opening day, then skipping two team meetings after being demoted from the starting job.)
Then bench him. Greg Schiano is the head coach and can bench any Buccaneers player he wants for any reason he wants. Bench Freeman, but stop the series of leaks revealing Freeman's minor transgressions because it looks like (whether it is true or not) you are trying to personally ruin Freeman rather than just benching him. That's the issue with Schiano. All of Freeman's screwups became public and it looked like Schiano was using these as the reason he benched Freeman.
Then, to further illustrate he doesn't understand why some people are very critical of Greg Schiano's handling of Josh Freeman, Peter illustrates how bad Josh Freeman has been. Great, he should be benched for cause, and don't allow screwups like missed team breakfasts and missed team meetings to get out. It looks like Schiano is making it personal for why he benched him when information like this gets leaked.
Of the 46 players who dressed for 5-0 New Orleans Sunday, 19 entered the league as undrafted college free agents. That’s 41 percent of the roster coming up the hard way. Seven of the 22 starters weren’t drafted.
What does that mean? Seattle and New England have a boatload of undrafted players on the roster too, and it tells me those teams scout well, know the kind of players their coaching staffs want, and then go and get them. And the coaches coach them well.
Well, undrafted players are better than those highly-paid glory boy first round draft picks.
Mr. Starwood Preferred Member Travel Note of the Week
There is no moral or lesson to this story. It’s not deep, or even very interesting. It just is something that happened to a traveling person.
Is this as opposed to the countless other travel notes of the week that have a moral or lesson and have been very, very interesting? Aren't all of Peter's traveling notes not deep?
I went to Boston for Game 1 of the Red Sox-Rays series. On Saturday morning at 8:15 I boarded the Acela in Back Bay, the second stop on the Boston-to-New York route. The train was crowded already. I walked through the Quiet Car, found an unoccupied two-seat row, and sat down. The train left the station.
This is already more interesting and less intrusive to other individuals than most of Peter's other travel notes. Well, it WAS more intrusive, but that ends quickly.
A few seconds later a fellow came up and said the two seats were taken. I looked at the back of the seats, which had no tags on them noting how far the passengers were going. And there was nothing on the seat—no bag, no newspaper, nothing to show that anyone was sitting there. “You sure?’’ I said. He said he was. He and a friend were sitting there, and his friend had gone to the café car to get something to eat, and he was quite sure the seats were his.
Slap-fight!
I gave the guy a good look. Seemed like an earnest man. If I didn’t move, I was basically calling the guy a liar. So I moved, and sat with a quiet apple-eater (he had two of them on the wordless journey) for the 3.5-hour trip to Manhattan.
YOUR INSISTENCE ON EATING APPLES IS INTERRUPTING PETER'S CELL PHONE CALLS TO THE HIGHLY RESPECTED TONY DUNGY!
I didn’t think much about it.
Yeah, Peter didn't think much about it, he just wrote about it in his nationally-read column about the NFL. Other than putting it in MMQB where all of Peter's readers can read about these two guys who may or may not have saved two seats, Peter barely even thought about this incident.
“Dirk Hayhurst…COULDNT hack it…Tom Verducci wasn’t even a water boy in high school…but yet they can still bash a player…SAVE IT NERDS”
—@DAVIDprice14, after allowing nine hits and seven earned runs to Boston in a 7-4 playoff loss Saturday, criticizing TBS analysts Hayhurst and Verducci (Hayhurst, a former minor-league pitcher who had a cup of coffee in Toronto; Verducci, a New Jersey high school baseball and football star) for having the temerity to break down his losing performance.
Dan Shaughnessy would say that it doesn't sound like David Price could cut it in a large market. Unsurprisingly, Peter King says this too.
Four thoughts:
1. Price did not include his career playoff record in the tweet: 0-4, 5.81 ERA.
2. He sounds a little Crawfordy to me.
A little "Crawfordy" to Peter? Is this the same Carl Crawford who is having an excellent NLDS with the Los Angeles Dodgers? Oh yeah, that's right. Because Crawford doesn't play in Boston anymore Peter considers Crawford's career in baseball to have effectively ended the day he left the Boston Red Sox roster.
3. Good luck pitching in New York, or wherever your next stop is, David.
I'm going to laugh like hell when he signs with the Red Sox and Peter gets all giddy about this.
1. I think this is what I liked about Week 5:
a. Alshon Jeffrey, with his franchise-record-setting day for the Bears: 218 receiving yards on 10 catches (one touchdown) while the Saints spent their time shutting down Brandon Marshall.
I never thought Jeffrey was going to be a very good NFL receiver due to his lack of speed. It looks like I was wrong...this is the second time I have ever been wrong.
h. Peyton Manning’s first scoring drive: three plays, 80 yards, 50 seconds. Scoring on a shovel pass to a 267-pount tight end.
Urban Dictionary says if Thomas is a 267 pount tight end then that's (a) pretty disgusting for your readers to have to read about this and (2) I'm guessing his teammates weren't in a rush to go hug him or congratulate him on his excitement at scoring a touchdown.
The least Peter could do is leave out sexual slang from his MMQB.
j. Great blocking downfield by Wes Welker.
At least Peter isn't being vague about what he is referring to here.
2. I think this is what I didn’t like about Week 5:
c. Luke Joeckel, four days after the Eugene Monroe trade, goes out with an ankle injury. Pity the Jags.
This is the perfect time to get Tim Tebow if you are the Jaguars. He's magical and doesn't need any stinkin' blocking in front of him to win games.
f. Linebacker James Anderson wearing No. 50, Mike Singletary’s number, for the Bears. Just noticed it Sunday, and I don’t like it. It was given to Anderson in April.
It doesn't shock me. Anderson is stealing money from the Panthers and still wearing Singletary's number while doing it. He likes to take things he has been given but didn't necessarily deserve.
6. I think until I watched Terrelle Pryor play early this morning, I would have said the best spot for Josh Freeman was Oakland. No question. Raiders offensive coordinator Greg Olson coached Freeman in his first three years in the NFL (2009-11), and Freeman had a 10-6 record with a 95.9 rating in 2010, when he looked like a rising star. I think the only better place for Freeman would have been Green Bay. If I were Freeman I’d have gone to work with Mike McCarthy and studied Aaron Rodgers, signed a modest deal with the Packers through the end of the 2014 season, then decided what to do with my future.
"Plus," says Gregg Easterbrook, "then the Packers could run some read-option with Freeman and force the opposing defense to prepare for a different look being thrown at them." This is what Gregg Easterbrook would say this week, until the 49ers lose their next game, at which point the read-option is dead again.
8. I think South Carolina pass rusher Jadaveon Clowney as a very, very high draft choice is really starting to scare me.
I think Peter is doing the typical over-analyzing of a college player upon knowing that player will enter the NFL in time for the next NFL Draft.
Pro scouts don’t look kindly on a player saving himself for the next level, which is what it appears Clowney is doing. At least that’s the impression NFL people have now.
Well, NFL scouts can go pount themselves because if I am Jadeveon Clowney I am not going to risk a near career-ending injury (much like Clowney's ex-teammate Marcus Lattimore experienced last year) just so I can play for free at the college level. Why would Clowney risk a severe or lingering injury while playing for free when he can move his draft stock right back up with a strong Combine and workouts? I don't know if Clowney is saving himself for the NFL, but I can't entirely blame him if he is.
10. I think these are my non-football thoughts of the week:
i. Saw Enough Said, the romantic comedy starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus and the late James Gandolfini. Meh. Let’s just say the acting is significantly better than the story. We’re going to miss a lot of good roles Gandolfini would have played.
Who would have ever thought a romantic comedy starting Julia Louis-Dreyfus and James Gandolfini could possibly be not very good?
j. Coffeenerdness: Did Amtrak do something to the weak coffee on the Acela? Tasted a little more like real coffee and not coffee-flavored water Saturday.
Yes, they did. They made it stronger just for you. Never forget how special you are.
m. I hope Art Briles is the next Texas coach. I don’t mean to pilfer him from you, Baylor, but he’d be a smart hire for Texas.
Peter says this having viewed all of what, one or two Baylor games? Peter has stated in several MMQB's that he doesn't have time to watch college football.
The Adieu Haiku
Two a.m. football.
Surprisingly, I want more.
And I want it now.
Every week I challenge Peter to make the next haiku even more useless than the last one. Every week Peter delivers.
