Terence Moore writes for MLB.com. I always get a good laugh reading his columns, because at the very end of his columns there is this disclaimer:
Terence Moore is a columnist for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
What Terence writes is not subject to approval from MLB. Sure, he works for MLB.com, but MLB doesn't give a shit what he writes. He could do a ten-part expose on how Rob Manfred is a closeted bigot who molests children in his spare time. IT DOESN'T MATTER, RUN THE STORY! That's how the reader is supposed to see it. Yet over the past few years Terence, an avowed "traditionalist" who hates all changes in baseball post-Big Red Machine, has written about how much he loves the following: a pitch clock, the one game Wild Card playoff, the All-Star Game format, and has slobbered all over Bud Selig once before. Well, once is not enough. Terence Moore has written the all-time fluff piece on Bud Selig and it's embarrassing. These two should just get a room.
I've defended Selig a few times, because I think he's done some good for MLB, and he gets mocked too much. Considering how outright hated Roger Goodell and Gary Bettman have become, while David Stern always received way too much credit for being handed the Bird/Magic/Jordan/Shaq/Kobe/LeBron era of the NBA and not fucking it up, I think Selig did a decent as commissioner of MLB. Bud Selig isn't my idea of a good time, but I also think he wasn't one of the worst commissioners in sports either. He moved baseball forward, and as much as the Steroid Era leaves a stain on his legacy, he also responded to the Steroid Era with a strong drug policy. But still...this is just too much. Terence Moore, NOT AT THE BEHEST OF MLB OR BECAUSE HE WORKS FOR THEM, thinks Bud Selig is the greatest and he's not afraid to slobber embarrassingly over Selig while making an ass of himself.
When Bud Selig isn't walking around his longtime Milwaukee neighborhood,
stretching his 80-year-old legs while listening through his headphones
to any baseball news he can find, he is watching 15 games a day.
There is a lot to mock here. The presentation as Bud Selig as an everyman is, of course, funny. I imagine that Selig's neighborhood isn't just a regular old neighborhood like you and I live in, but one of those neighborhoods that is really a shelter for the super-wealthy with a gate of some sort that keeps the unwanteds out. Also, I like to imagine Selig is listening to a Sony Walkman that doesn't even have a tape player.
Oh, and one other thing. It's impossible for Selig to watch all 15 games in a day. I doubt he stays up until 1am every night to catch the games. Good try, but I'm not buying it.
"I'm at home, and I have a little clicker, and I have a satellite, and I go from game to game,"
"A clicker." He has "a clicker," which I imagine he bangs on the couch cushion when it won't go to the channel he wants to go to immediately.
And if Terence wasn't on-the-nose enough with his description of Selig as an everyman, he'll just go ahead and point out that this fluff piece is about Bud Selig as an everyman. Just in case it's not obvious to the reader, here is what Terence is trying to paint Selig as being,
said the Commissioner Emeritus of Baseball, sharing his routine as just another fan.
Just another fan. And remember, no one asked Terence to write this column. This was a tongue-bath that he is giving Selig on his own accord. How this makes it better, I am not sure.
Well, Selig isn't just any fan. He spent more than two decades as the
Commissioner, and he is four months into a retirement that doesn't
exist.
Walking around the neighborhood, watching baseball all day. That's not retirement? If walking around the neighborhood and watching sports all day isn't retirement, then I have to wonder what Terence believes retirement to be. What Selig is doing all day, isn't that retirement for most people?
That means Selig is far from your average guy dreaming of snagging a foul ball some day from the bleachers.
As always, it wouldn't be a Terence Moore column if he didn't submarine his own point along the way. Bud Selig is a regular guy except he isn't.
(Terence Moore a few paragraphs ago) "Bud Selig is just like a regular guy watching baseball all day."
(Terence Moore now) "Bud Selig is not the average guy because he's too important and really, really wealthy."
Selig is that guy in spirit, though.
Well, in spirit I am really nice guy who is super-athletic and I treat everyone as I would like to be treated. Unfortunately, what I am in spirit doesn't matter when I'm not athletic enough to play professional sports, I can be an asshole and I'm incredibly impatient with some people. See, what I am in spirit doesn't matter, because in reality I'm not what I am in spirit.
Selig said he has been known to get a little excited at times while studying this baseball moment or that one.
"Studying this baseball moment..." I tell you, it sounds really fucking exciting just to talk about. I love sitting in front of the television, studying baseball moments. This sounds like something a real fan of baseball would do.
"Hey want to come over and use 'the clicker' to study baseball moments? Bring the fat free milk jug too. You know what? Screw it, bring over the jug of whole milk. I'm getting a little excited. There are baseball moments happening."
"I don't shout much, but I do mumble," Selig said. "Believe me, I will do that.
I'm not sure mumbling counts as getting excited. People who mumble when they get excited generally tend to be vagrants or other individuals who are slowly losing their mind. But yes, I absolutely do believe Bud Selig will mumble when he gets excited. That, I do believe.
Other than that, I may say on occasion, 'What the heck is going on
here?' That's when things aren't going the way I like them to go."
When those baseball moments aren't going right, sometimes you just have to ask "What the heck is going on here?" I like how Terence believes he's painting Bud Selig in a positive light, but he's portraying him as the same weird, quiet guy who seems aloof from everything and everyone that he was stereotyped as commissioner.
Selig was speaking about "things" on the diamond, not in his life.
Especially not his baseball life, because that has been an intriguing
story.
Because as much as Terence wants to paint Bud Selig as a regular guy, "things" away from the field have gone pretty well for Bud Selig. His dad owned a car leasing business and Bud made a few bucks off of that. But no, Bud Selig is just a regular fan of baseball, walking around the neighborhood and watching television all day. Just like you and I watch baseball all day, except Bud Selig is much wealthier, has "a clicker," is definitely not living a life of retirement, and used to the commissioner of baseball.
I witnessed many of the middle chapters of that story, and this was when
I knew Selig before I formally knew him. If you lived in Milwaukee
during the early 1970s when my family and I moved to town, everybody in
Wisconsin knew Allan Huber "Bud" Selig. He was woven into the fabric of
the state. He owned the Brewers, and he was on the board of directors of
the Green Bay Packers. His roommate at the University of Wisconsin was
Herb Kohl, who became a U.S. Senator and the owner of the Milwaukee
Bucks. Among Selig's best friends was Hank Aaron, which made sense.
And of course Terence Moore is writing this fluff piece on Selig because he grew up in Milwaukee. It's just like how Terence idolizes the Big Red Machine and so he writes 3-4 articles per year on them.
Selig breathed all things Braves during their stay in his native
Milwaukee from the early 1950s through the mid-1960s. When they left for
Atlanta after the 1965 season, he got the White Sox to play games at
old Milwaukee County Stadium
He eventually convinced baseball to allow the troubled Seattle Pilots franchise to become the Brewers before the 1970 season.
Bud Selig stole professional sports franchises from Seattle before it was cool to do so. He's ahead of his time in so many ways.
I began knowing Selig for real during his journey from original owner of
the Brewers to acting Commissioner in 1992 to full-time Commissioner
from '98 through his retirement in January. Through it all, Selig never
left Milwaukee as his primary residence.
That's so noble of him to include Milwaukee as his primary residence and not include any beach, vacation, or second homes as his primary residence. So even though Bud Selig may have multiple residences like any other baseball fan has, he is a man of the people, as seen by his keeping Milwaukee as his primary residence for tax purposes. I'm getting the warm and fuzzies now.
Has Selig gone back to the future as Wisconsin's staunchest baseball fan?
"Well, that's the first thing people always ask me, and then they
say, 'Now you can openly root for the Brewers,'" said Selig, with a sigh
after a pause. "But I'm still careful that way."
Yes, be careful not to let anyone think the team that Selig grew up loving and used to own, like own in terms of him actually legally owning the franchise, would be the team he would cheer for when he's retired (I'm sorry, I meant "not really retired"). Can't have that. It's better to keep the people in the dark on Selig's rooting allegiances.
Before long, he did something that his predecessors couldn't do, and
that is, he got his fellow owners to come to a consensus on a slew of
issues. He also was able to do the same with the Major League Baseball
Players Association. Interleague Play. From two divisions to three, with
Wild Cards in the playoffs. A replay system, and then an expanded
replay system. The toughest drug-testing program in pro sports. A
lasting peace between management and labor.
Outside of the one-game Wild Card, which I still hate, these is a nice list of Selig's accomplishments which have led to many baseball moments he can mutter under his breath about.
"I am a fan, and I enjoy the game immensely," Selig said, adding that he was particularly fond of the retired Derek Jeter,
I mean, who doesn't love The Jeter? The answer? Minka Kelly. She is probably not a fan of The Jeter. And possibly Mariah Carey or Jessica Biel. Though no one can be sure since Derek Jeter still has their phones confiscated upon entrance to his home, so any complaints they had at the time about The Jeter will remain in those phones.
and now they have what they call "The Selig Experience" at the same Miller Park that Selig built for the Brewers.
The "Experience" opened last week as a high-tech exhibit that uses
multimedia to describe how Selig saved Major League Baseball in
Wisconsin.
This doesn't sound self-serving at all.
It features a 3D version of Selig in his old Milwaukee County Stadium
office, and the highlights include Aaron slamming his National League
pennant-clinching home run in 1957.
A 3D version of Bud Selig. Screw muttering about baseball moments, I want to see a 3D Bud Selig for a real sense of excitement.
"You know, it was just unbelievable when they opened 'The Selig
Experience' last week, because sitting right next to me was Henry
[Aaron], and right behind me was Robin Yount," Selig said, referring to
two Baseball Hall of Famers with Milwaukee connections.
"I'm telling you. I wish you could have seen [Aaron's and Yount's]
emotion while watching this thing. I do have a passion for baseball, and
if you watch 'The Selig Experience,' I wouldn't have to tell you too
much more."
"It's great to have these two great baseball players sitting there while they celebrate how I saved baseball in Milwaukee. What a great moment and everyone should celebrate how great I am."
Okay, it's not exactly what Selig means, but in a fluff piece about Bud Selig it's easy to mock how Selig seems to be celebrating himself just a little bit as well.
You ready for the money shot of slobbering that Terence will do over Bud Selig? It's basically a tongue-bath in written form. If "Open Arms" could be translated into sports talk, then sung by Terence Moore while on one knee as Bud Selig blushes and acts like he's embarrassed, then these last two sentences would be the equivalent of that song.
Actually, I've watched something better than "The Selig Experience" to see Selig's passion for baseball.
I've watched Selig.
Wow, that's an embarrassing way to end the column. I'm not sure I've ever read a person fawn over Bud Selig like this since the last time Terence Moore fawned over Selig. And in no way has Terence written such an embarrassingly devoted column because he works for MLB.com and cares to keep Selig's legacy in the forefront of people's minds. Not at all.
Though I do have to ask the following question. Is Terence saying "The Selig Experience" isn't as good as sitting there on the couch, staring at Bud Selig, watching him mutter and bang "the clicker" on the couch in order to get it work? If so, that doesn't say a hell of a lot for "The Selig Experience."
The real "Selig Experience" would be watching a four hour baseball game and then having it end in a tie while everyone shrugs their shoulders and then walks home. Later, the decision will be made in order to prevent a tie from happening, as opposed to simply continuing to play baseball until one team wins, that there must be stakes tied to the game. Then World Series homefield advantage will be tied to this exhibition game, as if the real issue was that the stakes in the game weren't high enough and wasn't simply that the game ended in a tie. Knowing an exhibition game ended in a tie and figuring the best way to solve this problem was to raise the stakes and then tie these stakes from an exhibition game to the World Series, as opposed to simply making rules stating the exhibition game can't end in a tie...now that's the real "Selig Experience."
Showing posts with label puff pieces. Show all posts
Showing posts with label puff pieces. Show all posts
Sunday, July 26, 2015
Thursday, July 16, 2015
2 comments Jonny Gomes: Patriotic, Testosterone Filled American Hero; Possibly Not a Very Good Baseball Player Anymore But Why Should That Matter?
I haven't posted an article fawning about a player's grit and hustle on this blog lately. Without David Eckstein around there is a real lack of grit in MLB. It's sad, but no one can replace the grit with which Eckstein played the game. Eckstein was a gateway drug where sportswriters wrote cliche-laden columns about how, sure, Player X isn't actually good at baseball, but he brings intangibles that can't be measured and yet they just found a way to measure them and here's how many intangibles Player X has. Fortunately, David O'Brien is around to talk about Jonny Gomes and the profound impact of leadership and grit he has brought to a Braves team that lacks talent, but apparently needs a shit-ton of non-quantifiable things that can't be measured so don't bother questioning whether the fact he can only hit lefties is worth it. Of course Fredi Gonzalez has played Gomes mostly against right-handed pitchers, but that's a different issue. Here's some fawning over intangibles, which again, can't be measured, but trust David O'Brien, Gomes has a lot of them.
When Braves left fielder Jonny Gomes ran to his position in the middle of the second inning Monday, the Red Sox showed a highlight reel on the center-field video board that featured fist-pumping, muscle-flexing, helmet-flying moments from Gomes’ stint with the Red Sox, whom he helped win the 2013 World Series.
Very inspirational. It makes me want to listen to some Kid Rock and watch all of the "The Marine" films in a row while down Budweiser cans and not giving a fuck if I get some of my tobacco juice on the carpet.
There was much energy and testosterone evident
America, FUCK YEAH!
There is just something odd about typing how much testosterone was evident when Gomes takes the field. I can't explain it. It just seems like a sort of weird thing to type out. Gomes is a perfectly serviceable player, don't get me wrong. I'm not sure he merits this type of column.
as Gomes stirred up teammates and fans with one dramatic homer and diving catch after another in that highlight package.
It's a highlight package. Nearly any player can have a highlight package put together and make it look like the player was homering and making diving catches on a nightly basis. I'm not dismissing Gomes' achievements with the Red Sox or anything like that, but his job is to hit the baseball while fielding well for the Braves. He hasn't quite done that. His leadership is important, I'm sure, but not worthy of the hero worship.
So many moments that it was hard to believe he only played for the Red Sox from the start of the 2013 season until last July 31, 2014, when he was shipped to Oakland with Jon Lester in a trade-deadline deal.
Gomes' leadership was so important to the Red Sox they felt the need to share that leadership and patriotism with the A's. Then the A's felt other MLB teams needed the opportunity to share in Gomes' energy and testosterone, so they didn't re-sign him. It's nice these teams all want to share Gomes' great energy with other MLB teams.
Gomes had that effect on Boston and Red Sox Nation, where his hustle and blue-collar attitude were greatly appreciated, along with his overt patriotism and front-and-center role in helping Boston sports teams and citizens come together –
This is a real sentence that was written. I haven't changed a word. Yes, the phrases:
-"Red Sox Nation" (all caps, of course)
-"hustle and blue-collar attitude"
-"overt patriotism"
-"helping Boston sports teams and citizens come together"
all appeared in one sentence. All this sentence is missing is a reference to "grit" and how intangibles can't be measured, but Gomes' intangibles can be measured and that's how O'Brien knows he has a lot of them.
a team that already had iconic David Ortiz and Dustin Pedroia, but quickly embraced Gomes’ fiery enthusiasm and indefatigable optimism. Along with his right-handed power and flair for dramatic pinch-hit homers.
This doesn't sound like anecdotal evidence. In 2013, Gomes hit two pinch-home runs. One in a 9-2 Red Sox win and one in a 2-1 Red Sox win. He hit zero pinch-hit home runs in the 2013 playoffs. In 2014, Gomes hit two pinch-hit home runs. One in an 8-5 Red Sox loss and one in a 5-4 Red Sox victory. So I'm seeing one dramatic pinch-hit home run while he was with the Red Sox, as one pinch-hit homer happened before the 7th inning. I'm not sure where the plural of it came from like there are limitless amount of dramatic pinch-hit homers Gomes hit, but it sure is fun to exaggerate a little bit when using anecdotal evidence isn't it?
Gomes, 34, hasn’t given the Braves much in the way of offense, batting .209 with three homers in 115 plate appearances, with a .615 OPS that would be a career low.
Ah, but who cares? It's fun to measure Gomes' contributions in terms of his actual hitting contributions until it no longer helps to prove the point of how he helps the team. At that point, just ignore Gomes is only good for hitting lefties at this point in his career and let's talk about intangibles. Those things that can't be measured, but Gomes has a lot of them. David O'Brien knows Gomes has a lot of intangibles that can't be measured because he just knows it.
But he’s hit .300 (9-for-30) against lefties, had a couple of big pinch-hit homers and made a few diving catches, including a spectacular one in the fourth inning Monday that robbed Pedroia of an extra-base hit and likely prevented a run when Brock Holt followed with a single.
Now I'm confused. David O'Brien states that Gomes had a couple of big pinch-hit homers and as of the day that he wrote this fawning embarrassment of a column Gomes had three home runs on the season. Only one of them came as a pinch-hitter and it took a 5-5 game against the Blue Jays and made it a 6-5 game. Other than that, there are no other pinch-hit homers that he has hit for the Braves. So I'm not arguing semantics, but "a couple" doesn't mean one home run was hit. It means more than one home run was hit. The reason I bring this up is this goes to how O'Brien will exaggerate Gomes' contributions on the field in an effort to make Gomes seem more productive than he really is. If O'Brien will exaggerate what Gomes does on the field, wouldn't it make sense that he would exaggerate Gomes' contribution off the field too? So there is a possibility this entire column about Gomes' "unmeasurable" qualities could just be one big exaggeration? Hence, my issues with fawning columns about a player's grit and leadership skills. It could be true, but when the author plays loosely with numbers it brings into question whether he's playing loosely about the player's grit and leadership skills too.
“What he brings to the team, you can’t quantify that,” Braves shortstop Andrelton Simmons said. “You can’t put it in numbers. You can’t explain what it is.”
What O'Brien has put in numbers has been sort of shaky on the "truthiness" front so far. So, it's probably good the platitudes about Gomes are completely non-quantifiable.
But Simmons tried to anyway.
Because, why not? That's the kind of column O'Brien is looking to write. May as well appease him.
“He brings hustle, No. 1,” Simmons said. “He’s always playing hard, whenever he’s in the lineup. A lot of energy. Leadership and energy, that’s the two biggest things.
Wow, so if Gomes brought no energy and wasn't a leader, but just happened to produce and hit the ball well...what would that mean?
Even players who might have been a bit skeptical about Gomes’ ballyhooed leadership became believers after he joined the team.
By the way, who has "ballyhooed" Gomes' leadership? Sportswriters like David O'Brien. So he ballyhoos the leadership and then writes about how Gomes has ballyhooed leadership. It's sort of a story he reports on while helping to create the story.
Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez, who batted Gomes in the cleanup spot Tuesday,
This makes me throw up. Not only is Fredi hitting Gomes against mostly right-handed pitchers, but he's also hitting Gomes cleanup.
was asked by a Boston writer on Monday if Gomes brought to the Braves clubhouse what he brought to Boston.
“Same,” Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez.
That's not a good enough answer. Fredi will provide his motorcycling buddy Braves beat writer with a little hyperbole and cliches. No column about a gritty player is complete until there is cliches written throughout the column.
“He’s a team guy, comes in every day with a great mind frame. Everybody that’s around him, he makes them better. Just the way he carries himself. He cares about winning and losing games. He goes about it the right way.
This all means very little. It's just a bunch of cliches thrown into a sentence. "A great mind frame" and "just the way he carries himself." Apparently other players don't care about winning and losing games while going about "it" the wrong way? What the fuck does all of this even mean? It's embarrassing to have these things written from a beat writer. What sort of specific information does it provide to the reader? None.
Even when he was racking up 18 homers and 86 RBIs for the 2010 Cincinnati Reds, or 18 homers with an .868 OPS for the 2012 Oakland Athletics, or 13 homers with 52 RBIs as a platoon player and pinch hitter for the 2013 Red Sox, his biggest impact still came in the clubhouse, many of those who played with him have said.
Since Gomes is hitting the ball terribly during the 2015 season then I hope his biggest contributions are still coming in the clubhouse. Otherwise, he isn't helping the Braves team at all.
First baseman Freddie Freeman said in the last week of spring training, when a reporter asked him about the team’s chances, that they believed they could win because Gomes had made them believe it.
It's the Cult of Jonny Gomes. He's like Scientology. You aren't a believer until you meet him and then you immediately become a part of the group, isolated from your friends, and unwilling to associate with others who don't think Jonny Gomes is just the absolute greatest leader and patriot in the universe.
Gomes got a standing ovation as the highlight reel played Monday night, and he appreciated it.
Well yes, anyone appreciates it when their ego gets stroked a little bit. So of course he appreciated the highlight reel and standing ovation. I would too.
“I’ve been in a couple of organizations, and I always though that was cool, when an opposing player comes back and you get the standing ovation,” he said. “It’s pretty cool, and obviously these are pretty knowledgeable fans and they appreciate the way you play the game.”
This is the type of article many sports fans hate. There are meaningless quotes from a player, cliches thrown about, and there's really no new information to be gathered. Great, Jonny Gomes likes to get a standing ovation and to be appreciated.
“I guess, maybe unfortunately for them, but I’m not here to give advice, by any means,” Gomes replied. “Lot of good friends in that clubhouse, even on the (coaching) staff. But I wear a different uniform now. I’m here to put two MORE in their loss column.
Well, Gomes went 1-8 with 5 strikeouts against the Red Sox, so he wasn't really there to do much of anything except help try and help the Red Sox put MORE in their win column. I know I'm being hard on Gomes, but fluff pieces draw my ire.
The tension level in the Red Sox clubhouse has risen as their slump has deepened, and another writer asked Gomes, only half-seriously, if he had any plans to stop by and chat with his old teammates, maybe help with some quick team-bonding like the old days.
Get these Red Sox players acclimated to the Cult of Jonny Gomes. Just one visit to the clubhouse and he can fix any chemistry problems that team may have. It works that quickly.
“I’m with another team now, the Braves,” Gomes said. “I bring my tools over to the Braves.
I'm being mean, so I'll hold off on making a comment about Gomes' "tools." He has 50 more at-bats against right-handers versus left-handers and that's not how he is going to have success with the Braves. Gomes' tools, unlike his energy and patriotism, only last as far as his playing ability will take him. So far, these tools take him in the direction of hitting the ball well against left-handed pitchers. But you can't put a price on his intangibles, which are those unmeasurable items that can't be measured, yet David O'Brien knows Gomes has a lot of them. These intangibles are probably deeply tied to Gomes' patriotism, which is important for a baseball player to have...as long as that baseball player is American of course.
They’re in a tough spot, but at the end of the day, they’re two series away from first (place). I don’t know how much panic’s going on over there. But I know we’re 3 ½ back over here, and I’m excited to be here.”
Yes, excitement. The exact opposite feeling I got when I read this fluff piece from David O'Brien. If he can't find anything interesting to write, just don't do a fluff piece. That's pretty much all I ask. I get tired of reading about how a player provides value beyond the baseball field, all while that player's contributions on the field are glossed over in favor of cliches and talk about intangibles that NO ONE can measure, yet the author seems to know how to do exactly that.
When Braves left fielder Jonny Gomes ran to his position in the middle of the second inning Monday, the Red Sox showed a highlight reel on the center-field video board that featured fist-pumping, muscle-flexing, helmet-flying moments from Gomes’ stint with the Red Sox, whom he helped win the 2013 World Series.
Very inspirational. It makes me want to listen to some Kid Rock and watch all of the "The Marine" films in a row while down Budweiser cans and not giving a fuck if I get some of my tobacco juice on the carpet.
There was much energy and testosterone evident
America, FUCK YEAH!
There is just something odd about typing how much testosterone was evident when Gomes takes the field. I can't explain it. It just seems like a sort of weird thing to type out. Gomes is a perfectly serviceable player, don't get me wrong. I'm not sure he merits this type of column.
as Gomes stirred up teammates and fans with one dramatic homer and diving catch after another in that highlight package.
It's a highlight package. Nearly any player can have a highlight package put together and make it look like the player was homering and making diving catches on a nightly basis. I'm not dismissing Gomes' achievements with the Red Sox or anything like that, but his job is to hit the baseball while fielding well for the Braves. He hasn't quite done that. His leadership is important, I'm sure, but not worthy of the hero worship.
So many moments that it was hard to believe he only played for the Red Sox from the start of the 2013 season until last July 31, 2014, when he was shipped to Oakland with Jon Lester in a trade-deadline deal.
Gomes' leadership was so important to the Red Sox they felt the need to share that leadership and patriotism with the A's. Then the A's felt other MLB teams needed the opportunity to share in Gomes' energy and testosterone, so they didn't re-sign him. It's nice these teams all want to share Gomes' great energy with other MLB teams.
Gomes had that effect on Boston and Red Sox Nation, where his hustle and blue-collar attitude were greatly appreciated, along with his overt patriotism and front-and-center role in helping Boston sports teams and citizens come together –
This is a real sentence that was written. I haven't changed a word. Yes, the phrases:
-"Red Sox Nation" (all caps, of course)
-"hustle and blue-collar attitude"
-"overt patriotism"
-"helping Boston sports teams and citizens come together"
all appeared in one sentence. All this sentence is missing is a reference to "grit" and how intangibles can't be measured, but Gomes' intangibles can be measured and that's how O'Brien knows he has a lot of them.
a team that already had iconic David Ortiz and Dustin Pedroia, but quickly embraced Gomes’ fiery enthusiasm and indefatigable optimism. Along with his right-handed power and flair for dramatic pinch-hit homers.
This doesn't sound like anecdotal evidence. In 2013, Gomes hit two pinch-home runs. One in a 9-2 Red Sox win and one in a 2-1 Red Sox win. He hit zero pinch-hit home runs in the 2013 playoffs. In 2014, Gomes hit two pinch-hit home runs. One in an 8-5 Red Sox loss and one in a 5-4 Red Sox victory. So I'm seeing one dramatic pinch-hit home run while he was with the Red Sox, as one pinch-hit homer happened before the 7th inning. I'm not sure where the plural of it came from like there are limitless amount of dramatic pinch-hit homers Gomes hit, but it sure is fun to exaggerate a little bit when using anecdotal evidence isn't it?
Gomes, 34, hasn’t given the Braves much in the way of offense, batting .209 with three homers in 115 plate appearances, with a .615 OPS that would be a career low.
Ah, but who cares? It's fun to measure Gomes' contributions in terms of his actual hitting contributions until it no longer helps to prove the point of how he helps the team. At that point, just ignore Gomes is only good for hitting lefties at this point in his career and let's talk about intangibles. Those things that can't be measured, but Gomes has a lot of them. David O'Brien knows Gomes has a lot of intangibles that can't be measured because he just knows it.
But he’s hit .300 (9-for-30) against lefties, had a couple of big pinch-hit homers and made a few diving catches, including a spectacular one in the fourth inning Monday that robbed Pedroia of an extra-base hit and likely prevented a run when Brock Holt followed with a single.
Now I'm confused. David O'Brien states that Gomes had a couple of big pinch-hit homers and as of the day that he wrote this fawning embarrassment of a column Gomes had three home runs on the season. Only one of them came as a pinch-hitter and it took a 5-5 game against the Blue Jays and made it a 6-5 game. Other than that, there are no other pinch-hit homers that he has hit for the Braves. So I'm not arguing semantics, but "a couple" doesn't mean one home run was hit. It means more than one home run was hit. The reason I bring this up is this goes to how O'Brien will exaggerate Gomes' contributions on the field in an effort to make Gomes seem more productive than he really is. If O'Brien will exaggerate what Gomes does on the field, wouldn't it make sense that he would exaggerate Gomes' contribution off the field too? So there is a possibility this entire column about Gomes' "unmeasurable" qualities could just be one big exaggeration? Hence, my issues with fawning columns about a player's grit and leadership skills. It could be true, but when the author plays loosely with numbers it brings into question whether he's playing loosely about the player's grit and leadership skills too.
“What he brings to the team, you can’t quantify that,” Braves shortstop Andrelton Simmons said. “You can’t put it in numbers. You can’t explain what it is.”
What O'Brien has put in numbers has been sort of shaky on the "truthiness" front so far. So, it's probably good the platitudes about Gomes are completely non-quantifiable.
But Simmons tried to anyway.
Because, why not? That's the kind of column O'Brien is looking to write. May as well appease him.
“He brings hustle, No. 1,” Simmons said. “He’s always playing hard, whenever he’s in the lineup. A lot of energy. Leadership and energy, that’s the two biggest things.
Wow, so if Gomes brought no energy and wasn't a leader, but just happened to produce and hit the ball well...what would that mean?
Even players who might have been a bit skeptical about Gomes’ ballyhooed leadership became believers after he joined the team.
By the way, who has "ballyhooed" Gomes' leadership? Sportswriters like David O'Brien. So he ballyhoos the leadership and then writes about how Gomes has ballyhooed leadership. It's sort of a story he reports on while helping to create the story.
Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez, who batted Gomes in the cleanup spot Tuesday,
This makes me throw up. Not only is Fredi hitting Gomes against mostly right-handed pitchers, but he's also hitting Gomes cleanup.
was asked by a Boston writer on Monday if Gomes brought to the Braves clubhouse what he brought to Boston.
“Same,” Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez.
That's not a good enough answer. Fredi will provide his motorcycling buddy Braves beat writer with a little hyperbole and cliches. No column about a gritty player is complete until there is cliches written throughout the column.
“He’s a team guy, comes in every day with a great mind frame. Everybody that’s around him, he makes them better. Just the way he carries himself. He cares about winning and losing games. He goes about it the right way.
This all means very little. It's just a bunch of cliches thrown into a sentence. "A great mind frame" and "just the way he carries himself." Apparently other players don't care about winning and losing games while going about "it" the wrong way? What the fuck does all of this even mean? It's embarrassing to have these things written from a beat writer. What sort of specific information does it provide to the reader? None.
Even when he was racking up 18 homers and 86 RBIs for the 2010 Cincinnati Reds, or 18 homers with an .868 OPS for the 2012 Oakland Athletics, or 13 homers with 52 RBIs as a platoon player and pinch hitter for the 2013 Red Sox, his biggest impact still came in the clubhouse, many of those who played with him have said.
Since Gomes is hitting the ball terribly during the 2015 season then I hope his biggest contributions are still coming in the clubhouse. Otherwise, he isn't helping the Braves team at all.
First baseman Freddie Freeman said in the last week of spring training, when a reporter asked him about the team’s chances, that they believed they could win because Gomes had made them believe it.
It's the Cult of Jonny Gomes. He's like Scientology. You aren't a believer until you meet him and then you immediately become a part of the group, isolated from your friends, and unwilling to associate with others who don't think Jonny Gomes is just the absolute greatest leader and patriot in the universe.
Gomes got a standing ovation as the highlight reel played Monday night, and he appreciated it.