Now that was a really fun day of football and sidebars to football. A day plus, really, including tension in the Black Hole at 2:32 Eastern Time this morning. The highlights:
Josh Freeman wasn’t an unemployed quarterback for long. As Mike Florio reported on NBC late Sunday night, Minnesota GM Rick Spielman signed him to a one-year contract, and he’ll report to the Vikings today. Minnesota is coming off its bye week, and has a home game with Carolina Sunday afternoon. Freeman did the one-year deal for a strategic reason: He wants to be a free agent next March, able to sign with any quarterback-needy team before the lucrative 2014 quarterback draft happens in May. (More on the filthy-rich prospective QB crop lower in this column.) For now, Christian Ponder and Matt Cassel will have company in the quarterback meeting room,
I'm shocked, astounded is probably a better word, that the Vikings have brought Josh Freeman in to compete with Matt Cassel and Christian Ponder. Ponder "led" the Vikings to a playoff berth last year and this is how he gets treated? He's a winner who only knows how to win games. Just look at the 2012 Vikings team that Ponder "led" to the playoffs, what other quarterback could have done that?
I do have questions about this though...because Cassel played well in Week 4, does this mean Freeman will be the #3 quarterback? Obviously he will for the time being, but when Cassel beats the Panthers next week in Minnesota and doesn't play terribly, or does play terribly, is he going to be replaced by Ponder or Freeman? If Cassel isn't replaced by Ponder then does that mean Ponder will be the #3 quarterback eventually? I guess my point is the Vikings probably would not have signed Freeman if they planned on him being the #3 quarterback and sitting on the bench. It feels like a "throw it against the wall and see what sticks move," except what sticks could conceivably put Christian Ponder as the #3 quarterback.
The Vikings are only 1.5 games out of the NFC North lead,
The Vikings have played four games. Being 1.5 games out of the NFC North lead after four games is not good.
We all saw the pass Tony Romo, with 506 passing yards in a 48-48 tie very late in the Denver-Dallas game, threw. And he shouldn’t have thrown it. Denver linebacker Danny Trevathan stepped in front of rookie tight end Gavin Escobar and made an athletic interception at the Dallas 24. Eight plays later, as the clock ran out, Matt Prater kicked the winning 28-yard field goal. It follows the Romo pattern, of course, of throwing the ball to the other team in a vital moment...just saying it’s not fair to rip Romo when he’s played the game of his life, and when Manning made the exact same mistake just a few drives earlier, throwing one to Morris Claiborne is a tense time.
I think Romo gets too much shit too, but I think the point isn't that Romo didn't play well, but that he was due for one big screw up in the game at a crucial time. I absolutely agree the game was lost due to the Cowboys defense, but I think the criticism of Romo is due to the fact he threw the interception in a tie game on what would be the last Cowboys drive of the game. Manning did throw an earlier interception, but it wasn't on what would be the game-ending drive. The criticism of Romo seems to be less about his performance and more about the fact many people felt they knew he would make a mistake and it was only a matter of time...then he made the mistake everyone was expecting him to make.
I know Gary Kubiak said last night Schaub is his quarterback, and the Texans will do everything they can this week to get him mentally ready for the boos at home, because they’re coming. The Rams will come to Reliant Stadium, and it’s got to be Schaub’s last stand. He looks like a shell of himself.
It seems Matt Schaub has acquired "Jake Delhomme Disease" where a once competent quarterback who succeeded by making key throws and taking care of the football just can't stop throwing the football to the opposing team. There is no cure.
How the Texans do this week in performing mental rehab on Schaub will go a long way in determining whether they can salvage the season.
It's not like the 49ers have a crappy defense or anything of course. I'm sure that doesn't make the Texans feel any better, but the 49ers are a really good team. The 49ers win is mostly due to them going for it on fourth down two weeks ago (right Gregg Easterbrook?) and has very little do to with their actual talent of course.
Dungy joins the chorus. As respected a voice on the NFL as I know, NBC analyst Tony Dungy, said last night on TV that Washington owner Dan Snyder should change the name of his team.
I like Tony Dungy, but I feel like Peter respects his voice more than a lot of other people respect his voice and opinion. Dungy has become one of those guys whose opinion is supposed to hold more weight because we have been told his opinion holds more weight. Basically what I am saying is I don't give a shit about Dungy's opinion because I don't think his opinion should hold more weight than anyone else's opinion. The President of the United States says the Skins should think about changing their name and did so in vague and mealy mouth terms, so when Dungy has an opinion on the subject I'm not sure the fact he is voicing an opinion makes me get all hot and bothered because he's so respected. I keep hearing how respected Dungy is and I think that more than anything makes him respected.
“The Redskins nickname is offensive to Native Americans. In 2013, we need to get that name changed.”
Well, that is a persuasive argument so I can see how Dungy's voice is so respected. The way Dungy phrased those two sentences completely changes my opinion.
Last night, the attorney for the team, Lanny Davis, was strident to me in saying people were taking President Obama’s statement too far—and he’s right. “What is a sizable group?’’ he said. “In 2004, the only sampling of Native Americans [on this issue] was taken in an Annenberg Poll. Nine of 10 said they were not offended by the nickname.
Obama's statement meant nothing. It's so vague it almost had no meaning to the listener other than to say, "If a lot of people are offended they should maybe change the name." That's really not saying anything definitive, nor should Obama say anything definitive. He's got better things to do.
By the way, the super-duper respected Dungy didn't say anything else about the Skins nickname. He simply said it's offensive to Native Americans and it should be changed. As usual, while I like Tony Dungy, I fail to see what makes that opinion so respected other than we are supposed to feel like Dungy is respected.
With the Chargers driving frantically just inside the two-minute warning of the fourth quarter, rookie Raiders corner D.J. Hayden made the biggest play of his young career. He darted in front of San Diego wideout Keenan Allen in the end zone and intercepted a Philip Rivers pass, securing the 27-17 Oakland win with the first interception of his NFL career.
At 2:32 this morning on the East Coast.
That's a late game, but it's not that late on the West Coast. Either way, Peter liked it, and with a respected voice like Peter King liking Monday Morning Football I see no reason why the NFL shouldn't schedule a Monday Morning Game every week. We'll see if Peter continues to like Monday Morning Football when the 49ers and Broncos play at 11:30pm EST on a Sunday evening. I'm guessing Peter won't like Monday Morning Football when one of the best games of the week takes place at that time and he can't write parts of MMQB until the game is done.
At 3 a.m. Eastern, I polled my Twitter followers, asking them if they’d like to see a weekly very late Sunday night game. More football! Let’s gorge on football!
By 7 a.m., 127 of you morning people had responded. Voting yes: 91. No: 36.
This is what is known as using a biased sample size. The same people who would vote in this poll are the same people who stayed up for the very late Sunday night game.
But as several of you tweeted, if I held that vote at noon on Monday instead of 3 a.m., I’d get a heck of a lot more no votes.
You would also get a lot more votes against a late Sunday night game since many of the people didn't vote because they were asleep when the poll was taken. Peter already does passive-aggressive whining about having to stay up late to do MMQB, so I can only imagine how much he would whine if he had to write about an 11:30pm EST NFL game every week.
One interesting refrain: Many of you said, in effect, the league should get rid of the Thursday night game and hold one of these late jobs after NBC’s Sunday night game is over.
I'm not a diehard fan of the Thursday night game, but I think holding a game this late on Sunday night is a terrible idea. People are idiots and the same people who think getting rid of the Thursday night game and having an 11:30pm EST game on Sunday night is a good idea are also the same people who will bitch about the government shutdown and then re-elect the exact same representatives back into office who shut down the government.
It’s an interesting concept, but one I doubt that would have any chance of happening. Just thought it was novel, and quite a few of you night owls enjoyed it.
It's a great novel idea. It's not an idea that needs to happen every week of the NFL season.
The quarterback market will be rich next May.
The other day at The MMQB, our college football guru, Andy Staples, did his weekly list of the top 50 draft prospects. He had nine quarterbacks rated among his top 32 picks.
AND WHEN HAVE NFL DRAFT BOARDS IN MID-OCTOBER EVER BEEN WRONG?
When I asked Staples to do this list weekly during the college season, I told him to put underclass players in if he thinks they’ll be declaring for the draft. Thus Louisville quarterback Teddy Bridgewater, a junior, in. Thus UCLA redshirt sophomore Brett Hundley, out. Staples’ gut tells him Bridgewater comes out and Hundley stays in school.