Well yes, anyone appreciates it when their ego gets stroked a little bit. So of course he appreciated the highlight reel and standing ovation. I would too.
“I’ve been in a couple of organizations, and I always though that was cool, when an opposing player comes back and you get the standing ovation,” he said. “It’s pretty cool, and obviously these are pretty knowledgeable fans and they appreciate the way you play the game.”
This is the type of article many sports fans hate. There are meaningless quotes from a player, cliches thrown about, and there's really no new information to be gathered. Great, Jonny Gomes likes to get a standing ovation and to be appreciated.
“I guess, maybe unfortunately for them, but I’m not here to give advice, by any means,” Gomes replied. “Lot of good friends in that clubhouse, even on the (coaching) staff. But I wear a different uniform now. I’m here to put two MORE in their loss column.
Well, Gomes went 1-8 with 5 strikeouts against the Red Sox, so he wasn't really there to do much of anything except help try and help the Red Sox put MORE in their win column. I know I'm being hard on Gomes, but fluff pieces draw my ire.
The tension level in the Red Sox clubhouse has risen as their slump has deepened, and another writer asked Gomes, only half-seriously, if he had any plans to stop by and chat with his old teammates, maybe help with some quick team-bonding like the old days.
Get these Red Sox players acclimated to the Cult of Jonny Gomes. Just one visit to the clubhouse and he can fix any chemistry problems that team may have. It works that quickly.
“I’m with another team now, the Braves,” Gomes said. “I bring my tools over to the Braves.
I'm being mean, so I'll hold off on making a comment about Gomes' "tools." He has 50 more at-bats against right-handers versus left-handers and that's not how he is going to have success with the Braves. Gomes' tools, unlike his energy and patriotism, only last as far as his playing ability will take him. So far, these tools take him in the direction of hitting the ball well against left-handed pitchers. But you can't put a price on his intangibles, which are those unmeasurable items that can't be measured, yet David O'Brien knows Gomes has a lot of them. These intangibles are probably deeply tied to Gomes' patriotism, which is important for a baseball player to have...as long as that baseball player is American of course.
They’re in a tough spot, but at the end of the day, they’re two series away from first (place). I don’t know how much panic’s going on over there. But I know we’re 3 ½ back over here, and I’m excited to be here.”
Yes, excitement. The exact opposite feeling I got when I read this fluff piece from David O'Brien. If he can't find anything interesting to write, just don't do a fluff piece. That's pretty much all I ask. I get tired of reading about how a player provides value beyond the baseball field, all while that player's contributions on the field are glossed over in favor of cliches and talk about intangibles that NO ONE can measure, yet the author seems to know how to do exactly that.
Friday, June 5, 2015
3 comments Peter King Does a Little Public Relations for the St. Louis Rams
I am sure everyone remembers this post and Peter King column. It's the one where Peter's agent used Peter as a conduit to essentially explain how another NFL team could sign Alex Mack as a restricted free agent and guarantee the Browns won't match the offer sheet. It was fairly egregious that Peter allowed himself to be used in such fashion by his agent. It was obvious that Peter was doing Demoff's bidding for a couple of reasons. First, read the article. If it doesn't sound to you like Mack's agent is in Peter's ear giving a full plan on how he plans to get around the offer sheet, then we will just have to agree to disagree. Second, when has Peter ever written another article where the premise is "Here is exactly how Agent X plans to structure an offer sheet in order for Player X's team to not match that offer sheet"? I can't recall another time Peter did it to this extent. Well, now Peter has written an article about the St. Louis Rams and why they are confident in drafting Todd Gurley, even knowing the running back position is being devalued by many NFL teams. If you have read this blog at all, you probably know that Marvin Demoff's (Peter's agent) son, Kevin, is the COO of the Rams. Jeff Fisher is also a client of Marvin Demoff, so Peter has a sort of double conflict of interest here. I feel like Peter has always given the Rams and Fisher more favorable coverage than deserved. It's not a real conflict of interest because on it's face, because Peter is supposed to report on NFL teams. That's his job. Buuuuuuuuuuut, Peter was in the Rams' draft room two years ago to do some PR for the team describing how they drafted THE EXACT PLAYERS THEY WANTED. Peter also breathlessly reported on the bidding war between the Dolphins and Rams a few years ago for the services of Jeff Fisher, which I am sure didn't make Marvin Demoff sad to read. Peter King has a history of working closely with the Rams organization, withholding criticism for moves the Rams, and has a history of pimping out Marvin Demoff clients in some fashion. At best, Peter is naive enough to make himself available to do positive PR for Demoff clients at times, and at worst, he knowingly helps his agent's clients out through some of the columns he writes.
And to be clear, I love Todd Gurley. I think he is a franchise back and possibly the best player in the 2015 draft. The Rams drafting Gurley was a smart move. The problem is that Peter King has a history of writing self-serving columns for the sake of his agent's clients and son. Not to mention, while discussing how some NFL teams don't care about the devaluing of running backs, at no point in this column does Peter mention the Chargers drafted a running back five picks after the Rams drafted Gurley, AND the Chargers traded up to get that running back. "Gordon" nor "Chargers" are mentioned in this column, despite the fact they drafted a running back early just like the Rams did. One would think at least a mention of the running back taken five picks after Gurley could be found, but one would be wrong. There is a reason for this. This column is only supposed to be about the Rams, as most public relations pieces only focus on the subject for one specific entity. The subject isn't about running backs being devalued and teams who draft running backs early anyway. It's about the Rams and the direction they want to take their team and the plan they have to take the team in that direction. Marvin Demoff is smiling that his mouthpiece has done good again.
In part because NFL news is never-ending, and in part because you just can never read enough about allegedly deflated footballs, one off-season story has gotten a small fraction of the attention it would have gotten during a quieter May.
The St. Louis Rams bravely selected the best running back in the draft at the #10 spot. How crazy are they to do this? This is a team that must know where it's going (Los Angeles) and how it wants to get there (luring St. Louis football fans to pay for one more season of mediocrity before leaving town). I mean, what team drafts a running back in the first round (the Chargers did this too, five spots later) knowing the position is being devalued (the Chargers traded up to get their running back)?
It's a confident team that drafts a running back in the first round, especially when that team drafted a slot receiver in the Top 10 just a few years earlier. The Rams must have a real plan of action to win the Super Bowl this year. Perhaps it's time to give Jeff Fisher that contract extension he deserves.
In a time of radical devaluation of running backs, a tailback five months removed from surgery to repair a torn ACL was selected 10th overall in the 2015 NFL draft.
Oh, so if Melvin Gordon had blown his knee out then he would have gotten mentioned in this column too? Makes perfect sense. Gordon didn't blow his knee out, so even though the running back position is being devalued, his being drafted five spots later than Gurley is not news.
And so you think one of two things about Todd Gurley: Either he’s really good, or the Rams really reached to pick him in the top third of round one.
I think Todd Gurley is really good. I would have drafted him in the spot where the Rams drafted him. My complaint isn't in the Rams drafting Gurley, but how Peter discusses the Rams when discussing their drafting of Gurley, without even mentioning another running back went five picks later. This reads like a piece on the Rams' team website and not a column from a national sportswriter. Peter talks about how Fisher finally has the type of running back he always wanted (sorry Isaiah Pead, apparently the Rams never liked you). He shades this column less in terms of Todd Gurley being drafted high and more in terms of how the Rams feel like they are getting back on the right track. It reads like a PR piece.
I like how Peter is all like, "The Rams could have really screwed this pick up. It's always a possibility. But rest assured, if this is the case then I will not make mention of it, much like how I haven't made mention when talking about how the Rams fleeced the Redskins in the RG III trade that the Rams haven't done a hell of a lot with the three extra first round picks they received from Washington."
So Peter is sure to mention drafting Gurley could have been a bad move, but in reality it's not like Peter will ever follow up on whether it was a bad move or not.
“It’s never been a big thing to me, where I get drafted, who drafts me,” Gurley said in the wake of the Rams’ choice—and the revelation (per The MMQB) that St. Louis had the rehabbing runner as the No. 1 overall player on its 2015 draft board.
I love the wording used here. The "revelation" that the Rams had Gurley as the #1 overall player on their draft board. It sounds like THE MMQB broke some news that isn't quite as exciting as they think it is.
First, a few factoids about the value of running backs:
You know it is a Peter King column when the word "factoid" starts getting thrown around. "Factoid" essentially means a false or fabricated statement, yet Peter has used it for years as if the word means "a small, tiny fact of some importance." Here is a little factoid: Factoid isn't supposed to be used in the way that Peter King uses the word.
1. Of the 13 leading rushers in the NFL in 2014, one (Marshawn Lynch) was a first-round draft pick.
I like how Peter randomly stops at the 13th leading rusher. Mark Ingram is the 14th on the list. It's a funny place to stop and there is a reason Peter stopped there. The rest of the leading rushers for 2014 were drafted in the following rounds:
2nd round: 5
3rd round: 3
4th round: 1
6th round: 1
7th round: 1
UDFA: 1
In 2013, the top 13 leading rushers were drafted in the following rounds:
1st round: 6
2nd round: 3
3rd round: 3
6th round: 1
In 2012, the top 13 leading rushers were drafted in the following rounds:
1st round: 5
2nd round: 2
3rd round: 3
6th round: 1
UDFA: 2
In 2011, the top 13 leading rushers were drafted in the following round:
1st round: 6
2nd round: 3
3rd round: 2
5th round: 1
UDFA: 1
So, the Rams drafting Todd Gurley at #10 in the first round is a risk in the same way drafting any player early is a risk. Details from the past four seasons show that if a team wants to draft a running back who stands a chance of being one of the Top 13 rushers in the NFL, then the first two rounds, and the first round specifically, is where that running back will be found. It's just how it is. Even in 2014 when only one of the top 13 rushers was a first round pick, five of the thirteen leading rushers were found in the 2nd round. It's not a huge risk to draft a running back in the first round if you want to try and find an elite running back. That's where these elite running backs are found.
2. In the 2014 draft, the first running back came off the board at the 54th overall pick. That was Bishop Sankey, taken by Tennessee.
This was an outlier draft when there wasn't a strong group of running backs. Data from one season doesn't necessarily show a future trend.
3. In the four drafts between 2011 and 2014, only one running back was picked in the top 25 of any draft. That was Trent Richardson, selected No. 3 by Cleveland in 2012.
Okay, and yet 17 first round picks were in the Top 13 of rushing yards over a three season period.
4. Number of teams that have employed Trent Richardson since 2012: three.
Trent Richardson is a bust. Can we please get past Trent Richardson and stop pretending like Richardson is THE EXAMPLE of how all running backs will perform in the NFL from here until the end of time? Instead of saying the running back position is devalued, it would be easier to just say, "Hey, Trent Richardson is a bust and so does that mean all running backs drafted in the Top 10 will be busts from here on out?"
5. Number of 100-yard rushing games by Trent Richardson in his last 40 games: zero.
FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD IN THE WORLD, STOP TALKING ABOUT TRENT RICHARDSON AS IF HE IS MORE THAN JUST AN EXAMPLE OF A RUNNING BACK WHO WAS DRAFTED EARLY AND BUSTED. PLEASE. STOP.
6. And finally: If you take the top 10 rushers in the NFL in 2014 and figure the average overall draft pick spent on those 10 players, that number would be 95, around the last pick of the third round. (That includes one undrafted free agent, Arian Foster. There were 256 players drafted the year he was not chosen, 2009, and so for the sake of figuring this average, I gave Foster the number 257.)
This number means jack shit. What does mean something is the fact 9 of the 13 leading rushers in 2014 were drafted in the first three rounds of the draft. If an NFL team wants an elite running back, better get one before the 4th round, and it's best to get one in the first two rounds. That's how it is, no matter how Peter wants to show differently.
Strangely, in light of all that, when I called around in the days after the draft about any number of topics, I didn’t hear one GM or personnel man say, The Rams are crazy. In fact, I found out that Tampa Bay had Gurley No. 5 on its board.
Obviously this means the Rams are brilliant and doesn't mean that NFL teams are idiots like Peter King who assume just because Trent Richardson busted then all highly drafted running backs will bust. NFL teams know how to find an elite running back, that's all it tells me when no NFL teams say the Rams were crazy. Just because Peter King doesn't understand how to use numbers or statistics to examine when the best time to draft a franchise running back would be doesn't mean NFL teams don't understand how to use these numbers and statistics.
Peter seems to want to paint the Rams as this team that are rebels and controversially pulled the trigger on a running back early in the draft. It's simply that they have a need at the running back position and there is a running back considered elite in this draft. The same can't be said for every draft over the past few seasons.
Andrews told teams the week before the draft that he’d put his professional reputation on the line that Gurley, when fully healed sometime late this year, will be as good as he ever was, and no more susceptible to chronic knee problems than any other running backs.
It's easy to say this when you are the only one that NFL teams go to in order to fix these types of knee injuries that Gurley sustained. Andrews seems to have a monopoly on the blown knee/elbow market in sports. He doesn't need a professional reputation as long as he has success with the majority of the athletes he does surgery on.
The other reason: NFL teams saw Gurley as the best back to come into the draft since Adrian Peterson was picked seventh overall in 2007. The comparison is interesting. Peterson is 6-1 and 218; Gurley is 6-1 and 222.
Well obviously that means Todd Gurley is Adrian Peterson. Jeff Fisher just drafted Adrian Peterson under the rest of the NFL's noses. I bet they feel stupid. But that's just the genius of Fisher.
Peterson has reportedly run a 40-yard dash in 4.24 seconds, and Gurley, who ran the 110-meter hurdles at the World Junior Championship in 2011, has been recorded below 4.3 in the 40 too. Peterson has made his living being strong enough to make the tough yards between the tackles and fast enough to hit the home runs outside the tackles. Ditto Gurley.
So the only conclusion I can come to is the Rams just drafted Adrian Peterson. Yes, Todd Gurley looks like he could be a stud running back, but let's back off the Peterson comparisons until Gurley plays one regular season snap. Of course, don't forget Gurley ran that fast in 2011 before his knee injury.
Peterson’s official 40 time is 4.40; Gurley’s estimated 40 time is 4.40.
And when have estimated 40 times ever been wrong?
St. Louis has been dying for a franchise running back. Since Steven Jackson left for Atlanta two years ago—and even before, actually; the Rams thought Jackson was declining in 2012—coach Jeff Fisher has wanted a back like Gurley.
It sounds like the Rams are a team on the rise. Next stop, Jeff Fisher's first playoff win in a decade. You can feel the tension in excitement inLos Angeles St. Louis as the team is ready to finally be the team on the rise that Jeff Fisher has always promised they would be. Jeff Fisher has always wanted a running back like Todd Gurley and he finally has him.
Fisher is a throwback coach.
"Throwback" meaning "Go back in the past to find where he has been successful, but only pay attention to the seasons where his team made the playoffs and ignore the vast majority of the seasons where his team had a .500 or losing record."
Most of the league craves an offense with a 60-40 pass-run split. Fisher would love it to be 50-50, or even 55-45 run. He likes to play offense with a back capable of wearing down defenses with long drives early in games and eating the clock in the fourth quarter.
And yet, it's taken Fisher four years to get to that point with the Rams. It must be nice to have such job security to know as a head coach you have four years to get the team you are coaching to resemble the team you would like it to resemble. I'm hard on Jeff Fisher, but at no point does Peter King acknowledge that Fisher has had three full seasons to get the Rams team how he wants it and has so far seemingly failed to do so? Why is this not a relevant point? Peter presents it as Fisher accomplishing the equivalent of a coup to get Todd Gurley so the Rams team can run it's offense how he wants it to. IT TOOK THREE FUCKING YEARS THOUGH! Why? Is this not a question that should be asked while up the organization's butt hole for drafting Gurley? What took so fucking long? It's the same thing as the quarterback position for the Rams. I feel miserable for Rams fans to have a coaching staff that seems happy to dick around for a few seasons knowing there is job security.