Hundley probably should come out this year, but if there are really that many quality quarterbacks coming out it makes sense to wait until next year. Of course if he wants to land in a good situation then maybe he should come out this year and hope to get drafted by a team that isn't QB-needy for another season or two.
That doesn’t mean nine quarterbacks will go in the first round, obviously. That won’t happen. But the big numbers at quarterback, assuming players like Manziel and Bridgewater and Oregon redshirt soph Marcus Mariota do come out, could be very good for teams like Minnesota and Oakland.
I'm notoriously terrible at evaluating quarterbacks, but I think Marcus Mariota is violently underrated (yes, "violently" underrated and I have no idea what this means). I would take him over Manziel and quite possibly Brett Hundley as well.
The Vikings and Raiders could exit 2013 doubting Christian Ponder/Josh Freeman (and Freeman could want to play elsewhere) and Terrelle Pryor as their long-term quarterback answers—but they may not be ready to pull the plug on them for good. The market might be so good that teams thought not to be in the market (Philadelphia, Dallas, Denver, Cincinnati and Houston, for example) could see a highly ranked guy on their board sitting there in the third round and think he’s just too good a player to pass up.
Okay, well not every NFL team can draft a quarterback. Peter just listed seven teams who could draft a quarterback and he hasn't even gotten to the Eagles, Jaguars, or any surprise team who could draft a quarterback (Bears, Titans, Cardinals) early in the draft.
This road scout said the most intriguing prospect he’d seen this season was 6-5, 235-pound LSU quarterback Zach Mettenberger, who he said has improved a lot under new offensive Cam Cameron.
Wow, a quarterback who improved playing under Cam Cameron. Now that is saying something.
And so you want to be a Hall of Fame voter …
Well, you can’t.
Yeah, I know I can't. Don't be a dick Peter and brag about your ability to vote for the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
This week, The MMQB will give 10 of you a chance to make your best case for a player you believe belongs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Nominate and support your favorite candidate in short, 250-word essays, and we’ll run the best ones Friday on The MMQB.
I am surprised Peter didn't ask the readers to write their nominations in haiku form. Let's see if I can make really, really persuasive arguments for some coaches and quarterbacks to be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Quarterbacks—Drew Bledsoe, Randall Cunningham, Doug Flutie, Trent Green, Steve McNair, Phil Simms.
All six should be in the Hall of Fame. McNair and Cunningham under the "Tony Dungy Rule" that Peter introduced last week, where neither player has the statistics to necessarily make it, but they opened up chances for today's black quarterbacks to play in the NFL. Forebearers should all be admitted. Come one, come all...except Akili Smith.
Bledsoe played for the Patriots. He should be in.
Doug Flutie taught the world what scrappiness could do for a team and was the forebearer of quarterbacks who didn't look like a quarterback, but they had heart and grit. He should be in.
Trent Green- He and Peter King are text buddies. Of course he should be in.
Phil Simms- He was a winner at the quarterback position for a large market team, plus he's such a great broadcaster. He's in.
Coaches—Bill Arnsparger, Don Coryell, Bill Cowher, Tony Dungy, Tom Flores, Jon Gruden, Mike Holmgren, Jimmy Johnson, Chuck Knox, Buddy Parker, Richie Petitbon, Dan Reeves, Lou Saban, Marty Schottenheimer, Clark Shaughnessy, Dick Vermeil.
Arnsparger has a great name. He's in.
Don Coryell is the forebearer (Tony Dungy Rule) of modern offenses that utilize an athletic tight end. He's in.
Bill Cowher has won one real Super Bowl and three Super Bowls in the minds of NFL fans desperate to have him coach their team. He should be in after winning four Super Bowls, one real and three only in the mind of desperate, coach-needy teams.
Dungy is the forebearer for black coaches and the forebearer of the Tony Dungy Rule.
Tom Flores was the forebearer of Hispanic coaches like Ron Rivera. Of course he's in (Flores, not Rivera...the only hall Rivera should be in is the atrium outside an NFL team's facility waiting to interview for a job after this season).
Jon Gruden, well this guy is the best. If I had to choose one head coach to make the Hall of Fame, it would be this guy.
Holmgren/Johnson/Reeves/Knox all seem like they were great coaches so they should be in.
Buddy Parker, the booster from "Friday Night Lights" should be in the Hall of Fame for all he helped East and West Dillon do in achieving state titles. Wait, that was Buddy Garrity? Either way, Buddy Parker sounds like a jazz musician so he's in.
Richie Petitbon is a coach I get confused with Rich Kotite. For that, Petitbon should be in the Hall of Fame.
I think Lou Saban and Clark Shaughnessy are names Peter King made up to make his readers feel stupid. I'm not falling for it. They are both out.
Marty Schottenheimer wasn't a clutch coach who couldn't win a playoff game. For that...he's in. No Hall of Fame would be any good without Marty Schottenheimer in there to annoy sportswriters who would complain about his lack of playoff victories while they easily vote Dungy into the Hall of Fame. Schottenheimer was the forebearer of playoff choking coaches and led the way for coaches like Marv Levy and Dan Reeves who just couldn't win the Super Bowl.
Dick Vermeil is in because I don't want him crying if he doesn't make it.
Then Peter interviews the authors of "League of Denial," Steve Fainaru and Mark Fainaru-Wade about their book and the upcoming documentary. I guess this has a place in MMQB. It has more of a place than other topics Peter gives attention to in MMQB. Oh, and I also love how Bud Selig gets ruined for putting his head in the sand on steroids, while Paul Tagliabue took steps to cover up the effect concussions had on NFL players and gets very little criticism. Isn't it obvious now that completely ignoring and covering up a problem is worse than ignoring the problem and eventually trying to fix it? This book on concussions in the NFL makes Tags look really, really bad. It's a good thing Tagliabue is retired.
Fine Fifteen
Fifteen teams placed in random order of supposed strength.
2. New Orleans (5-0). Building a 23-7 lead and coasting is great for the confidence of a team that might have to play outdoors in January.
Well, except it will be colder in January than it was this past weekend, which has a great impact on the Saints having to play outdoors.
10. Baltimore (3-2). Good win to pull it out in Miami, but this is something John Harbaugh frets about: Last year, Ray Rice and Bernard Pierce averaged 4.6 yards per carry. This year: 2.9.
It's almost like other NFL teams don't worry about the Ravens throwing the football and are paying special attention to the run game. Peter King says if the Ravens had just kept Anquan Boldin then they wouldn't be having this problem.
11. Dallas (2-3). One of the craziest games in Cowboys history. In NFL history. Showed how great, and how maddening, Tony Romo can be in one game.
Yeah, it's so maddening when he puts up 48 points and then has the audacity to commit one turnover and the Cowboys lose because the defense gave up 51 points. Romo is such a frustrating player in how he isn't very good at defense.
12. Detroit (3-2). Calvin Johnson missed the game, out of nowhere, and it showed. The Lions played like they had a thorn in their collective paw.
See, because they are Lions they don't like thorns in their paw. This is a real thing.
15. Atlanta (1-3). Speaking of New Jersey teams you like to see coming to your place … Jets at Falcons tonight.
The Jets have a strong run defense, while the Falcons have a backup running back starting with three quality receivers ready to catch the football, which means the Falcons will try to throw the ball around the field a lot while Gregg Easterbrook complains the Falcons don't run the ball often enough.
Defensive Players of the Week
Tramaine Brock, CB, San Francisco. Call him Wally Pipp—you’ll have to Google (or Bing) that if you need to know what it means.
Yeah Peter, you are the only one who knows who Wally Pipp is because you are a more knowledgeable fan due to being a Red Sox fan. I'm pretty sure anyone who follows sports or would read MMQB on a regular basis knows who Wally Pipp is. If a person doesn't know who Wally Pipp is then he/she will look it up. It sounds pretentious to be like "If you aren't quite as knowledgeable as I am then go research it."
Suffice it to say Brock subbed for the injured Nnamdi Asomugha at nickel cornerback Sunday night, and it’s going to be tough for Asomugha to get his job back after the 34-3 beatdown of the Texans Sunday night.
Quite a fall for Nnamdi Asomugha to go from one of the most coveted free agents of all-time (in Peter's one-time opinion) to losing his job to Tramine Brock just a few years later.
Coach of the Week
Adam Gase, offensive coordinator, Denver. For the smooth transition from Mike McCoy at offensive coordinator and offensive play-caller, for being able to bond quickly with a quarterback who clearly respects him (Peyton Manning), and for piloting an offense that’s putting up 46 points a game through five weeks.
Just one week ago Peter did a portion of MMQB about Peyton Manning and how he holds meetings with his offensive teammates where they can air out differences and talk about the previous game. Eric Decker explained that Peyton Manning is like a coach out there and it comes off when he runs these meetings. No disrespect to Adam Gase, but I have a hard time seeing him as a coach of the week when Peyton Manning is the guy he coaches. Peyton Manning probably doesn't even need an offensive coordinator at times.
I realize Peyton Manning can't coach himself, but he comes pretty close to coaching himself at times.
Goat of the Week
Matt Schaub, QB, Houston. It’s sad to watch the implosion of this productive player. And make no mistake—he’s imploding before our eyes. For the fourth straight game, an NFL record, he had an interception returned for touchdown, this one 90 seconds into the first quarter. It was one of three picks in all for Schaub. Though coach Gary Kubiak said Schaub remains the starter, it’d be a shock if Schaub can hang onto the job with one more poor performance Sunday at home against the Rams. Who, by the way, have a risk-taking secondary.
Peter calls the Rams secondary "risk-taking" I call them 17th in the NFL in passing yards allowed per game and 28th in the NFL in points allowed per game. The Rams have a very good front seven by the way, so one would think this could positively impact the Rams secondary.
Then Peter goes into his quotes of the week.
“Nobody says it’s a good law, nobody says it’s a bad law. But it’s a law.
Actually, the entire government shutdown is because some legislators say Obamacare is a good law and other legislators say it is a bad law. So "nobody" doesn't say or not say either of these things.
Did you see the Giants game on Sunday? They lost 31-7. And do you know what the Giants didn’t say after that game? ‘If you don’t give us 25 more points by midnight Monday, we will shut down the [bleeping] NFL!’ They didn’t say that! What I’m saying is: Wouldn’t it be nice if the United States Congress aspired to the maturity and problem-solving … of football players.”
—Jon Stewart last week on The Daily Show, urging our elected leaders to re-open the government and to stop using a budget debate to protest a health-care law some of the politicians don’t like.
It always disturbs me that many people get their political news from "The Daily Show." It's supposed to be comedy riffing on real life news, not real life news with a comedy slant. It's a funny show, but this isn't the best of comparisons made by Jon Stewart.
One thing largely ignored in the rush to say how wronged new Viking Josh Freeman was by the Bucs in the last couple of weeks: He’s been playing bad football going back to last Thanksgiving.
Shouldn’t we judge players by how they play? Seems like we’ve heard every excuse—coach Greg Schiano is a hands-on-your-throat, privacy-invading nutcase, mostly—for why the Bucs were losing and Freeman was playing poorly. Now, Schiano certainly deserves his share of the blame for a team that has lost nine of 10.
Here's the part of MMQB where Peter King defends his boy from Rutgers, Greg Schiano. I'm not sure a lot of people were saying that Josh Freeman deserves to be the starter of the Buccaneers anymore. Peter either doesn't understand the issue or is trying to muddy the waters to make Schiano look better than he does. Schiano could simply have benched Josh Freeman and chose not to do that. He chose to start a pissing contest with Freeman's camp by leaking that he was late for meetings and various other minor transgressions by Freeman were also revealed. It's like Schiano wanted to find cause to bench Freeman rather than simply bench him.
So I think intentionally/unintentionally Peter is missing the point. It isn't about Schiano benching Freeman, it is about him not simply benching Freeman and instead trying to make it seem like it was for cause other than Freeman's play. It doesn't shock me that Peter is not understanding the issue some have with how Schiano handled Freeman. It's not about Freeman's performance, it's about the pissing contest between Freeman's camp and Schiano.
But all of the blame on Schiano, or most on Schiano and some on second-year offensive coordinator Mike Sullivan? I’m not buying it. Freeman has to take his share of the responsibility too—a lot more than he’s been assigned in the public view so far. (Last week Roy Cummings of the Tampa Tribune documented a series of Freeman screwups, including missing the team breakfast and being late for the bus on opening day, then skipping two team meetings after being demoted from the starting job.)
Then bench him. Greg Schiano is the head coach and can bench any Buccaneers player he wants for any reason he wants. Bench Freeman, but stop the series of leaks revealing Freeman's minor transgressions because it looks like (whether it is true or not) you are trying to personally ruin Freeman rather than just benching him. That's the issue with Schiano. All of Freeman's screwups became public and it looked like Schiano was using these as the reason he benched Freeman.
Then, to further illustrate he doesn't understand why some people are very critical of Greg Schiano's handling of Josh Freeman, Peter illustrates how bad Josh Freeman has been. Great, he should be benched for cause, and don't allow screwups like missed team breakfasts and missed team meetings to get out. It looks like Schiano is making it personal for why he benched him when information like this gets leaked.
Of the 46 players who dressed for 5-0 New Orleans Sunday, 19 entered the league as undrafted college free agents. That’s 41 percent of the roster coming up the hard way. Seven of the 22 starters weren’t drafted.
What does that mean? Seattle and New England have a boatload of undrafted players on the roster too, and it tells me those teams scout well, know the kind of players their coaching staffs want, and then go and get them. And the coaches coach them well.
Well, undrafted players are better than those highly-paid glory boy first round draft picks.
Mr. Starwood Preferred Member Travel Note of the Week
There is no moral or lesson to this story. It’s not deep, or even very interesting. It just is something that happened to a traveling person.
Is this as opposed to the countless other travel notes of the week that have a moral or lesson and have been very, very interesting? Aren't all of Peter's traveling notes not deep?
I went to Boston for Game 1 of the Red Sox-Rays series. On Saturday morning at 8:15 I boarded the Acela in Back Bay, the second stop on the Boston-to-New York route. The train was crowded already. I walked through the Quiet Car, found an unoccupied two-seat row, and sat down. The train left the station.
This is already more interesting and less intrusive to other individuals than most of Peter's other travel notes. Well, it WAS more intrusive, but that ends quickly.
A few seconds later a fellow came up and said the two seats were taken. I looked at the back of the seats, which had no tags on them noting how far the passengers were going. And there was nothing on the seat—no bag, no newspaper, nothing to show that anyone was sitting there. “You sure?’’ I said. He said he was. He and a friend were sitting there, and his friend had gone to the café car to get something to eat, and he was quite sure the seats were his.
Slap-fight!
I gave the guy a good look. Seemed like an earnest man. If I didn’t move, I was basically calling the guy a liar. So I moved, and sat with a quiet apple-eater (he had two of them on the wordless journey) for the 3.5-hour trip to Manhattan.
YOUR INSISTENCE ON EATING APPLES IS INTERRUPTING PETER'S CELL PHONE CALLS TO THE HIGHLY RESPECTED TONY DUNGY!
I didn’t think much about it.
Yeah, Peter didn't think much about it, he just wrote about it in his nationally-read column about the NFL. Other than putting it in MMQB where all of Peter's readers can read about these two guys who may or may not have saved two seats, Peter barely even thought about this incident.
“Dirk Hayhurst…COULDNT hack it…Tom Verducci wasn’t even a water boy in high school…but yet they can still bash a player…SAVE IT NERDS”
—@DAVIDprice14, after allowing nine hits and seven earned runs to Boston in a 7-4 playoff loss Saturday, criticizing TBS analysts Hayhurst and Verducci (Hayhurst, a former minor-league pitcher who had a cup of coffee in Toronto; Verducci, a New Jersey high school baseball and football star) for having the temerity to break down his losing performance.
Dan Shaughnessy would say that it doesn't sound like David Price could cut it in a large market. Unsurprisingly, Peter King says this too.
Four thoughts:
1. Price did not include his career playoff record in the tweet: 0-4, 5.81 ERA.
2. He sounds a little Crawfordy to me.
A little "Crawfordy" to Peter? Is this the same Carl Crawford who is having an excellent NLDS with the Los Angeles Dodgers? Oh yeah, that's right. Because Crawford doesn't play in Boston anymore Peter considers Crawford's career in baseball to have effectively ended the day he left the Boston Red Sox roster.
3. Good luck pitching in New York, or wherever your next stop is, David.
I'm going to laugh like hell when he signs with the Red Sox and Peter gets all giddy about this.
1. I think this is what I liked about Week 5:
a. Alshon Jeffrey, with his franchise-record-setting day for the Bears: 218 receiving yards on 10 catches (one touchdown) while the Saints spent their time shutting down Brandon Marshall.