“Here’s what it came down to for us,’’ said GM Les Snead. “Todd, for us, was one of those once-every-few-years talents, one of the best players we’ve seen come out in a while. We just felt he was somebody we couldn’t pass up. This wasn’t about Week 1 against Seattle, whether he’d be ready to go then; we will let nature takes its course on that. This was a long-term decision.
Great, it's nice to know the team's mindset. What about the mindset of the Chargers who traded up to #15 from #17 to draft Melvin Gordon. Why isn't this "devalued running backs" story about them as well? Specifically since the Chargers tried and failed (mostly) with Ryan Mathews just a few years ago and felt the need to invest in a running back in the first round yet again? Isn't that a somewhat interesting story? Of course, painting the Chargers as rebels for taking Gordon in the middle of the first round would take away from going inside the head of Les Snead and Jeff Fisher to find out why they drafted Todd Gurley. Peter King has so much access to the Rams organization he probably has an office in the building at this point. Access is great. Using the access to come off like you are there for PR purposes is not great.
I asked Snead about the Adrian Peterson comparisons.
THE COMPARISON THAT PETER KING JUST MADE!
"So how about the comparison that people (I) are making of Todd Gurley to Adrian Peterson?"
“I can see people thinking of him at that level,’’ he said. “When you watch him, you see him run like that sometimes.”
Right, because Les Snead will say anything different about the running back he just took at the #10 spot in the first round. Snead wants to look smart and he has a national sportswriter in his lap ready to regurgitate every word he says about Gurley. What else would he say?
Mike Mayock said he likes the Marshawn Lynch comparison more. “St. Louis wants to win games the same way Seattle and San Francisco in the same division do—running the ball and playing great defense and playing great special teams,” the NFL Network analyst said. “I like the fit in St. Louis.”
Peter King wants us to know this was another brilliant move by the Rams. And in no way is this article affected by the fact that Peter shares an agent with Jeff Fisher and Kevin Demoff is Marvin Demoff's agent. It's just a pure coincidence that Peter has access to the Rams team in the way he does and consistently lets Fisher off the hook for three seasons (and let's be honest, a good portion of his coaching career) of treading water while not living up to the expectations his salary calls for him to meet.
Fisher really hasn’t had a workhorse back with some outside burst since Eddie George in Tennessee.
Yeah, when I think of outside burst I just don't think of Eddie George. His career long run is 54 yards and he averaged 3.6 yards per carry (with a career high of 4.1 (!!!!) in 1996 and 1999) during his career. I don't think of George as having outside burst. I think of him as grinding out 3.5-3.8 yards per carry. In fact, that's pretty much what he did his entire career.
But the story here is not just Gurley helping Fisher play football the way the coach has always wanted to.
Haha...I just laugh at this. The amount of job security that Jeff Fisher has is ridiculous. He's going on his fourth year and he's finally getting around to building the Rams in the way that he would like. It's inexcusable to me.
If Fisher had his way, the quarterback would be a complementary player. He doesn’t want to play a Drew Brees or Peyton Manning game—in part because he doesn’t have Brees or Manning, but mostly because he’s more comfortable playing football the more traditional way.
So is this an article about the devaluing of running backs through an examination of Todd Gurley being drafted at #10 or an article about how old school Jeff Fisher is and how he likes to run his offense?
If the rest of the NFL wants to move the chains with 40 mostly short passes every game, Fisher understands. That’s the way teams are being built. He’d preferred to win with a strong ground game, and a mashing line.
I like how Peter is speaking for Fisher. He's literally being his mouthpiece in this article. Peter is taking Fisher's thoughts and putting them into the column so everyone understands what Fisher wants to accomplish.
Now that he has his preferred front five and running back, we should see by late this season (when Gurley is back to form) if he’s right.
Yes, NOW Jeff Fisher is ready to win some football games. He hasn't had a winning season since 2008 and six winning seasons over his 19 year head coaching career, but he's ready to win some games now that he has the Rams team just where he wants them to be. It's a team on the rise!
“It’s been a long time coming,’’ Fisher said after the draft,
Oh, Fisher is acknowledging his own mediocrity. Wow.
speaking of his desire to get a back he can make his go-to offensive key. “Clearly, he was set back because of the injury, but the athletic ability, the strength, the explosion, the acceleration, the instincts that he has as a runner, and he’s also got great hands out of the backfield. He’s that complete back.
Welp, nevermind. Jeff Fisher was talking about Todd Gurley, the only running back in this year's draft to be drafted in the first round as long as you ignore the existence of the other running back that was drafted in the first round. Running backs are being devalued, now let Peter King tell you about Jeff Fisher's philosophy and why the Rams are ready to make noise in the NFC West this year.
He’s referring to the board that had Gurley as the draft’s No. 1 overall player. It’s a risk, particularly when recent history says running backs can be found low in the draft (and after the draft too).
Oh, Peter. Just give up. Running backs can be found low in the draft, but the best running backs are found in the first three rounds. All of the data supports this contention. The Rams know this and other NFL teams know this. You clearly don't know this.
Fisher might be putting his future with the Rams on the line
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Peter King is pretending there are real stakes here. There are not stakes. The Rams organization has let Fisher dick around at the running back and quarterback position for three years now. If Gurley ends up busting, which he won't do, they will just give Fisher a contract extension. It beats all I have ever seen. A highly paid coach who has consistently not provided the results his contract calls for him to provide...and yet, his job is safe.
with Gurley, and one thing is sure: He’s happy to do it.
Of course he is. This is the type of column that should appear on the Rams team website, not on THE MMQB. It's poorly researched and a fluff piece that appears to have one goal, which is to get Jeff Fisher's coaching philosophy out there and indicate the Rams are a team that's finally gotten the players they want. They are on the rise. Marvin Demoff is smiling.
And to be clear, I love Todd Gurley. I think he is a franchise back and possibly the best player in the 2015 draft. The Rams drafting Gurley was a smart move. The problem is that Peter King has a history of writing self-serving columns for the sake of his agent's clients and son. Not to mention, while discussing how some NFL teams don't care about the devaluing of running backs, at no point in this column does Peter mention the Chargers drafted a running back five picks after the Rams drafted Gurley, AND the Chargers traded up to get that running back. "Gordon" nor "Chargers" are mentioned in this column, despite the fact they drafted a running back early just like the Rams did. One would think at least a mention of the running back taken five picks after Gurley could be found, but one would be wrong. There is a reason for this. This column is only supposed to be about the Rams, as most public relations pieces only focus on the subject for one specific entity. The subject isn't about running backs being devalued and teams who draft running backs early anyway. It's about the Rams and the direction they want to take their team and the plan they have to take the team in that direction. Marvin Demoff is smiling that his mouthpiece has done good again.
In part because NFL news is never-ending, and in part because you just can never read enough about allegedly deflated footballs, one off-season story has gotten a small fraction of the attention it would have gotten during a quieter May.
The St. Louis Rams bravely selected the best running back in the draft at the #10 spot. How crazy are they to do this? This is a team that must know where it's going (Los Angeles) and how it wants to get there (luring St. Louis football fans to pay for one more season of mediocrity before leaving town). I mean, what team drafts a running back in the first round (the Chargers did this too, five spots later) knowing the position is being devalued (the Chargers traded up to get their running back)?
It's a confident team that drafts a running back in the first round, especially when that team drafted a slot receiver in the Top 10 just a few years earlier. The Rams must have a real plan of action to win the Super Bowl this year. Perhaps it's time to give Jeff Fisher that contract extension he deserves.
In a time of radical devaluation of running backs, a tailback five months removed from surgery to repair a torn ACL was selected 10th overall in the 2015 NFL draft.
Oh, so if Melvin Gordon had blown his knee out then he would have gotten mentioned in this column too? Makes perfect sense. Gordon didn't blow his knee out, so even though the running back position is being devalued, his being drafted five spots later than Gurley is not news.
And so you think one of two things about Todd Gurley: Either he’s really good, or the Rams really reached to pick him in the top third of round one.
I think Todd Gurley is really good. I would have drafted him in the spot where the Rams drafted him. My complaint isn't in the Rams drafting Gurley, but how Peter discusses the Rams when discussing their drafting of Gurley, without even mentioning another running back went five picks later. This reads like a piece on the Rams' team website and not a column from a national sportswriter. Peter talks about how Fisher finally has the type of running back he always wanted (sorry Isaiah Pead, apparently the Rams never liked you). He shades this column less in terms of Todd Gurley being drafted high and more in terms of how the Rams feel like they are getting back on the right track. It reads like a PR piece.
I like how Peter is all like, "The Rams could have really screwed this pick up. It's always a possibility. But rest assured, if this is the case then I will not make mention of it, much like how I haven't made mention when talking about how the Rams fleeced the Redskins in the RG III trade that the Rams haven't done a hell of a lot with the three extra first round picks they received from Washington."
So Peter is sure to mention drafting Gurley could have been a bad move, but in reality it's not like Peter will ever follow up on whether it was a bad move or not.
“It’s never been a big thing to me, where I get drafted, who drafts me,” Gurley said in the wake of the Rams’ choice—and the revelation (per The MMQB) that St. Louis had the rehabbing runner as the No. 1 overall player on its 2015 draft board.
I love the wording used here. The "revelation" that the Rams had Gurley as the #1 overall player on their draft board. It sounds like THE MMQB broke some news that isn't quite as exciting as they think it is.
First, a few factoids about the value of running backs:
You know it is a Peter King column when the word "factoid" starts getting thrown around. "Factoid" essentially means a false or fabricated statement, yet Peter has used it for years as if the word means "a small, tiny fact of some importance." Here is a little factoid: Factoid isn't supposed to be used in the way that Peter King uses the word.
1. Of the 13 leading rushers in the NFL in 2014, one (Marshawn Lynch) was a first-round draft pick.
I like how Peter randomly stops at the 13th leading rusher. Mark Ingram is the 14th on the list. It's a funny place to stop and there is a reason Peter stopped there. The rest of the leading rushers for 2014 were drafted in the following rounds:
2nd round: 5
3rd round: 3
4th round: 1
6th round: 1
7th round: 1
UDFA: 1
In 2013, the top 13 leading rushers were drafted in the following rounds:
1st round: 6
2nd round: 3
3rd round: 3
6th round: 1
In 2012, the top 13 leading rushers were drafted in the following rounds:
1st round: 5
2nd round: 2
3rd round: 3
6th round: 1
UDFA: 2
In 2011, the top 13 leading rushers were drafted in the following round:
1st round: 6
2nd round: 3
3rd round: 2
5th round: 1
UDFA: 1
So, the Rams drafting Todd Gurley at #10 in the first round is a risk in the same way drafting any player early is a risk. Details from the past four seasons show that if a team wants to draft a running back who stands a chance of being one of the Top 13 rushers in the NFL, then the first two rounds, and the first round specifically, is where that running back will be found. It's just how it is. Even in 2014 when only one of the top 13 rushers was a first round pick, five of the thirteen leading rushers were found in the 2nd round. It's not a huge risk to draft a running back in the first round if you want to try and find an elite running back. That's where these elite running backs are found.
2. In the 2014 draft, the first running back came off the board at the 54th overall pick. That was Bishop Sankey, taken by Tennessee.
This was an outlier draft when there wasn't a strong group of running backs. Data from one season doesn't necessarily show a future trend.
3. In the four drafts between 2011 and 2014, only one running back was picked in the top 25 of any draft. That was Trent Richardson, selected No. 3 by Cleveland in 2012.
Okay, and yet 17 first round picks were in the Top 13 of rushing yards over a three season period.
4. Number of teams that have employed Trent Richardson since 2012: three.
Trent Richardson is a bust. Can we please get past Trent Richardson and stop pretending like Richardson is THE EXAMPLE of how all running backs will perform in the NFL from here until the end of time? Instead of saying the running back position is devalued, it would be easier to just say, "Hey, Trent Richardson is a bust and so does that mean all running backs drafted in the Top 10 will be busts from here on out?"
5. Number of 100-yard rushing games by Trent Richardson in his last 40 games: zero.
FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD IN THE WORLD, STOP TALKING ABOUT TRENT RICHARDSON AS IF HE IS MORE THAN JUST AN EXAMPLE OF A RUNNING BACK WHO WAS DRAFTED EARLY AND BUSTED. PLEASE. STOP.
6. And finally: If you take the top 10 rushers in the NFL in 2014 and figure the average overall draft pick spent on those 10 players, that number would be 95, around the last pick of the third round. (That includes one undrafted free agent, Arian Foster. There were 256 players drafted the year he was not chosen, 2009, and so for the sake of figuring this average, I gave Foster the number 257.)
This number means jack shit. What does mean something is the fact 9 of the 13 leading rushers in 2014 were drafted in the first three rounds of the draft. If an NFL team wants an elite running back, better get one before the 4th round, and it's best to get one in the first two rounds. That's how it is, no matter how Peter wants to show differently.
Strangely, in light of all that, when I called around in the days after the draft about any number of topics, I didn’t hear one GM or personnel man say, The Rams are crazy. In fact, I found out that Tampa Bay had Gurley No. 5 on its board.
Obviously this means the Rams are brilliant and doesn't mean that NFL teams are idiots like Peter King who assume just because Trent Richardson busted then all highly drafted running backs will bust. NFL teams know how to find an elite running back, that's all it tells me when no NFL teams say the Rams were crazy. Just because Peter King doesn't understand how to use numbers or statistics to examine when the best time to draft a franchise running back would be doesn't mean NFL teams don't understand how to use these numbers and statistics.
Peter seems to want to paint the Rams as this team that are rebels and controversially pulled the trigger on a running back early in the draft. It's simply that they have a need at the running back position and there is a running back considered elite in this draft. The same can't be said for every draft over the past few seasons.
Andrews told teams the week before the draft that he’d put his professional reputation on the line that Gurley, when fully healed sometime late this year, will be as good as he ever was, and no more susceptible to chronic knee problems than any other running backs.
It's easy to say this when you are the only one that NFL teams go to in order to fix these types of knee injuries that Gurley sustained. Andrews seems to have a monopoly on the blown knee/elbow market in sports. He doesn't need a professional reputation as long as he has success with the majority of the athletes he does surgery on.
The other reason: NFL teams saw Gurley as the best back to come into the draft since Adrian Peterson was picked seventh overall in 2007. The comparison is interesting. Peterson is 6-1 and 218; Gurley is 6-1 and 222.
Well obviously that means Todd Gurley is Adrian Peterson. Jeff Fisher just drafted Adrian Peterson under the rest of the NFL's noses. I bet they feel stupid. But that's just the genius of Fisher.
Peterson has reportedly run a 40-yard dash in 4.24 seconds, and Gurley, who ran the 110-meter hurdles at the World Junior Championship in 2011, has been recorded below 4.3 in the 40 too. Peterson has made his living being strong enough to make the tough yards between the tackles and fast enough to hit the home runs outside the tackles. Ditto Gurley.
So the only conclusion I can come to is the Rams just drafted Adrian Peterson. Yes, Todd Gurley looks like he could be a stud running back, but let's back off the Peterson comparisons until Gurley plays one regular season snap. Of course, don't forget Gurley ran that fast in 2011 before his knee injury.