I never thought Jeffrey was going to be a very good NFL receiver due to his lack of speed. It looks like I was wrong...this is the second time I have ever been wrong.
h. Peyton Manning’s first scoring drive: three plays, 80 yards, 50 seconds. Scoring on a shovel pass to a 267-pount tight end.
Urban Dictionary says if Thomas is a 267 pount tight end then that's (a) pretty disgusting for your readers to have to read about this and (2) I'm guessing his teammates weren't in a rush to go hug him or congratulate him on his excitement at scoring a touchdown.
The least Peter could do is leave out sexual slang from his MMQB.
j. Great blocking downfield by Wes Welker.
At least Peter isn't being vague about what he is referring to here.
2. I think this is what I didn’t like about Week 5:
c. Luke Joeckel, four days after the Eugene Monroe trade, goes out with an ankle injury. Pity the Jags.
This is the perfect time to get Tim Tebow if you are the Jaguars. He's magical and doesn't need any stinkin' blocking in front of him to win games.
f. Linebacker James Anderson wearing No. 50, Mike Singletary’s number, for the Bears. Just noticed it Sunday, and I don’t like it. It was given to Anderson in April.
It doesn't shock me. Anderson is stealing money from the Panthers and still wearing Singletary's number while doing it. He likes to take things he has been given but didn't necessarily deserve.
6. I think until I watched Terrelle Pryor play early this morning, I would have said the best spot for Josh Freeman was Oakland. No question. Raiders offensive coordinator Greg Olson coached Freeman in his first three years in the NFL (2009-11), and Freeman had a 10-6 record with a 95.9 rating in 2010, when he looked like a rising star. I think the only better place for Freeman would have been Green Bay. If I were Freeman I’d have gone to work with Mike McCarthy and studied Aaron Rodgers, signed a modest deal with the Packers through the end of the 2014 season, then decided what to do with my future.
"Plus," says Gregg Easterbrook, "then the Packers could run some read-option with Freeman and force the opposing defense to prepare for a different look being thrown at them." This is what Gregg Easterbrook would say this week, until the 49ers lose their next game, at which point the read-option is dead again.
8. I think South Carolina pass rusher Jadaveon Clowney as a very, very high draft choice is really starting to scare me.
I think Peter is doing the typical over-analyzing of a college player upon knowing that player will enter the NFL in time for the next NFL Draft.
Pro scouts don’t look kindly on a player saving himself for the next level, which is what it appears Clowney is doing. At least that’s the impression NFL people have now.
Well, NFL scouts can go pount themselves because if I am Jadeveon Clowney I am not going to risk a near career-ending injury (much like Clowney's ex-teammate Marcus Lattimore experienced last year) just so I can play for free at the college level. Why would Clowney risk a severe or lingering injury while playing for free when he can move his draft stock right back up with a strong Combine and workouts? I don't know if Clowney is saving himself for the NFL, but I can't entirely blame him if he is.
10. I think these are my non-football thoughts of the week:
i. Saw Enough Said, the romantic comedy starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus and the late James Gandolfini. Meh. Let’s just say the acting is significantly better than the story. We’re going to miss a lot of good roles Gandolfini would have played.
Who would have ever thought a romantic comedy starting Julia Louis-Dreyfus and James Gandolfini could possibly be not very good?
j. Coffeenerdness: Did Amtrak do something to the weak coffee on the Acela? Tasted a little more like real coffee and not coffee-flavored water Saturday.
Yes, they did. They made it stronger just for you. Never forget how special you are.
m. I hope Art Briles is the next Texas coach. I don’t mean to pilfer him from you, Baylor, but he’d be a smart hire for Texas.
Peter says this having viewed all of what, one or two Baylor games? Peter has stated in several MMQB's that he doesn't have time to watch college football.
The Adieu Haiku
Two a.m. football.
Surprisingly, I want more.
And I want it now.
Every week I challenge Peter to make the next haiku even more useless than the last one. Every week Peter delivers.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
9 comments Gregg Easterbrook Latest NFL Epidemic of the Week is That NFL Offenses and Defenses Are Too Complex
Last week in TMQ Gregg Easterbrook had some bizarre thoughts about why the NFL is like the NBA in that the officials don't enforce the rules (which I still don't completely understand), criticized a rookie cornerback for not being able to cover an All-Pro tight end, and generally wrote the same type of stuff he writes on a weekly basis in TMQ. Gregg also complained about all the scoring in NFL games and suggested the NFL do something about the lack of defense, then watched as a weekend of NFL action was played without a lot of high scoring games between two teams. Gregg never fails to run out of league-wide epidemics (that last for a week or two, like the 3-4 being a "gimmick" defense) which need the NFL's attention immediately and he feels feels to discuss in his weekly TMQ. This week Gregg decides the NFL is too complicated and teams that use a basic offense, like he claims the Minnesota Vikings use, are teams that will win more games here in the future. Gregg doesn't tell us how his belief that basic offenses are better than
complex offenses fits in with his belief teams that use motion and a
lot of movement on fourth-and-short situations have a better chance of
converting the first down. By next week, Gregg will have a reason why basic offenses and defenses don't work and talk about how good NFL teams are the ones who can confuse the opposing team with the complex offensive/defensive game plan they are using.
The Vikes opened 1-1, then posted three straight victories, including over San Francisco and Detroit, playoff teams from last season. What is Minnesota's secret? The Vikings threw out complex schemes and went simple.
Which raises the question -- has football gotten too complicated?
For the purposes of this column, let's assume this is true and then never bring it up again once this is proven untrue over the next week. After all, Gregg is always telling NFL teams they need to simplify their offense. On fourth-and-short plays he is always telling NFL teams they need to use motion or some other complicated offensive procedure rather than merely running the ball straight ahead for the fourth down. You know, make it simple and don't overcomplicate a simple game by using motion or any other fancy offensive procedures to get 1-2 yards. That's what Gregg stands for, right?
Offenses have dozens of formations with hundreds of possible plays. Defenses have multiple fronts, personnel packages for every down-and-distance, complicated twists and rotating coverages. Yet for all this complexity, game statistics have changed only a little in the last half century.
Game statistics have changed very much over the last half century other than that enormous increase in offensive scoring that Gregg was so concerned about last week. That was last week and apparently Gregg isn't able to remember what he writes about on a week-to-week basis. Just last week Gregg wanted the NFL to change some rules to reduce the offensive explosion of the last decade, but this week game statistics haven't changed very much. It's interesting how Gregg can change his position from week-to-week. If game statistics haven't changed much in the last half century then why would the NFL need to change the rules to stop an offensive explosion? After all, game statistics haven't changed much in the last half century have they?
Sunday, no one at all from the Atlanta Falcons covered Santana Moss of the Redskins on his 77-yard touchdown catch. Maybe a simpler scheme would suffice.
Or maybe the complex offensive play design is what caused the Falcons defense to be confused about which Redskins player to cover. So maybe the Redskins' complex offensive scheme is what paid off on this play.
Then there's the profusion of coaches. The Vikings employ 22 coaches, most in the NFL. Having 22 coaches sounds like having five girlfriends -- way too many to juggle.
But again, it is the simplicity of having 22 coaches on staff that has led the Vikings to a 4-1 record. It isn't the play of Christian Ponder or an improved defense. It is not the special teams play of Percy Harvin, but the simple play-calling (which apparently overrides the non-simplicity of having 22 coaches on staff) that has led the Vikings to a 4-1 start.
Maybe teams should just line up and play!
This is as opposed to what they do now? Teams have to practice and while teams probably do have too many coaches, the complexity of a team's offense prevents the defense from knowing exactly what play is being run and how to stop that play. The same thing goes for an offense knowing what the defense is running. There has to be some complexity or else the other team will know how to scheme to win the game.
I really hope that Gregg realizes while a team's offense or defense can be too complex, it is the complexity and unexpectedness of a team's offense or defense that can win a game for that team. NFL teams have game plans going into a game and if the opposing team does something different or adds a wrinkle to their offense or defense it can throw this game plan off. So while saying "line up and play" sounds really good, it isn't very productive without game planning and some complexity in the offense or defense that throws off the opposing team.
If Brees were coming out of college today, is there any chance he would have stuck around long enough to become a star?