Peterson’s official 40 time is 4.40; Gurley’s estimated 40 time is 4.40.
And when have estimated 40 times ever been wrong?
St. Louis has been dying for a franchise running back. Since Steven Jackson left for Atlanta two years ago—and even before, actually; the Rams thought Jackson was declining in 2012—coach Jeff Fisher has wanted a back like Gurley.
It sounds like the Rams are a team on the rise. Next stop, Jeff Fisher's first playoff win in a decade. You can feel the tension in excitement in
Fisher is a throwback coach.
"Throwback" meaning "Go back in the past to find where he has been successful, but only pay attention to the seasons where his team made the playoffs and ignore the vast majority of the seasons where his team had a .500 or losing record."
Most of the league craves an offense with a 60-40 pass-run split. Fisher would love it to be 50-50, or even 55-45 run. He likes to play offense with a back capable of wearing down defenses with long drives early in games and eating the clock in the fourth quarter.
And yet, it's taken Fisher four years to get to that point with the Rams. It must be nice to have such job security to know as a head coach you have four years to get the team you are coaching to resemble the team you would like it to resemble. I'm hard on Jeff Fisher, but at no point does Peter King acknowledge that Fisher has had three full seasons to get the Rams team how he wants it and has so far seemingly failed to do so? Why is this not a relevant point? Peter presents it as Fisher accomplishing the equivalent of a coup to get Todd Gurley so the Rams team can run it's offense how he wants it to. IT TOOK THREE FUCKING YEARS THOUGH! Why? Is this not a question that should be asked while up the organization's butt hole for drafting Gurley? What took so fucking long? It's the same thing as the quarterback position for the Rams. I feel miserable for Rams fans to have a coaching staff that seems happy to dick around for a few seasons knowing there is job security.
“Here’s what it came down to for us,’’ said GM Les Snead. “Todd, for us, was one of those once-every-few-years talents, one of the best players we’ve seen come out in a while. We just felt he was somebody we couldn’t pass up. This wasn’t about Week 1 against Seattle, whether he’d be ready to go then; we will let nature takes its course on that. This was a long-term decision.
Great, it's nice to know the team's mindset. What about the mindset of the Chargers who traded up to #15 from #17 to draft Melvin Gordon. Why isn't this "devalued running backs" story about them as well? Specifically since the Chargers tried and failed (mostly) with Ryan Mathews just a few years ago and felt the need to invest in a running back in the first round yet again? Isn't that a somewhat interesting story? Of course, painting the Chargers as rebels for taking Gordon in the middle of the first round would take away from going inside the head of Les Snead and Jeff Fisher to find out why they drafted Todd Gurley. Peter King has so much access to the Rams organization he probably has an office in the building at this point. Access is great. Using the access to come off like you are there for PR purposes is not great.
I asked Snead about the Adrian Peterson comparisons.
THE COMPARISON THAT PETER KING JUST MADE!
"So how about the comparison that people (I) are making of Todd Gurley to Adrian Peterson?"
“I can see people thinking of him at that level,’’ he said. “When you watch him, you see him run like that sometimes.”
Right, because Les Snead will say anything different about the running back he just took at the #10 spot in the first round. Snead wants to look smart and he has a national sportswriter in his lap ready to regurgitate every word he says about Gurley. What else would he say?
Mike Mayock said he likes the Marshawn Lynch comparison more. “St. Louis wants to win games the same way Seattle and San Francisco in the same division do—running the ball and playing great defense and playing great special teams,” the NFL Network analyst said. “I like the fit in St. Louis.”
Peter King wants us to know this was another brilliant move by the Rams. And in no way is this article affected by the fact that Peter shares an agent with Jeff Fisher and Kevin Demoff is Marvin Demoff's agent. It's just a pure coincidence that Peter has access to the Rams team in the way he does and consistently lets Fisher off the hook for three seasons (and let's be honest, a good portion of his coaching career) of treading water while not living up to the expectations his salary calls for him to meet.
Fisher really hasn’t had a workhorse back with some outside burst since Eddie George in Tennessee.
Yeah, when I think of outside burst I just don't think of Eddie George. His career long run is 54 yards and he averaged 3.6 yards per carry (with a career high of 4.1 (!!!!) in 1996 and 1999) during his career. I don't think of George as having outside burst. I think of him as grinding out 3.5-3.8 yards per carry. In fact, that's pretty much what he did his entire career.
But the story here is not just Gurley helping Fisher play football the way the coach has always wanted to.
Haha...I just laugh at this. The amount of job security that Jeff Fisher has is ridiculous. He's going on his fourth year and he's finally getting around to building the Rams in the way that he would like. It's inexcusable to me.
If Fisher had his way, the quarterback would be a complementary player. He doesn’t want to play a Drew Brees or Peyton Manning game—in part because he doesn’t have Brees or Manning, but mostly because he’s more comfortable playing football the more traditional way.
So is this an article about the devaluing of running backs through an examination of Todd Gurley being drafted at #10 or an article about how old school Jeff Fisher is and how he likes to run his offense?
If the rest of the NFL wants to move the chains with 40 mostly short passes every game, Fisher understands. That’s the way teams are being built. He’d preferred to win with a strong ground game, and a mashing line.
I like how Peter is speaking for Fisher. He's literally being his mouthpiece in this article. Peter is taking Fisher's thoughts and putting them into the column so everyone understands what Fisher wants to accomplish.
Now that he has his preferred front five and running back, we should see by late this season (when Gurley is back to form) if he’s right.
Yes, NOW Jeff Fisher is ready to win some football games. He hasn't had a winning season since 2008 and six winning seasons over his 19 year head coaching career, but he's ready to win some games now that he has the Rams team just where he wants them to be. It's a team on the rise!
“It’s been a long time coming,’’ Fisher said after the draft,
Oh, Fisher is acknowledging his own mediocrity. Wow.
speaking of his desire to get a back he can make his go-to offensive key. “Clearly, he was set back because of the injury, but the athletic ability, the strength, the explosion, the acceleration, the instincts that he has as a runner, and he’s also got great hands out of the backfield. He’s that complete back.
Welp, nevermind. Jeff Fisher was talking about Todd Gurley, the only running back in this year's draft to be drafted in the first round as long as you ignore the existence of the other running back that was drafted in the first round. Running backs are being devalued, now let Peter King tell you about Jeff Fisher's philosophy and why the Rams are ready to make noise in the NFC West this year.
He’s referring to the board that had Gurley as the draft’s No. 1 overall player. It’s a risk, particularly when recent history says running backs can be found low in the draft (and after the draft too).
Oh, Peter. Just give up. Running backs can be found low in the draft, but the best running backs are found in the first three rounds. All of the data supports this contention. The Rams know this and other NFL teams know this. You clearly don't know this.
Fisher might be putting his future with the Rams on the line
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Peter King is pretending there are real stakes here. There are not stakes. The Rams organization has let Fisher dick around at the running back and quarterback position for three years now. If Gurley ends up busting, which he won't do, they will just give Fisher a contract extension. It beats all I have ever seen. A highly paid coach who has consistently not provided the results his contract calls for him to provide...and yet, his job is safe.
with Gurley, and one thing is sure: He’s happy to do it.
Of course he is. This is the type of column that should appear on the Rams team website, not on THE MMQB. It's poorly researched and a fluff piece that appears to have one goal, which is to get Jeff Fisher's coaching philosophy out there and indicate the Rams are a team that's finally gotten the players they want. They are on the rise. Marvin Demoff is smiling.
Thursday, June 5, 2014
2 comments Hey Rick Reilly, Writing a Letter to Derek Jeter's Children is Kind of Creepy
The Derek Jeter Appreciation Tour has continued for most of the summer. Along with this appreciation comes puff pieces about Jeter and his accomplishments as a MLB player. Most of these tributes are pretty innocuous and well-deserved, but then there is the occasional article where the author should take a cold shower or a brief break before posting what he/she has written. AND THEN, there are those who get very carried away writing about Jeter and end up writing something that is incredibly embarrassing. You know, those people who write a letter to Derek Jeter's non-existent children on the topic of their father's baseball career. "Those people" are Rick Reilly and it's a little creepy to write a letter to someone else's children. I ask this a lot, but I have no idea how this article got posted on ESPN.com. It's not only a bad idea, even for someone like Rick Reilly who seemingly has tons of bad column ideas, but it's just a little weird.
To Derek Jeter's kids (whenever you come along):
Writing letters to someone else's children is just a little weird. It just is. I can't argue with anyone about this. If Derek Jeter wanted his kids to read a letter about his playing career he would do it or just cue up one of the thousands of videos online of his MLB career for his children to watch.
You were born too late to know your father the way we did,
And Rick Reilly knows Derek Jeter well, which is why this isn't an interview with Jeter and instead is a creepy stalker letter directed towards Jeter's unborn children.
Don't you like how Rick is playing the "insider sportswriter" role here as if he has special access to Derek Jeter? It's almost like Rick isn't talking about one of the few sports superstars that few know anything about. Seriously, does anyone know anything really specific about Derek Jeter other than he likes attractive brunette women? But no, Rick will pretend he knows something everyone else doesn't and that he truly knows Jeter.
so I want to take just a minute to let you know what he meant to us.
He meant the Braves didn't win two more World Series in the 90's to me, so I'm still pretty pissed off about that.
He was a kind of prince in baseball cleats, George Clooney in pinstripes,
A Chris Cornell in cleats, the Neil Patrick Harris of outstanding clutch plays, and the John Grisham of shortstops.
He was humble and handsome and yet hard to hate.
Does Rick Reilly know that Derek Jeter is humble and hard to hate? I would seriously doubt that he knows Jeter personally enough to know this is a fact and not just a set of characteristics he's looking to project onto Jeter.
He was like a good magician. You could never figure out how he did it.
Dedication, hard work and talent he cultivated within himself through this hard work. Doesn't seem too hard to figure out.
He was the best player in baseball for a good 10 years straight and yet he never won a batting title, never won an MVP, never was the highest-paid player in the game.
"I'll take ridiculous observations that casual fans of baseball would make for $100, Alex."
He spoke to the media every day, yet managed to say nothing.
BUT RICK KNOWS JETER IS HUMBLE! HE KNOWS THIS BECAUSE HE PROJECTS THIS QUALITY ONTO JETER.
He never showed up in the clubhouse with a black eye to explain, a headline to deny or a photo to justify.
No, but his spending the night on the town was questioned at one point, which lead to this VISA commercial. It was all much ado about nothing, but I think it's funny that sportswriters tend to forget that Jeter did hit the town in the younger years. He was quiet-ish about it, but he wasn't quite the stay-at-home guy that writers like Reilly want to remember him as being.
"He could sense trouble coming," said his best friend, former teammate and retired catcher Jorge Posada. "We'd be at a restaurant. He'd say, 'That guy in the blue shirt. He's going to come over here and ask for an autograph.' And sure enough, 15 seconds later, the guy would be standing at our table."
Two things:
1. Since when does an autograph seeker count as "trouble"?
2. Derek Jeter is incredibly famous in New York and around the United States, so the fact he thinks a guy looking at him will come over for an autograph is simply a reflection of his fame, not a reflection of his heightened senses.
How he was loved! In a league full of bloated steroid cheats, he kept the same body, the same weight, the same helmet size.
By the way, Jeter won World Series titles and part of his legacy is tied to the team success that was assisted by steroid cheats, but let's completely not mention this okay? Writers and players point out Jeter is a winner and the ultimate champion, while differentiating him from the steroid cheats, but always conveniently leave out part of Jeter's legacy is what it is because he played with a list of steroid cheats. It's all part of the game the media plays. They manage to separate Jeter out from the steroid cheats, give reason to taint the accomplishments of these cheats, but refuse to see Jeter's accomplishments in any way tied to the accomplishments of these cheats.
In a world of my-agent-doesn't-want-me-to-play multimillionaires, he played hurt more than we know. "Most of the time, he wasn't 100 percent," Posada said. "He'd come out of spring training and tell me, 'I'm already hurting,' but he wouldn't tell anybody else. He just kept going."
I'm interested to know who Rick Reilly thinks the my-agent-doesn't-want-me-to-play multimillionaires are, but I'm guessing he can't name one.
Your father was everything men wanted to be. The guy with the $15 million Trump Tower penthouse. The dude dating Miss Universe. The man with all of the talent and none of the jerk. He was everything women wanted, too.
No kid wants to hear this shit about their father, even kids who aren't born yet or may never be born yet. Rick Reilly is writing a letter to Derek Jeter's semen right now. Pretty creepy.
The elegant athlete who loved books, paid for everything, and had a limo waiting for them when it was time to go.
He had a limo waiting for him when it was time to go, BUT BOY THAT JETER WAS HUMBLE!
The stat-heads scoffed at him, but then the stat-heads never figured out a way to measure the things he did.
Yes, it is difficult to measure hyperbole, intangibles, and anecdotal evidence...most likely because they don't exist in a way where they can be measured.
Some guys would lean over the wall in foul territory to make a catch. Jeter would launch himself over it, sometimes two rows deep. He'd come out with a bruised face, a cut chin, and the ball.
He did this once. It wasn't a thing he did a couple of times a year.
Fourteen Yankees were captains, but none longer than your father, and that includes Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.
Who is going to write the letter to Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig's great-grandchildren telling them of their father's accomplishments?
Your father was like a rooster's crow. You could always depend on him.
This letter is getting even more creepy. Now Rick is comparing Derek Jeter to a consistently performing cock. This is after mentioning Jeter's ways with women a couple of times in this letter...not that he is blurring the line between hero worship and creepy of course.
Oh, he had his faults. If you crossed him, even once, you were out forever. If he didn't get to the World Series, he would slip into a terrible funk.
Rick is still writing this column like he had a deep, personal relationship to Derek Jeter. Like he was the Gail to Jeter's Oprah. The Brett Favre to Peter King. The Lance Armstrong to Rick Reilly.
He refused to use public bathrooms unless it was an emergency.
(Derek Jeter begins to walk into the bathroom at Yankee Stadium and sees a shirtless Rick Reilly peeking out the side of it)
(Rick Reilly starts waving his finger for Jeter to come into the bathroom) "Hey Derek, why don't you come in here? I have a question for you. Maybe you could pee in a cup and prove you aren't a steroid user."
(The Jeter) "Nah man, I'm good...I was just walking down the hall."
(Rick Reilly looks around) "There's nothing else down here...and no one else down here. There's no where to go but to the bathroom. Where were you going Derek?"
(The Jeter) "I mean...I was...I thought about heading to the bathroom, but I only go if it's an emergency and I've decided it's not an emergency."
(Rick Reilly) "I saw you coming from down the hall doing the pee-pee dance. It certainly looked like an emergency (removes his shoes and socks). Come on in the bathroom and use one of the urinals. I'll be right behind you."
(The Jeter) "Nah, I don't use public bathrooms except if it's an emergency and it's not (runs the other way)"
(Rick Reilly whispers) "No one knows you like I do. We should be together."
Nobody had to yell at him much. He threw right, hit to right and did right. He began a foundation called Turn 2, which helps kids growing up in lousy situations, and he gave far more to it than money. One time, he showed up to watch a hapless Turn 2 Little League team. Not only hadn't they won a game, they hadn't even scored a run. When they finally scored one that game, he celebrated as though they'd all just landed on the moon.
This certainly sounds like a story that Jeter could tell his children himself. Not to step on Reilly's toes in this really creepy letter to Jeter's unborn children or anything.