Yes, there is a chance Brees would have stuck around long enough to become a star. Brees showed in his third season in San Diego that he could be a quality NFL starting quarterback. He had an excellent 2004 season and that was his fourth year in the league and his second full year starting. The Chargers didn't really have to be overly patient with Brees. Teams can be patient with a quarterback though. Alex Smith has been in San Francisco since 2005 and he is now blossoming.
The news-cycle pace of life has accelerated so much, merely in the short time since Brees joined the NFL, that today, he wouldn't have had a career beyond his third season. Brees would have been benched, or waived out of football, before he blossomed.
Gregg clearly doesn't know this, but the Chargers drafted Philip Rivers in 2004, so Brees was essentially replaced after his third season in the NFL. As I have detailed constantly, the Chargers still made a contract offer to Brees, but the Chargers did bring in Philip Rivers as their quarterback of the future prior to the 2004 season.
Stats of the Week No. 1: Bears defensive back Charles Tillman has more career touchdowns (seven) than Bears wide receivers Earl Bennett, Dane Sanzenbacher or Alshon Jeffrey.
While true, Alshon Jeffrey is a rookie who has played a grand total of five NFL games. Even though Charles Tillman is a defensive player, this isn't exactly a fair comparison when you look at how many NFL games Jeffrey has played in.
New England leading Denver 17-7 in the third quarter, the Patriots faced second-and-10 on the Broncos' 17. Tom Brady shouted and gestured, seeming to call a checkoff and making blocking assignments -- "52 is the mike!" was one instruction he shouted, meaning the middle linebacker. Then he barked a hard count, and Denver jumped offside. What hard-count word did Brady bark? "Warren!" Denver employs defensive tackle Ty Warren. Hearing their teammate's name made the Broncos defensive line jump.
Again, I am in awe at Gregg Easterbrook's ability to read minds. It wasn't the barking or tone that Brady used which caused the Broncos to jump offsides, it was the specific word he used in the hard count, "Warren" that caused the Broncos defensive line to jump. I guess Gregg believes the Broncos defensive line are like dogs who salivate when a bell rings. They hear the name "Warren" and immediately jump offsides.
I wish I had the ability to read minds like Gregg does. So we are to believe if Brady had barked "Moore" the Broncos defensive line would not have jumped offsides? This is what Gregg and his Selena Gomez notebook (the same one he writes "Game Over" in) want us to believe.
Then Gregg starts to criticize the movie "Battleship," because a movie about an alien attack based on a board game needs to be realistic as possible.
But the opening scene of "Battleship" raises a question that needs debate. Now that the Kepler probe, launched in 2009 and designed to detect other worlds, has begun discovering "exoplanets" in great numbers, it seems only a matter of time until an Earth-like place is located. When that time comes, should we send a message?
Of course not! Haven't we learned anything from the documentary film "Battleship?" If we engage the aliens then they will hide under the ocean until the time comes for them to attack us.
A space-alien invasion would seem unlikely for the simple reason that an advance species wouldn't bother.
Now that Gregg is talking about a space-alien invasion, this is a good time to remind you this column is about the NFL and football. Not that Gregg is off-topic or anything like that, of course.
Whether humanity should attempt to contact another Earth-like world is a debate worth having. This question may come up sooner than expected.
Very, very true. I don't know why the Presidential candidates are wasting their time talking about the deficit or the direction of this country when they could be formulating a plan on how to stop an impending alien attack or beginning a debate on whether humanity should contact another Earth-like world or not.
In the offseason, touts were shocked that Houston traded DeMeco Ryans and let Mario Williams walk.
Few people were shocked that DeMeco Ryans was traded. He is a 4-3 linebacker who didn't fit in with the 3-4 defense the Texans were now running. Touts were as shocked about this as I am that Gregg essentially just made something up.
Now these moves seem savvy -- Williams is giving Ryan Leaf a run for most overrated football player of all time,
But is he really giving Ryan Leaf a run for this dishonor? Mario Williams has had several very good years in the NFL, so how does that make him more overrated than a guy like Vernon Gholston or any other draft bust (which is what it seems Gregg is actually meaning when he says "overrated")? Perhaps when the aliens from another Earth-like planet contact us we can send them Gregg Easterbrook as our official spokesman. They can even have him for a few months and I guarantee they won't come back to bother Earth for fear there are 5 billion other people like Gregg on the planet Earth.
We'll know more about the Houston defense once it has faced Green Bay and New England, and once the prognosis for Brian Cushing is known. For now, it continues to look like Wade Phillips, who was a deer in the headlights as a head coach, is a master at coaching defense.
It helps that Wade Phillips has guys like Brian Cushing and J.J. Watt on his defense. In fact, the Texans defense has quite a few highly-drafted, glory boys, which is something Gregg intentionally skips over mentioning because it doesn't fit his narrative this type of player is lazy and underperforming.
With 39 seconds remaining at Indianapolis, Andrew Luck dove for a first down at the Green Bay 4. Officials stopped the game for three minutes to review whether Luck made the first down, ultimately confirming the call on the field. A call on the field is supposed to be overturned only if it is obvious the call was wrong -- if you can't be sure whether the call was wrong, the original ruling should stand. How can several minutes of multiple viewings be required to determine if something is obvious?
As usual, Gregg makes up his own standard for instant replay so it sounds like he is making a good point. A call should be overturned upon replay if there is "conclusive" or "indisputable" evidence the original call was correct. Gregg is annoyingly ignorant when it comes to things like this. There is a difference in a call that is "conclusive" and "obvious." The official was looking at multiple views to confirm the call was correct. Multiple viewings are required to ensure the call was conclusive and to confirm the placement of the football on the field. There are different camera angles the official needs to look at in order to determine there was indisputable evidence the call was correct. So the official wanted to confirm the call and also determine where the ball should be spotted. Naturally, Gregg is too busy asking questions and creating his own fictional standard to overturn a call upon replay that he doesn't take the time to think.
If replay officials are looking at the play over and over and over again, then they can't be sure what happened so the call on the field must stand. The replay review booth should be limited to two viewings of the play.
There are also different angles of the same play you ass-clown. This isn't difficult to figure out. Different angles can give different indisputable evidence as to whether the call was correct or not and good officials look at every angle to determine the call on the field was correct. Stop writing TMQ if you are going to ask questions just to be obstinate.
Revenge of the Defense: Last week, Tuesday Morning Quarterback opined that it was time for defenses to assert themselves. This week, five NFL teams were held without touchdowns. Florida defeated LSU 14-6 in a clouds-of-dust contest that might have been staged in 1962, with the winner held to 237 yards of offense.
Last week's TMQ is otherwise known as, "Gregg Easterbrook tends to write columns claiming a football-wide epidemic based on one week's worth of data and then wants us to completely forget what he wrote that ended up being incorrect."
If you can't use small sample sizes to claim a larger issue exists, then what is the point in living life?
Reformers want to limit political donations: all such plans have run afoul of the First Amendment, and they should. But maybe we're thinking about this wrong. Don't try to limit donations -- forbid fundraising by current public officials.
So how would a public official raise money for his re-election campaign? Why should an incumbent be denied the fundraising opportunities a non-incumbent has? I'm all about election fundraising overhauls, but this doesn't seem to make sense to me.
If any person or organization wants to donate to the president or other elected official, fine, so long as the donation is disclosed. But it should not be fine for a sitting president or other elected official not only to solicit donations but to do so on public time,
An elected official, especially the President of the United States, is always on public time. Even his vacations involve him doing some sort of work. So a law to limit donations and forbid fundraising by current public officials would in essence not allow an incumbent candidate for an office to raise money. This is especially true for an incumbent in the United States Senate or House of Representatives, a incumbent governor or the incumbent President who is running for re-election.
I agree elected officials shouldn't use public funds to campaign, but it is hard to enforce this rule for some elected offices. It sounds really good in principle, but nearly impossible to do in reality.
Foreswearing fundraising should be one of the conditions of holding public office. And if that handed an advantage to challengers -- good, because incumbents hold too many advantages.
Incumbents do hold a lot of advantages, and as much as I can get behind a campaign finance reform bill, I am not sure I could get behind a bill that says incumbents can't fundraise. Maybe it is a good idea, but this would only lead to a candidate attending a fundraiser but not actually doing any fundraising while he is there. The rules will get bent and then Gregg will want to create a whole new set of rules to prevent a candidate from attending a fundraiser on his behalf where the candidate isn't actually doing any fundraising.