He had this way of making you feel you belonged. Before the first World Series game at Yankee Stadium after 9/11, President George W. Bush was to throw out the first pitch. Everybody was tense. Jeter walked up to Bush and said: "Throw from the mound or else they'll boo you."
If Jeter was really helpful he would have told Bush there were no WMD's in Iraq. That would have been super-clutch of him.
Yet again, this sounds like the kind of story that Jeter could tell his children himself. So I'm still not sure why Reilly feels the need to be so weird.
He was hilarious, but he didn't want you to know it. In his final goodbye season of 2014, I asked, "Who would you cross the street to avoid?"
"You," he said.
Rick Reilly laughed as Derek Jeter stood stone-faced staring at him, being absolutely serious about his answer. Rick then put his hands around Jeter's neck and pretended to choke him in the hopes someone would take a picture of it. What a jokester that Jeter was, saying he would avoid his soulmate on the street. If Jeter avoided Rick Reilly then who would be around to tell Jeter's non-existent children about his exploits on the field?
When his body just couldn't do it anymore, it was bittersweet. Nobody loved playing baseball more than your dad, but he was ready. "I'm going to finally see what Europe is like in the summer," he told me. "I've been on a schedule my whole life. The plan now is to have no plan."
You can feel the personal connection Jeter and Reilly had. It's palpable. In fact, the personal relationship between Rick Reilly and Derek Jeter is the Derek Jeter of personal relationships. It's the best.
After that, he said he was going to settle down and have a family, which was unthinkable. Derek Jeter settling down? It was like an eagle deciding to take the bus. Glad he did, though, because genes this good shouldn't be wasted.
Plus, it gave Rick a chance to mail in a creepy column where he pretended to write a letter to Derek Jeter's hypothetical children. I'm assuming Reilly didn't tell Jeter of his plans to write a letter to his hypothetical children or else there would have been mention of a restraining order in the news somewhere.
Of course, who are we to believe these quotes from Jeter are even accurate? I mean after all, Rick is the guy who misquoted his own father-in-law.
If there was a better man in sports, I never met him. Your father was a gentleman. A charmer. A 1,000-point star.
Jeter and Rick are going to get married, get married on the top of a mountain at a wedding no one else will be invited to and then have a baseball field of children who will have this letter read to them by Rick and Jeter every night before bed.
He was ours for 20 years, but he's yours now, and I just wanted you to know how lucky you are.
I would ask how this column slipped by ESPN's editors, but I'm assuming they let Rick do whatever he wants to these days. And what Rick wants to do is be extra-creepy and write a letter about how great their father is to Derek Jeter's children that don't exist. He wrote a letter to semen. Just when you think Rick can't be more lazy and more terrible, he goes and lowers the bar for himself one more time.
To Derek Jeter's kids (whenever you come along):
Writing letters to someone else's children is just a little weird. It just is. I can't argue with anyone about this. If Derek Jeter wanted his kids to read a letter about his playing career he would do it or just cue up one of the thousands of videos online of his MLB career for his children to watch.
You were born too late to know your father the way we did,
And Rick Reilly knows Derek Jeter well, which is why this isn't an interview with Jeter and instead is a creepy stalker letter directed towards Jeter's unborn children.
Don't you like how Rick is playing the "insider sportswriter" role here as if he has special access to Derek Jeter? It's almost like Rick isn't talking about one of the few sports superstars that few know anything about. Seriously, does anyone know anything really specific about Derek Jeter other than he likes attractive brunette women? But no, Rick will pretend he knows something everyone else doesn't and that he truly knows Jeter.
so I want to take just a minute to let you know what he meant to us.
He meant the Braves didn't win two more World Series in the 90's to me, so I'm still pretty pissed off about that.
He was a kind of prince in baseball cleats, George Clooney in pinstripes,
A Chris Cornell in cleats, the Neil Patrick Harris of outstanding clutch plays, and the John Grisham of shortstops.
He was humble and handsome and yet hard to hate.
Does Rick Reilly know that Derek Jeter is humble and hard to hate? I would seriously doubt that he knows Jeter personally enough to know this is a fact and not just a set of characteristics he's looking to project onto Jeter.
He was like a good magician. You could never figure out how he did it.
Dedication, hard work and talent he cultivated within himself through this hard work. Doesn't seem too hard to figure out.
He was the best player in baseball for a good 10 years straight and yet he never won a batting title, never won an MVP, never was the highest-paid player in the game.
"I'll take ridiculous observations that casual fans of baseball would make for $100, Alex."
He spoke to the media every day, yet managed to say nothing.
BUT RICK KNOWS JETER IS HUMBLE! HE KNOWS THIS BECAUSE HE PROJECTS THIS QUALITY ONTO JETER.
He never showed up in the clubhouse with a black eye to explain, a headline to deny or a photo to justify.
No, but his spending the night on the town was questioned at one point, which lead to this VISA commercial. It was all much ado about nothing, but I think it's funny that sportswriters tend to forget that Jeter did hit the town in the younger years. He was quiet-ish about it, but he wasn't quite the stay-at-home guy that writers like Reilly want to remember him as being.
"He could sense trouble coming," said his best friend, former teammate and retired catcher Jorge Posada. "We'd be at a restaurant. He'd say, 'That guy in the blue shirt. He's going to come over here and ask for an autograph.' And sure enough, 15 seconds later, the guy would be standing at our table."
Two things:
1. Since when does an autograph seeker count as "trouble"?
2. Derek Jeter is incredibly famous in New York and around the United States, so the fact he thinks a guy looking at him will come over for an autograph is simply a reflection of his fame, not a reflection of his heightened senses.
How he was loved! In a league full of bloated steroid cheats, he kept the same body, the same weight, the same helmet size.
By the way, Jeter won World Series titles and part of his legacy is tied to the team success that was assisted by steroid cheats, but let's completely not mention this okay? Writers and players point out Jeter is a winner and the ultimate champion, while differentiating him from the steroid cheats, but always conveniently leave out part of Jeter's legacy is what it is because he played with a list of steroid cheats. It's all part of the game the media plays. They manage to separate Jeter out from the steroid cheats, give reason to taint the accomplishments of these cheats, but refuse to see Jeter's accomplishments in any way tied to the accomplishments of these cheats.
In a world of my-agent-doesn't-want-me-to-play multimillionaires, he played hurt more than we know. "Most of the time, he wasn't 100 percent," Posada said. "He'd come out of spring training and tell me, 'I'm already hurting,' but he wouldn't tell anybody else. He just kept going."
I'm interested to know who Rick Reilly thinks the my-agent-doesn't-want-me-to-play multimillionaires are, but I'm guessing he can't name one.
Your father was everything men wanted to be. The guy with the $15 million Trump Tower penthouse. The dude dating Miss Universe. The man with all of the talent and none of the jerk. He was everything women wanted, too.
No kid wants to hear this shit about their father, even kids who aren't born yet or may never be born yet. Rick Reilly is writing a letter to Derek Jeter's semen right now. Pretty creepy.
The elegant athlete who loved books, paid for everything, and had a limo waiting for them when it was time to go.
He had a limo waiting for him when it was time to go, BUT BOY THAT JETER WAS HUMBLE!
The stat-heads scoffed at him, but then the stat-heads never figured out a way to measure the things he did.
Yes, it is difficult to measure hyperbole, intangibles, and anecdotal evidence...most likely because they don't exist in a way where they can be measured.
Some guys would lean over the wall in foul territory to make a catch. Jeter would launch himself over it, sometimes two rows deep. He'd come out with a bruised face, a cut chin, and the ball.
He did this once. It wasn't a thing he did a couple of times a year.
Fourteen Yankees were captains, but none longer than your father, and that includes Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.
Who is going to write the letter to Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig's great-grandchildren telling them of their father's accomplishments?
Your father was like a rooster's crow. You could always depend on him.
This letter is getting even more creepy. Now Rick is comparing Derek Jeter to a consistently performing cock. This is after mentioning Jeter's ways with women a couple of times in this letter...not that he is blurring the line between hero worship and creepy of course.
Oh, he had his faults. If you crossed him, even once, you were out forever. If he didn't get to the World Series, he would slip into a terrible funk.
Rick is still writing this column like he had a deep, personal relationship to Derek Jeter. Like he was the Gail to Jeter's Oprah. The Brett Favre to Peter King. The Lance Armstrong to Rick Reilly.
He refused to use public bathrooms unless it was an emergency.
(Derek Jeter begins to walk into the bathroom at Yankee Stadium and sees a shirtless Rick Reilly peeking out the side of it)
(Rick Reilly starts waving his finger for Jeter to come into the bathroom) "Hey Derek, why don't you come in here? I have a question for you. Maybe you could pee in a cup and prove you aren't a steroid user."
(The Jeter) "Nah man, I'm good...I was just walking down the hall."
(Rick Reilly looks around) "There's nothing else down here...and no one else down here. There's no where to go but to the bathroom. Where were you going Derek?"
(The Jeter) "I mean...I was...I thought about heading to the bathroom, but I only go if it's an emergency and I've decided it's not an emergency."
(Rick Reilly) "I saw you coming from down the hall doing the pee-pee dance. It certainly looked like an emergency (removes his shoes and socks). Come on in the bathroom and use one of the urinals. I'll be right behind you."
(The Jeter) "Nah, I don't use public bathrooms except if it's an emergency and it's not (runs the other way)"
(Rick Reilly whispers) "No one knows you like I do. We should be together."
Nobody had to yell at him much. He threw right, hit to right and did right. He began a foundation called Turn 2, which helps kids growing up in lousy situations, and he gave far more to it than money. One time, he showed up to watch a hapless Turn 2 Little League team. Not only hadn't they won a game, they hadn't even scored a run. When they finally scored one that game, he celebrated as though they'd all just landed on the moon.
This certainly sounds like a story that Jeter could tell his children himself. Not to step on Reilly's toes in this really creepy letter to Jeter's unborn children or anything.
He had this way of making you feel you belonged. Before the first World Series game at Yankee Stadium after 9/11, President George W. Bush was to throw out the first pitch. Everybody was tense. Jeter walked up to Bush and said: "Throw from the mound or else they'll boo you."
If Jeter was really helpful he would have told Bush there were no WMD's in Iraq. That would have been super-clutch of him.
Yet again, this sounds like the kind of story that Jeter could tell his children himself. So I'm still not sure why Reilly feels the need to be so weird.
He was hilarious, but he didn't want you to know it. In his final goodbye season of 2014, I asked, "Who would you cross the street to avoid?"
"You," he said.
Rick Reilly laughed as Derek Jeter stood stone-faced staring at him, being absolutely serious about his answer. Rick then put his hands around Jeter's neck and pretended to choke him in the hopes someone would take a picture of it. What a jokester that Jeter was, saying he would avoid his soulmate on the street. If Jeter avoided Rick Reilly then who would be around to tell Jeter's non-existent children about his exploits on the field?
When his body just couldn't do it anymore, it was bittersweet. Nobody loved playing baseball more than your dad, but he was ready. "I'm going to finally see what Europe is like in the summer," he told me. "I've been on a schedule my whole life. The plan now is to have no plan."
You can feel the personal connection Jeter and Reilly had. It's palpable. In fact, the personal relationship between Rick Reilly and Derek Jeter is the Derek Jeter of personal relationships. It's the best.
After that, he said he was going to settle down and have a family, which was unthinkable. Derek Jeter settling down? It was like an eagle deciding to take the bus. Glad he did, though, because genes this good shouldn't be wasted.
Plus, it gave Rick a chance to mail in a creepy column where he pretended to write a letter to Derek Jeter's hypothetical children. I'm assuming Reilly didn't tell Jeter of his plans to write a letter to his hypothetical children or else there would have been mention of a restraining order in the news somewhere.
Of course, who are we to believe these quotes from Jeter are even accurate? I mean after all, Rick is the guy who misquoted his own father-in-law.
If there was a better man in sports, I never met him. Your father was a gentleman. A charmer. A 1,000-point star.
Jeter and Rick are going to get married, get married on the top of a mountain at a wedding no one else will be invited to and then have a baseball field of children who will have this letter read to them by Rick and Jeter every night before bed.
He was ours for 20 years, but he's yours now, and I just wanted you to know how lucky you are.
I would ask how this column slipped by ESPN's editors, but I'm assuming they let Rick do whatever he wants to these days. And what Rick wants to do is be extra-creepy and write a letter about how great their father is to Derek Jeter's children that don't exist. He wrote a letter to semen. Just when you think Rick can't be more lazy and more terrible, he goes and lowers the bar for himself one more time.
Monday, May 5, 2014
1 comments Derek Jeter Has Feelings Too You Know
The Derek Jeter Farewell Tour has begun and is in full swing, which means the "Constant Updates about Derek Jeter on his Farewell Tour" has begun as well. This means never-ending updates on what Derek Jeter is doing, how he feels and whether his last meal in Houston as a member of the Yankees was memorable or just super-memorable. Today, Johnette Howard informs her readers that Derek Jeter has feelings and he isn't a superman, but just a typical man. I think maybe she and her media brethren who fawn over athletes such as Jeter for any little thing they do might be better served to heed this reminder as opposed to being the ones handing out this reminder. Jeter is just a master of hiding his feelings, no matter how many times these brainless sportswriters ask him about his feelings. These sportswriters like Johnette Howard want Derek Jeter to open up to them so badly, it's borderline pathetic. Just give us a tear Derek, just one tear!
Derek Jeter knows full well a great swath of his legend is built upon the idea that he's superhuman when it comes to shrugging off the feelings or pressure that rock other players.
This legend was created and furthered by the national media, who feel the need to subscribe professional athletes the personal characteristics they feel these athletes should have, regardless of whether these personal characteristics are true or not. It's all about making sure the attributes the media wants that athlete to have are reflected in how the public sees that athlete. That's why the downfall of an athlete like Tiger Woods or Lance Armstrong is met with such vitriol and shock, because the attributes the media has subscribed to them are not seen as being true anymore. Armstrong is a cheat who dragged other people down in his efforts to continue cheating, while Tiger Woods isn't a family man who is dedicated to his lovely model wife. Woods' competitive nature apparently extended to off the golf course where he tried to have as many mistresses as possible, while Armstrong's competitive nature led him to using PED's. Those aren't the attributes the media had subscribed to these two athletes though.
So it was interesting that Jeter took great pains to make something clear before he took the field Monday for his last Opening Day at Yankee Stadium.
Derek Jeter stated something of substance! Quick, let's report on it and over analyze what he said!
He was asked twice about the assumption that the fanfare around his season-long goodbye tour would be a pain, not a joy, for him. And it seemed uncharacteristically important for Jeter to correct public opinion.
He's probably tired of being asked about it. I'm annoyed with all the stupid questions about whether he enjoys the fanfare so I can only imagine how he feels.
"The perception is wrong -- I will enjoy it," Jeter said. "Every city I go to, every game I play, I will enjoy it. So what they think, how they 'think' I feel, they're wrong on that one. But at the same time, I get the fact that I have to play a game,
Now Johnette Howard must immediately parse out what Jeter REALLY means in making this statement. Much like how Bob Klapisch took comments Jeter made about PED's in the way he wanted to perceive these comments in order to make Jeter an anti-PED's poster boy, Johnette Howard tells us what Jeter really means in order to inform us that Jeter has feelings and describe what Jeter is really meaning to say. Because, his comments can't just stand alone, they have to have a deeper meaning other than "I enjoy the farewell tour and will miss baseball."
It was Jeter's roundabout way of telling people not to underestimate how much he loves baseball or how badly he's going to actually miss playing, even if he hasn't yet wiped away a tear.