Friday night, Pulaski won 42-14 with starters leaving the game in the third quarter. Because Pulaski won handily, Bruins starters faced only two fourth downs. The results:
So by going for it on fourth down Kelley and Pulaski successfully were able to run up the score more on the opposing team. Instead of winning 31-14, they won 42-14 (and note Gregg complains about college teams running up the score on opposing teams). Usually, these are the sort of actions that Gregg Easterbrook tends to believe are indicative of a coach who will be thrashed by the football gods. As I write every week, the team Pulaski faced was clearly overmatched so I'm not sure we can learn anything from their fourth down conversion. If the Baltimore Ravens play the Missouri Tigers and go for it every time on fourth down and succeed 80% of the time in getting the first down, does this really mean anything in terms of whether it is smart for the Ravens to go for it every time on fourth down when playing the New England Patriots? Probably not.
I avowed it is a good thing that today almost all high school graduates aspire to attend college. Doug Lippert of Babylon, N.Y., replies, "I believe there is a parallel between the rising cost of college and the housing bubble we saw burst in 2008. The reason for both is/was the amount of loan capital freely available for the purpose of either purchasing a home, or going to college. When people can easily get a specific-purpose loan, the cost of the product tends to go up. Due to the proliferation of student loans and increased demand for college degrees, tuition costs are rising at an unsustainable rate.
This same point was made in the comments last week. America already tried the "Everyone can afford a house!" movement in the housing market and it turns out everyone can afford a house, but not everyone can pay for that house. Wanting everyone to go to college is a great idea in theory.
There could be a market correction, where the cost of tuition goes down due to lenders being less willing to write tuition loans.
Not likely to happen. Colleges will only lower tuition costs if given a good reason to do so and lenders being less willing to write tuition loans isn't a good enough reason.
Unfortunately the more likely scenario is tuition will become such a burden that going to college returns to its previous status as an elite privilege. This would make a degree rarer and therefore more valuable, which would be good for well-off families but bad for everyone else."
Families who are not well-off could have their child go to a less expensive school or more scholarships can be given to students who exhibit more need for those scholarships. Some colleges already award aid based on a student's need for that aid. So colleges could continue to give more aid to qualified non-elite status students and the elite students who can afford to pay out of pocket for the balance still owed the college after scholarships and grants will do so. The idea every college should be affordable makes as much sense as saying every house or car should be affordable for every home buyer. It would be nice, but it isn't realistic.
Next Week:
A week after saying NFL rules needed to be changed because of powerful offenses, which I didn't think had any truth to it, Gregg now says the best offenses are the simple offenses. I will remember this the next time Gregg credits a complex offensive play design with confusing the opposing defense.
The Vikes opened 1-1, then posted three straight victories, including over San Francisco and Detroit, playoff teams from last season. What is Minnesota's secret? The Vikings threw out complex schemes and went simple.
Which raises the question -- has football gotten too complicated?
For the purposes of this column, let's assume this is true and then never bring it up again once this is proven untrue over the next week. After all, Gregg is always telling NFL teams they need to simplify their offense. On fourth-and-short plays he is always telling NFL teams they need to use motion or some other complicated offensive procedure rather than merely running the ball straight ahead for the fourth down. You know, make it simple and don't overcomplicate a simple game by using motion or any other fancy offensive procedures to get 1-2 yards. That's what Gregg stands for, right?
Offenses have dozens of formations with hundreds of possible plays. Defenses have multiple fronts, personnel packages for every down-and-distance, complicated twists and rotating coverages. Yet for all this complexity, game statistics have changed only a little in the last half century.
Game statistics have changed very much over the last half century other than that enormous increase in offensive scoring that Gregg was so concerned about last week. That was last week and apparently Gregg isn't able to remember what he writes about on a week-to-week basis. Just last week Gregg wanted the NFL to change some rules to reduce the offensive explosion of the last decade, but this week game statistics haven't changed very much. It's interesting how Gregg can change his position from week-to-week. If game statistics haven't changed much in the last half century then why would the NFL need to change the rules to stop an offensive explosion? After all, game statistics haven't changed much in the last half century have they?
Sunday, no one at all from the Atlanta Falcons covered Santana Moss of the Redskins on his 77-yard touchdown catch. Maybe a simpler scheme would suffice.
Or maybe the complex offensive play design is what caused the Falcons defense to be confused about which Redskins player to cover. So maybe the Redskins' complex offensive scheme is what paid off on this play.
Then there's the profusion of coaches. The Vikings employ 22 coaches, most in the NFL. Having 22 coaches sounds like having five girlfriends -- way too many to juggle.
But again, it is the simplicity of having 22 coaches on staff that has led the Vikings to a 4-1 record. It isn't the play of Christian Ponder or an improved defense. It is not the special teams play of Percy Harvin, but the simple play-calling (which apparently overrides the non-simplicity of having 22 coaches on staff) that has led the Vikings to a 4-1 start.
Maybe teams should just line up and play!
This is as opposed to what they do now? Teams have to practice and while teams probably do have too many coaches, the complexity of a team's offense prevents the defense from knowing exactly what play is being run and how to stop that play. The same thing goes for an offense knowing what the defense is running. There has to be some complexity or else the other team will know how to scheme to win the game.
I really hope that Gregg realizes while a team's offense or defense can be too complex, it is the complexity and unexpectedness of a team's offense or defense that can win a game for that team. NFL teams have game plans going into a game and if the opposing team does something different or adds a wrinkle to their offense or defense it can throw this game plan off. So while saying "line up and play" sounds really good, it isn't very productive without game planning and some complexity in the offense or defense that throws off the opposing team.
If Brees were coming out of college today, is there any chance he would have stuck around long enough to become a star?
Yes, there is a chance Brees would have stuck around long enough to become a star. Brees showed in his third season in San Diego that he could be a quality NFL starting quarterback. He had an excellent 2004 season and that was his fourth year in the league and his second full year starting. The Chargers didn't really have to be overly patient with Brees. Teams can be patient with a quarterback though. Alex Smith has been in San Francisco since 2005 and he is now blossoming.
The news-cycle pace of life has accelerated so much, merely in the short time since Brees joined the NFL, that today, he wouldn't have had a career beyond his third season. Brees would have been benched, or waived out of football, before he blossomed.
Gregg clearly doesn't know this, but the Chargers drafted Philip Rivers in 2004, so Brees was essentially replaced after his third season in the NFL. As I have detailed constantly, the Chargers still made a contract offer to Brees, but the Chargers did bring in Philip Rivers as their quarterback of the future prior to the 2004 season.
Stats of the Week No. 1: Bears defensive back Charles Tillman has more career touchdowns (seven) than Bears wide receivers Earl Bennett, Dane Sanzenbacher or Alshon Jeffrey.
While true, Alshon Jeffrey is a rookie who has played a grand total of five NFL games. Even though Charles Tillman is a defensive player, this isn't exactly a fair comparison when you look at how many NFL games Jeffrey has played in.
New England leading Denver 17-7 in the third quarter, the Patriots faced second-and-10 on the Broncos' 17. Tom Brady shouted and gestured, seeming to call a checkoff and making blocking assignments -- "52 is the mike!" was one instruction he shouted, meaning the middle linebacker. Then he barked a hard count, and Denver jumped offside. What hard-count word did Brady bark? "Warren!" Denver employs defensive tackle Ty Warren. Hearing their teammate's name made the Broncos defensive line jump.
Again, I am in awe at Gregg Easterbrook's ability to read minds. It wasn't the barking or tone that Brady used which caused the Broncos to jump offsides, it was the specific word he used in the hard count, "Warren" that caused the Broncos defensive line to jump. I guess Gregg believes the Broncos defensive line are like dogs who salivate when a bell rings. They hear the name "Warren" and immediately jump offsides.
I wish I had the ability to read minds like Gregg does. So we are to believe if Brady had barked "Moore" the Broncos defensive line would not have jumped offsides? This is what Gregg and his Selena Gomez notebook (the same one he writes "Game Over" in) want us to believe.
Then Gregg starts to criticize the movie "Battleship," because a movie about an alien attack based on a board game needs to be realistic as possible.
But the opening scene of "Battleship" raises a question that needs debate. Now that the Kepler probe, launched in 2009 and designed to detect other worlds, has begun discovering "exoplanets" in great numbers, it seems only a matter of time until an Earth-like place is located. When that time comes, should we send a message?
Of course not! Haven't we learned anything from the documentary film "Battleship?" If we engage the aliens then they will hide under the ocean until the time comes for them to attack us.