Oh, is that what he was saying? Because it sort of sounded like Jeter was saying, "People think they know how I feel but they are wrong. I try to focus on playing the game." The irony that Jeter's statement was basically saying other people think they know how he feels and Johnette Howard is currently stating that she knows how he feels is too much for me. Howard is parsing what Jeter was really saying by ignoring what Jeter was really saying and doing exactly what Jeter states "people" are doing. I might pass out from this irony.
He's smart enough to know that every day marks more steps in his long goodbye.
But Johnette Howard isn't smart enough to know that she's doing exactly what Derek Jeter has stated sportswriters tend to do by assuming they know how he feels.
It was the last first day of hearing the Bleacher Creatures call out his name -- just a little louder than usual -- during roll call.
"The last first day." Not that this year is going to be interminable with the countdown to Jeter's final game or anything.
It was seeing Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera walk out in street clothes for the ceremonial first pitch to honor him, struck by the sight of him being the last of them still in uniform -- another reminder of the passage of time.
These are all things that Derek Jeter feels because this is how Johnette Howard would like to believe this is how Derek Jeter feels.
And it was the sight of Jeter at the pregame news conference microphone, patiently listening to someone remind him how Joe Torre, his longest big league manager, told him not to let success go to his head after he had a terrific season and won his first World Series in their first season together.
And Jeter did not let success go to his head. He upgraded the quality of the attractive brunette he dated and that's the only big change Jeter made after winning his first World Series. Well, there was also that whole situation where George Steinbrenner thought Jeter was staying out too late at the clubs and not focused enough on the Yankees, but that's to be forgotten during the farewell tour. Only good memories allowed.
Smirking a little now, Jeter cracked, "Well, the part of the story you're missing is that I told him the same thing: 'We won a championship, you had a great year managing. Don't screw it up after this.'"
Please Johnette Howard, translate what Jeter actually meant when he said this. We must know.
But Orioles manager Buck Showalter, the Yanks' manager the first year Jeter arrived in the big leagues, put a lot into perspective before Jeter went 1-for-4 in the Yankees' 4-2 win over Baltimore. Like current Yankees manager Joe Girardi (who said, no, he didn't look at Jeter the rookie way back when and just know he'd get 3,000 hits), Showalter scoffed prior to Monday's game about "these scouts who say, 'I knew exactly what he [Jeter] was going to be.'"
Buck Showalter looks like he scoffs at least 30 times per day, so I'm not sure this really means something.
But as for how Jeter did turn out, Showalter deadpanned, "We're excited to see him retire. Same as Mo." Was he happy to be here for such a memorable occasion?
No, he's not happy at all. "Fuck Derek Jeter," says Buck Showalter. Showalter has no interest in being there for this occasion. Great question. This reader feels more informed.
Another Showalter wisecrack: "I'd rather him not be playing today. I mean, seriously. It's like your grandmother making you go out and get switches to whip your own butt with."
Great point. My grandmother always shops for her own switches and would never trust me to go get a switch at Target that would be used to whip my own butt. I would just choose the Switch-o-matic 3001 which has the rubber grip but a soft coating around the actual part of the switch used to beat my ass. That switch is useless when it comes to teaching me a lesson.
And everyone laughed.
Heartily? Did everyone laugh heartily?
But Showalter's overarching point was an important one: To take for granted that Jeter was always destined to become great ignores the rest.
So basically this entire column about Jeter having feelings is really about Johnette Howard wanting to do the typical cookie-cutter fluff piece on Jeter. Great.
It wasn't dumb luck that made Jeter great. Nor was it some total absence of what Jeter called "nerves" or "butterflies" in the "wow moments" of his career. Rather, Jeter emphasized Monday, it was that he felt all of that, but "I hide it well."
WHAT DOES JETER REALLY MEAN BY THIS? TELL US JOHNETTE HOWARD!
"You know, I came up in a culture where you were never promised a job," Jeter reminded everybody. "We had to perform in order to keep our job.
Which differs from today's environment how again? I didn't realize baseball players, especially rookie prospects, were promised jobs without earning those jobs. I must have missed this happening.
That's the mindset that we had going into every season. ... If you didn't do your job, The Boss would get rid of you. So every spring training, every offseason, we trained and prepared.
Again, how is this different from today's game again? I must be missing something. Perhaps this is why Derek Jeter doesn't say much all the time, because if he did then what he did say would sound like the typical cliches coming from an athlete.
There are folks who wonder if a star as big as Jeter can really be as grounded as all that sounds. Him, have to win a job?
Jeter is talking about when he was a rookie, not talking about right now, you dipshit. Jeter wasn't a big star prior to his first season when he had to fight to win a job. It's like Johnette Howard isn't even listening to what Jeter is saying, probably because she KNOWS what Jeter really means.
Not invoking his superstar privilege Monday when confronted with repeated questions about initially not running hard out of the box in the fifth inning when a ball he hammered down the left-field line turned out to be a double off the wall, not the home run he thought it was?
That's probably because the media didn't batter him into the ground for not hustling because they are too busy deciphering what he really means whenever he speaks and asking the same questions about how it feels to be retiring after this season.
Rather than preen like a sacred cow, Jeter instead acknowledged he screwed up with a series of droll jokes -- each of them funnier than the last.
It seems Robinson Cano's downfall was that he didn't know any jokes. If he knew jokes, the New York media would have totally laid off him for not hustling every time ran to first base. Tell jokes, make the people happy so they lay off you. That's apparently the rule.
The best one? Responding to an unrelated question about whether it's going to be awkward to see fans applaud him just for grounding into a double play. Jeter circled back to the ribbing for having to leg out the double and dryly cracked, "Maybe they were cheering for me hustling."
Oh Jetes, you kidder! Let's all have a good laugh, go get a drink and hope the 40,000th question about his retirement will get Derek Jeter to cry a little. THE SEASON DOESN'T END UNTIL THE JETER IS CRYING LIKE A BABY!
But Jeter has said self-deprecating things like that forever. And it's hard to fake being something you're not for 20 years.
Which is why Jeter is clearly a robot without feelings, despite Howard's protestations to the contrary. For 20 years Jeter has been an unemotional robot. It can't be an act. He must really be a robot who has no emotions. I'm just glad Johnette Howard has gotten to the bottom of this issue and this article wasn't just an excuse to write a fluff piece about Jeter.
Jeter has feelings, all right. And high personal standards.
Especially in women. If he wakes up one day looks at Minka Kelly, sees the beginning of fat around a thigh, then it's onto the next attractive brunette. The Jeter doesn't play around with bitches wearing cellulite. Cellulite is never in fashion.
Like those other Yankees icons, he has loved this ride. He will dearly miss this. He gets how special it's been.
Jeter doesn't even have to say this, Johnette Howard knows it's true because that's what she wants Jeter to say. Now cry, Jeter, cry and make Johnette Howard happy. It's all that's left to give the people, just one tear.
"Everybody's human," he said. "It's just ..."
Yeah, we know.
"I've got a job to do," he repeated.
I think what Jeter is really wanting to say is, "Stop asking me the same dumbass questions about whether I will miss baseball."
So even if this is his long goodbye, the takeaway Monday was this: Jeter is just determined not to let it become maudlin.
But even so, the media will be damned if they don't write the same "Jeter is going to miss baseball even though he won't say he will baseball" column that is just a cheap excuse to write a boring, by-the-numbers Jeter fluff piece.
Derek Jeter knows full well a great swath of his legend is built upon the idea that he's superhuman when it comes to shrugging off the feelings or pressure that rock other players.
This legend was created and furthered by the national media, who feel the need to subscribe professional athletes the personal characteristics they feel these athletes should have, regardless of whether these personal characteristics are true or not. It's all about making sure the attributes the media wants that athlete to have are reflected in how the public sees that athlete. That's why the downfall of an athlete like Tiger Woods or Lance Armstrong is met with such vitriol and shock, because the attributes the media has subscribed to them are not seen as being true anymore. Armstrong is a cheat who dragged other people down in his efforts to continue cheating, while Tiger Woods isn't a family man who is dedicated to his lovely model wife. Woods' competitive nature apparently extended to off the golf course where he tried to have as many mistresses as possible, while Armstrong's competitive nature led him to using PED's. Those aren't the attributes the media had subscribed to these two athletes though.
So it was interesting that Jeter took great pains to make something clear before he took the field Monday for his last Opening Day at Yankee Stadium.
Derek Jeter stated something of substance! Quick, let's report on it and over analyze what he said!
He was asked twice about the assumption that the fanfare around his season-long goodbye tour would be a pain, not a joy, for him. And it seemed uncharacteristically important for Jeter to correct public opinion.
He's probably tired of being asked about it. I'm annoyed with all the stupid questions about whether he enjoys the fanfare so I can only imagine how he feels.
"The perception is wrong -- I will enjoy it," Jeter said. "Every city I go to, every game I play, I will enjoy it. So what they think, how they 'think' I feel, they're wrong on that one. But at the same time, I get the fact that I have to play a game,
Now Johnette Howard must immediately parse out what Jeter REALLY means in making this statement. Much like how Bob Klapisch took comments Jeter made about PED's in the way he wanted to perceive these comments in order to make Jeter an anti-PED's poster boy, Johnette Howard tells us what Jeter really means in order to inform us that Jeter has feelings and describe what Jeter is really meaning to say. Because, his comments can't just stand alone, they have to have a deeper meaning other than "I enjoy the farewell tour and will miss baseball."
It was Jeter's roundabout way of telling people not to underestimate how much he loves baseball or how badly he's going to actually miss playing, even if he hasn't yet wiped away a tear.
Oh, is that what he was saying? Because it sort of sounded like Jeter was saying, "People think they know how I feel but they are wrong. I try to focus on playing the game." The irony that Jeter's statement was basically saying other people think they know how he feels and Johnette Howard is currently stating that she knows how he feels is too much for me. Howard is parsing what Jeter was really saying by ignoring what Jeter was really saying and doing exactly what Jeter states "people" are doing. I might pass out from this irony.
He's smart enough to know that every day marks more steps in his long goodbye.
But Johnette Howard isn't smart enough to know that she's doing exactly what Derek Jeter has stated sportswriters tend to do by assuming they know how he feels.
It was the last first day of hearing the Bleacher Creatures call out his name -- just a little louder than usual -- during roll call.
"The last first day." Not that this year is going to be interminable with the countdown to Jeter's final game or anything.
It was seeing Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera walk out in street clothes for the ceremonial first pitch to honor him, struck by the sight of him being the last of them still in uniform -- another reminder of the passage of time.
These are all things that Derek Jeter feels because this is how Johnette Howard would like to believe this is how Derek Jeter feels.
And it was the sight of Jeter at the pregame news conference microphone, patiently listening to someone remind him how Joe Torre, his longest big league manager, told him not to let success go to his head after he had a terrific season and won his first World Series in their first season together.
And Jeter did not let success go to his head. He upgraded the quality of the attractive brunette he dated and that's the only big change Jeter made after winning his first World Series. Well, there was also that whole situation where George Steinbrenner thought Jeter was staying out too late at the clubs and not focused enough on the Yankees, but that's to be forgotten during the farewell tour. Only good memories allowed.
Smirking a little now, Jeter cracked, "Well, the part of the story you're missing is that I told him the same thing: 'We won a championship, you had a great year managing. Don't screw it up after this.'"
Please Johnette Howard, translate what Jeter actually meant when he said this. We must know.
But Orioles manager Buck Showalter, the Yanks' manager the first year Jeter arrived in the big leagues, put a lot into perspective before Jeter went 1-for-4 in the Yankees' 4-2 win over Baltimore. Like current Yankees manager Joe Girardi (who said, no, he didn't look at Jeter the rookie way back when and just know he'd get 3,000 hits), Showalter scoffed prior to Monday's game about "these scouts who say, 'I knew exactly what he [Jeter] was going to be.'"
Buck Showalter looks like he scoffs at least 30 times per day, so I'm not sure this really means something.
But as for how Jeter did turn out, Showalter deadpanned, "We're excited to see him retire. Same as Mo." Was he happy to be here for such a memorable occasion?
No, he's not happy at all. "Fuck Derek Jeter," says Buck Showalter. Showalter has no interest in being there for this occasion. Great question. This reader feels more informed.
Another Showalter wisecrack: "I'd rather him not be playing today. I mean, seriously. It's like your grandmother making you go out and get switches to whip your own butt with."
Great point. My grandmother always shops for her own switches and would never trust me to go get a switch at Target that would be used to whip my own butt. I would just choose the Switch-o-matic 3001 which has the rubber grip but a soft coating around the actual part of the switch used to beat my ass. That switch is useless when it comes to teaching me a lesson.
And everyone laughed.
Heartily? Did everyone laugh heartily?
But Showalter's overarching point was an important one: To take for granted that Jeter was always destined to become great ignores the rest.
So basically this entire column about Jeter having feelings is really about Johnette Howard wanting to do the typical cookie-cutter fluff piece on Jeter. Great.
It wasn't dumb luck that made Jeter great. Nor was it some total absence of what Jeter called "nerves" or "butterflies" in the "wow moments" of his career. Rather, Jeter emphasized Monday, it was that he felt all of that, but "I hide it well."
WHAT DOES JETER REALLY MEAN BY THIS? TELL US JOHNETTE HOWARD!
"You know, I came up in a culture where you were never promised a job," Jeter reminded everybody. "We had to perform in order to keep our job.
Which differs from today's environment how again? I didn't realize baseball players, especially rookie prospects, were promised jobs without earning those jobs. I must have missed this happening.
That's the mindset that we had going into every season. ... If you didn't do your job, The Boss would get rid of you. So every spring training, every offseason, we trained and prepared.
Again, how is this different from today's game again? I must be missing something. Perhaps this is why Derek Jeter doesn't say much all the time, because if he did then what he did say would sound like the typical cliches coming from an athlete.
There are folks who wonder if a star as big as Jeter can really be as grounded as all that sounds. Him, have to win a job?
Jeter is talking about when he was a rookie, not talking about right now, you dipshit. Jeter wasn't a big star prior to his first season when he had to fight to win a job. It's like Johnette Howard isn't even listening to what Jeter is saying, probably because she KNOWS what Jeter really means.
Not invoking his superstar privilege Monday when confronted with repeated questions about initially not running hard out of the box in the fifth inning when a ball he hammered down the left-field line turned out to be a double off the wall, not the home run he thought it was?
That's probably because the media didn't batter him into the ground for not hustling because they are too busy deciphering what he really means whenever he speaks and asking the same questions about how it feels to be retiring after this season.
Rather than preen like a sacred cow, Jeter instead acknowledged he screwed up with a series of droll jokes -- each of them funnier than the last.
It seems Robinson Cano's downfall was that he didn't know any jokes. If he knew jokes, the New York media would have totally laid off him for not hustling every time ran to first base. Tell jokes, make the people happy so they lay off you. That's apparently the rule.
The best one? Responding to an unrelated question about whether it's going to be awkward to see fans applaud him just for grounding into a double play. Jeter circled back to the ribbing for having to leg out the double and dryly cracked, "Maybe they were cheering for me hustling."
Oh Jetes, you kidder! Let's all have a good laugh, go get a drink and hope the 40,000th question about his retirement will get Derek Jeter to cry a little. THE SEASON DOESN'T END UNTIL THE JETER IS CRYING LIKE A BABY!
But Jeter has said self-deprecating things like that forever. And it's hard to fake being something you're not for 20 years.
Which is why Jeter is clearly a robot without feelings, despite Howard's protestations to the contrary. For 20 years Jeter has been an unemotional robot. It can't be an act. He must really be a robot who has no emotions. I'm just glad Johnette Howard has gotten to the bottom of this issue and this article wasn't just an excuse to write a fluff piece about Jeter.