A space-alien invasion would seem unlikely for the simple reason that an advance species wouldn't bother.
Now that Gregg is talking about a space-alien invasion, this is a good time to remind you this column is about the NFL and football. Not that Gregg is off-topic or anything like that, of course.
Whether humanity should attempt to contact another Earth-like world is a debate worth having. This question may come up sooner than expected.
Very, very true. I don't know why the Presidential candidates are wasting their time talking about the deficit or the direction of this country when they could be formulating a plan on how to stop an impending alien attack or beginning a debate on whether humanity should contact another Earth-like world or not.
In the offseason, touts were shocked that Houston traded DeMeco Ryans and let Mario Williams walk.
Few people were shocked that DeMeco Ryans was traded. He is a 4-3 linebacker who didn't fit in with the 3-4 defense the Texans were now running. Touts were as shocked about this as I am that Gregg essentially just made something up.
Now these moves seem savvy -- Williams is giving Ryan Leaf a run for most overrated football player of all time,
But is he really giving Ryan Leaf a run for this dishonor? Mario Williams has had several very good years in the NFL, so how does that make him more overrated than a guy like Vernon Gholston or any other draft bust (which is what it seems Gregg is actually meaning when he says "overrated")? Perhaps when the aliens from another Earth-like planet contact us we can send them Gregg Easterbrook as our official spokesman. They can even have him for a few months and I guarantee they won't come back to bother Earth for fear there are 5 billion other people like Gregg on the planet Earth.
We'll know more about the Houston defense once it has faced Green Bay and New England, and once the prognosis for Brian Cushing is known. For now, it continues to look like Wade Phillips, who was a deer in the headlights as a head coach, is a master at coaching defense.
It helps that Wade Phillips has guys like Brian Cushing and J.J. Watt on his defense. In fact, the Texans defense has quite a few highly-drafted, glory boys, which is something Gregg intentionally skips over mentioning because it doesn't fit his narrative this type of player is lazy and underperforming.
With 39 seconds remaining at Indianapolis, Andrew Luck dove for a first down at the Green Bay 4. Officials stopped the game for three minutes to review whether Luck made the first down, ultimately confirming the call on the field. A call on the field is supposed to be overturned only if it is obvious the call was wrong -- if you can't be sure whether the call was wrong, the original ruling should stand. How can several minutes of multiple viewings be required to determine if something is obvious?
As usual, Gregg makes up his own standard for instant replay so it sounds like he is making a good point. A call should be overturned upon replay if there is "conclusive" or "indisputable" evidence the original call was correct. Gregg is annoyingly ignorant when it comes to things like this. There is a difference in a call that is "conclusive" and "obvious." The official was looking at multiple views to confirm the call was correct. Multiple viewings are required to ensure the call was conclusive and to confirm the placement of the football on the field. There are different camera angles the official needs to look at in order to determine there was indisputable evidence the call was correct. So the official wanted to confirm the call and also determine where the ball should be spotted. Naturally, Gregg is too busy asking questions and creating his own fictional standard to overturn a call upon replay that he doesn't take the time to think.
If replay officials are looking at the play over and over and over again, then they can't be sure what happened so the call on the field must stand. The replay review booth should be limited to two viewings of the play.
There are also different angles of the same play you ass-clown. This isn't difficult to figure out. Different angles can give different indisputable evidence as to whether the call was correct or not and good officials look at every angle to determine the call on the field was correct. Stop writing TMQ if you are going to ask questions just to be obstinate.
Revenge of the Defense: Last week, Tuesday Morning Quarterback opined that it was time for defenses to assert themselves. This week, five NFL teams were held without touchdowns. Florida defeated LSU 14-6 in a clouds-of-dust contest that might have been staged in 1962, with the winner held to 237 yards of offense.
Last week's TMQ is otherwise known as, "Gregg Easterbrook tends to write columns claiming a football-wide epidemic based on one week's worth of data and then wants us to completely forget what he wrote that ended up being incorrect."
If you can't use small sample sizes to claim a larger issue exists, then what is the point in living life?
Reformers want to limit political donations: all such plans have run afoul of the First Amendment, and they should. But maybe we're thinking about this wrong. Don't try to limit donations -- forbid fundraising by current public officials.
So how would a public official raise money for his re-election campaign? Why should an incumbent be denied the fundraising opportunities a non-incumbent has? I'm all about election fundraising overhauls, but this doesn't seem to make sense to me.
If any person or organization wants to donate to the president or other elected official, fine, so long as the donation is disclosed. But it should not be fine for a sitting president or other elected official not only to solicit donations but to do so on public time,
An elected official, especially the President of the United States, is always on public time. Even his vacations involve him doing some sort of work. So a law to limit donations and forbid fundraising by current public officials would in essence not allow an incumbent candidate for an office to raise money. This is especially true for an incumbent in the United States Senate or House of Representatives, a incumbent governor or the incumbent President who is running for re-election.
I agree elected officials shouldn't use public funds to campaign, but it is hard to enforce this rule for some elected offices. It sounds really good in principle, but nearly impossible to do in reality.
Foreswearing fundraising should be one of the conditions of holding public office. And if that handed an advantage to challengers -- good, because incumbents hold too many advantages.
Incumbents do hold a lot of advantages, and as much as I can get behind a campaign finance reform bill, I am not sure I could get behind a bill that says incumbents can't fundraise. Maybe it is a good idea, but this would only lead to a candidate attending a fundraiser but not actually doing any fundraising while he is there. The rules will get bent and then Gregg will want to create a whole new set of rules to prevent a candidate from attending a fundraiser on his behalf where the candidate isn't actually doing any fundraising.
Friday night, Pulaski won 42-14 with starters leaving the game in the third quarter. Because Pulaski won handily, Bruins starters faced only two fourth downs. The results:
- Fourth-and-7 own 38 -- pass, convert. First Pulaski possession of the game. Touchdown on the possession.
- Fourth-and-goal on the 15 -- pass, touchdown.
So by going for it on fourth down Kelley and Pulaski successfully were able to run up the score more on the opposing team. Instead of winning 31-14, they won 42-14 (and note Gregg complains about college teams running up the score on opposing teams). Usually, these are the sort of actions that Gregg Easterbrook tends to believe are indicative of a coach who will be thrashed by the football gods. As I write every week, the team Pulaski faced was clearly overmatched so I'm not sure we can learn anything from their fourth down conversion. If the Baltimore Ravens play the Missouri Tigers and go for it every time on fourth down and succeed 80% of the time in getting the first down, does this really mean anything in terms of whether it is smart for the Ravens to go for it every time on fourth down when playing the New England Patriots? Probably not.
I avowed it is a good thing that today almost all high school graduates aspire to attend college. Doug Lippert of Babylon, N.Y., replies, "I believe there is a parallel between the rising cost of college and the housing bubble we saw burst in 2008. The reason for both is/was the amount of loan capital freely available for the purpose of either purchasing a home, or going to college. When people can easily get a specific-purpose loan, the cost of the product tends to go up. Due to the proliferation of student loans and increased demand for college degrees, tuition costs are rising at an unsustainable rate.
This same point was made in the comments last week. America already tried the "Everyone can afford a house!" movement in the housing market and it turns out everyone can afford a house, but not everyone can pay for that house. Wanting everyone to go to college is a great idea in theory.
There could be a market correction, where the cost of tuition goes down due to lenders being less willing to write tuition loans.
Not likely to happen. Colleges will only lower tuition costs if given a good reason to do so and lenders being less willing to write tuition loans isn't a good enough reason.
Unfortunately the more likely scenario is tuition will become such a burden that going to college returns to its previous status as an elite privilege. This would make a degree rarer and therefore more valuable, which would be good for well-off families but bad for everyone else."
Families who are not well-off could have their child go to a less expensive school or more scholarships can be given to students who exhibit more need for those scholarships. Some colleges already award aid based on a student's need for that aid. So colleges could continue to give more aid to qualified non-elite status students and the elite students who can afford to pay out of pocket for the balance still owed the college after scholarships and grants will do so. The idea every college should be affordable makes as much sense as saying every house or car should be affordable for every home buyer. It would be nice, but it isn't realistic.
Next Week:
A week after saying NFL rules needed to be changed because of powerful offenses, which I didn't think had any truth to it, Gregg now says the best offenses are the simple offenses. I will remember this the next time Gregg credits a complex offensive play design with confusing the opposing defense.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
10 comments 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.
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.
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