Jeter has feelings, all right. And high personal standards.
Especially in women. If he wakes up one day looks at Minka Kelly, sees the beginning of fat around a thigh, then it's onto the next attractive brunette. The Jeter doesn't play around with bitches wearing cellulite. Cellulite is never in fashion.
Like those other Yankees icons, he has loved this ride. He will dearly miss this. He gets how special it's been.
Jeter doesn't even have to say this, Johnette Howard knows it's true because that's what she wants Jeter to say. Now cry, Jeter, cry and make Johnette Howard happy. It's all that's left to give the people, just one tear.
"Everybody's human," he said. "It's just ..."
Yeah, we know.
"I've got a job to do," he repeated.
I think what Jeter is really wanting to say is, "Stop asking me the same dumbass questions about whether I will miss baseball."
So even if this is his long goodbye, the takeaway Monday was this: Jeter is just determined not to let it become maudlin.
But even so, the media will be damned if they don't write the same "Jeter is going to miss baseball even though he won't say he will baseball" column that is just a cheap excuse to write a boring, by-the-numbers Jeter fluff piece.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
2 comments MMQB Review: Marvin Demoff Plays Emperor Palpatine to Peter's Anakin Edition
Peter King told us last week in MMQB that he really enjoys the obituaries in "The New York Times," he made a few guesses about how the NFL Draft is going to turn out, discussed the Darrelle Revis trade, and glossed over Jimmy Haslem potentially being convicted for a crime. It's not like that would be a big deal or anything of course. This week Peter talks about all the surprises in the NFL Draft, talks about the time he spent in the (not a shock) Rams' war room, and apologizes for lacking non-football related notes. Because I'm sure everyone reads MMQB for Peter's half-thought out ruminations on baseball and to see what latest anti-gun screed he has cooked up for this week. Oh, the horror of an NFL column not having enough non-football related topics contained within it.
(Four days before the NFL Draft, Peter King and Jeff Fisher's agent Marvin Demoff calls Peter)...
(Peter is whistling a U2 song when his cell rings) "Brett, is that you?"
(Marvin Demoff) "Peter, you have to stop answering the phone that way. How many times have I told you that? I will let you have Brett Favre's cell phone number at the end of the 2014 season. No sooner, no less. Your habit has to be broken."
(Peter King) "Sorry, sir."
(Marvin Demoff) "Don't you think Jeff Fisher is doing a great job in St. Louis?"
(Peter King) "Oh, I think he's doing a right splendid job down there in St.---"
(Marvin Demoff) "Over there, Peter, not 'down there.'"
(Peter King) "Oh...right. I think he's doing a right splendid job over there in St. Louis. I've been telling my readers just like you like me to what a fantastic team the Rams are putting together. I let my readers know what a fine coach Mr. Fisher is."
(Marvin Demoff) "Yeah, you are doing great. I need you to ask your bosses if you can be in the Rams war room for this year's NFL Draft. I just need you to be in the war room and report on what a fine organization is being run by Fisher and Les Snead. No big deal, just say nothing negative about the job Jeff Fisher is doing, exactly like you have been doing so far even though Fisher has hired a coach who placed bounties on opposing players and then hired that coach's son when he not ready for the position."
(Peter King) "Oh, sir, you know I'd never say nothing negative about the Fisher team being run down there in St. Louis."
(Marvin Demoff) "Again, it's 'over there,' not 'down there.' While you are in St. Louis writing about all the great things the Rams organization is doing, take a tour of St. Louis and get to know the city so you know where the hell it is. Just convince your bosses this is the team you need to be embedded with or I will never give you Favre's cell phone number."
(Peter King) "I'll get done, sir. I do the good work and will make Mr. Fisher seem like the next Bob Lombardi---"
(Marvin Demoff) "It's 'Vince Lombardi," Peter, not 'Bob Lombardi.'"
(Peter King) "Either way, you'll be real impressed with the work I'll do. I'm gonna make him look real good and see if I can't help you land him another contract in St. Louis."
(Marvin Demoff) "That's real good Peter. I'm proud of you. Make me even prouder and remember to never ever say anything bad about the Rams and say only good things about who they draft."
(Peter King) "I won't forget, I promise sir. And I'm taking that tour of St. Louis while I'm there. Nebraska is such a beautiful state I bet."
(Marvin Demoff) "St. Louis is in Missou---ok, just go convince your bosses, Peter. Talk to you later."
Being with the coaches, GM, scouts and execs of the Rams for Round 1, I saw and heard what a rush the draft is for football-freak 30- and 40-somethings.
The NFL is popular and those who have jobs with NFL teams like their job. Apparently this is a concept Peter had never come to understand prior to spending time in the Rams' war room. Peter just figured everyone read MMQB for his sharp wit and astute observations on the Red Sox team.
There's gambling -- which the Rams did especially well in moving from pick 22 to pick 30.
(Marvin Demoff nods his head in encouragement and rubs his hands together excitedly at how Peter is starting MMQB off)
There are big-screen TVs, and the occasional chuckle at a Kiper or Mayock statement, and catered swordfish and strip steaks, and you're with all your friends (mostly), doing what guys love to do: talk football.
I feel like I am really there in the war room. What a descriptive narrative by Peter King. There is big-screen televisions and catered swordfish? It's not like Peter to bring up any interesting perks he gets while doing his job, so you know this must have been some really good catered swordfish.
I was here to write a story on the Rams for this week's issue of Sports Illustrated (shameless plug -- on iPads Wednesday and newsstands Thursday!).
So we get a preview of the article on the Rams in MMQB AND we get an entire full article in "Sports Illustrated" this week? It's going to be interesting to read about the Rams war room, but it is such a coincidence that Peter was embedded with Jeff Fisher's team. I'm interested to learn more about Jeff Fisher's plan to go 8-8 this upcoming year. I am kidding of course, the Rams seemingly did a great job in the draft and it is just a coincidence Peter breathlessly reported on Fisher's decision between the Dolphins and the Rams over a year ago. It was just a coincidence and had nothing to do with Peter throwing his agent a solid by driving up the interest in his client.
Well, I lucked out, as you'll read in the story this week, because GM Les Snead, coach Jeff Fisher and COO Kevin Demoff made stuff happen.
Wait, wait...Kevin Demoff? That must be a misspelling because there is a Marvin Demoff that represents Fisher and Peter King. It turns out this is not a misspelling and Kevin Demoff his Marvin Demoff's son.
So for those of you keeping track, Jeff Fisher was hired by his agent's son and now that same agent has another of his clients who is a respected reporter in the Rams war room reporting on the Rams draft day dealings and selections. A more jaded person would say Marvin Demoff worked this all out so his client, who is a reporter, could report positive things about another one of his clients, Jeff Fisher, so that his son who happens to be the COO of the Rams would look good. I am not jaded and would never suggest anything like this was ever thought nor happened. It was all just a coincidence.
You saw the Rams trade twice -- from 16 up to eight, to take wideout/returner Tavon Austin, and from 22 down to 30, to take versatile linebacker Alec Ogletree -- but what you didn't see was the glee in the room when both picks were made.
You also won't hear from Peter about the red flags that came along with Alec Ogletree and how Austin is a bit of a risk because he put up his fantastic numbers in a very wide receiver-friendly college system and is not built like the typical #1 wide receiver.
Twenty-five or so football people in the room, not in cliques or camps, but together, and pretty excited when the moves were made. Case in point: When Ogletree was picked, special teams coach John Fassel and linebackers coach Frank Bush high-fived and considered the impact of the first two picks.
My question to Peter would be this...the Rams traded up to get Tavon Austin and Alec Ogletree, so why would anyone expect the Rams organization to be upset about these picks specifically when they traded up to get these players? Is it really news that the Rams organization was happy about these picks? They traded up to specifically acquire these players.
"Wait,'' Fassel said. "I don't want him to block the punts -- I want to see Tavon return 'em!''
And they both laughed the kind of laugh you hear in a draft room when you've just had a good day.
It's all rainbows and sunshine in the Rams war room. Well played Marvin Demoff, well played.
Will Austin be the electric player he was at West Virginia? Don't know.
But Peter does know the Rams were excited to pick Austin and that has to mean something, right? Usually the staff of an NFL team mopes around after selecting a player they specifically traded up to acquire.
Will Ogletree be all player and no distraction, which made him tumble down the board in Round 1? Don't know that either. But for one night, the Rams seemed to help their team quite a bit, and it's obvious from the view I got why football's such a drug to so many.
BREAKING NEWS: An NFL team liked their draft picks.
Topics of the day:
1. I admire what Doug Marrone did. I think passing on the quarterback who helped him get an NFL head-coaching job was tough -- but it was the loyal thing to his organization, and the honorable thing to do once he found he liked E.J. Manuel more than his own Ryan Nassib.
So Peter admires Doug Marrone for choosing the quarterback he likes best who will also best enable him to keep his NFL head coaching job? It doesn't take much to get Peter's admiration it seems. Do what is best for you to keep your current job and Peter thinks you are a peachy guy.
Why would Marrone draft a quarterback he doesn't believe is the best option at #16 in the first round? Is there an NFL head coach who would do this completely out of loyalty to one of his college players?
2. Who doesn't love what the Vikings did? Sharrif Floyd 23rd?
Players sometimes fall for a reason, plus he has short arms, which apparently is a bad thing for a defensive lineman.
The most dangerous deep-threat receiver in the pool, Cordarrelle Patterson, 29th?
I remember the last time the Vikings selected a dangerous deep-threat and a defensive lineman in the first round it was Troy Williamson and Erasmus James. I'm not saying Patterson and Floyd are going to be busts, but let's not crown the Vikings quite yet. They appear to have had a great draft, but Patterson isn't exactly a non-risk at #29.
4. Cleveland does the Belichickian thing, trading into the future.
Except unlike Belichick's Patriots teams the Browns need good players right now. There's a small difference in the Belichick approach for the Patriots and the Browns.
5. The quarterbacks didn't go 6-29-31-33-40, the way we were sold that they might. They went 16-39-73-98-110. They fell because we all bought the hype --
What's this "we" shit? I didn't buy into any hype. My mock draft had one quarterback going in the first round. Granted, I was WAY off on when Nassib would go, but there isn't a "we" in the conversation. Peter King bought into the hype.
As one personnel man told me Sunday: "I think we just couldn't believe there wasn't a run on them late in the first round, and it's because it turned out teams just didn't see them as their quarterbacks of the future.''
Thank God I have this quote from an anonymous personnel guy to tell me that teams who don't like a quarterback won't draft that quarterback in the first round. This is completely new knowledge to me.
Here will be one of the great trivia questions five years from now: Who was the first running back picked in the 2013 draft? Even this morning, you have to think hard to say Giovani Bernard (37th, to Cincinnati). This was the first time since 1973 a runner wasn't picked in the first round, and no wonder. In 2010, an undrafted back (Arian Foster) won the rushing title. In 2011, the top five in the rushing race were drafted 60th, 55th, 154th, 53rd and not at all. And of course last year, the 173rd pick, a rookie, Alfred Morris, finished second in the rushing race to Adrian Peterson.
Where was Adrian Peterson drafted again? That's right, the first round. So there may not have been a franchise running back in this year's draft, but it still may be worth it from time-to-time to draft running backs in the first round.
There can still be great running backs picked high, but why do it unless you have a combo speed/power guy like Peterson -- especially when rushing gems drop out of the sky on Day 3?
What if a team has found it's speed/power guy in the 2014 draft and wants to make sure they get this running back by drafting him in the first round? Does that make it a bad pick or did they simply draft the guy they wanted when they wanted him? Say Eddie Lacy has a great rookie season, wouldn't it make sense for an NFL team to look at T.J. Yeldon and think, "It may be worth it to take him with a first round pick"?
13. Two Philly thoughts: I have no idea what Chip Kelly's going to do on offense, and I think he likes it that way. If two of his three quarterbacks (Nick Foles and Matt Barkley) are pocket guys, is he really going to make his quarterback pocket a movable feast? I think Tony Dungy's right (his son played for Kelly at Oregon) when he says he expects Kelly's NFL offense to be like Buffalo's under Jim Kelly -- very fast-paced, but not necessarily with a quarterback who has to run to win
Is having a fast-paced offense not necessarily with a quarterback who has to run to win any different from the hurry-up offense the Patriots run or the no-huddle offense the Falcons ran at times last year? I fully expect Chip Kelly to do some different things in terms of running the Eagles offense, but there are NFL teams who run a fast-paced offense without a quarterback who has to run to win.
14. Stop killing the Cowboys. Just stop. Dallas got the No. 1 center on many boards at 31 (Travis Frederick), filling a gaping hole; an offensive tight end to someday replace Jason Witten (Gavin Escobar) at 47; and a 51-game starter at wideout from Baylor, Terrance Williams (who averaged 19 yards a catch last year) at 74. As one GM told me Sunday: "Frederick might be a reach, but if you get a starter for your team for six or eight years -- at any position -- isn't that worth the 31st pick overall in a lousy draft?"
This wasn't a lousy draft at all. If anything this is one of the deepest drafts over the last decade. There were quality players to be found in the fourth and fifth round. It certainly wasn't considered a top-heavy draft, but the draft wasn't lousy.
When Arizona took Mathieu early in the third round, I immediately thought that was the kind of move other teams in the NFC West would have tried.
Upon hearing this I immediately think you are an idiot and I have no idea what you mean by this comment.
Seattle went the risky route with Bruce Irvin in the first round last year (and took cornerback Tharold Simon two days after he was arrested this year).
There is a big difference in drafting Bruce Irvin in the first round and taking Mathieu in the third round. There is less money involved and there are more questions about Mathieu's ability to be mature and thrive in the NFL. Bruce Irvin was more of a risk because he was seen as being drafted too early. Irvin broke a sign in March of 2012 and had spent 2.5 weeks in jail five years before being drafted. Mathieu's red flags were more numerous and also spread over a shorter period of time.
"It's uncharacteristic of our organization to take chances on guys with troubled pasts,'' Cardinals general manager Steve Keim told me Sunday night. "But we thought this was a good player and person for us to take.''
"He is good at football," is all Steve Keim had to say. That's what he really means.
The Cardinals, one league source told me earlier Sunday, will randomly drug test Mathieu as often as weekly after he signs his NFL contract -- a contract, I'm told, that will not include any guaranteed money. Rather, Mathieu will earn bonus money in the form of roster bonuses, to ensure that the club is protected in the event that he lapses and the team chooses to cut him. If that happens, the Cardinals will be out a prime draft choice, but not any guaranteed money. Last year's 69th pick, wideout T.J. Graham of the Bills, signed a four-year deal with a $671,000 bonus. For Mathieu to make that money, he'll have to be a member of the Cardinals in good standing week to week -- and clean.
I'm not sure Peter is completely understanding the issue with Mathieu. It isn't the money the Cardinals should be worried most about. For them, taking a chance on a player who will earn a $700,000 isn't a huge risk. This is the team that gave Kevin Kolb a huge contract, so if Mathieu doesn't stick I don't think money would be the Cardinals biggest concern. The concern is mostly about spending an early third round draft choice on a player who has red flags when it comes to his personal life and behavior. It's smart for the Cardinals to protect themselves in terms of bonus money, but I wouldn't think the money spent on a third round draft choice is the main concern here.
Some team was going to take Mathieu,
Most likely an NFC West team, because drafting Mathieu is the kind of move other NFC West teams would have tried.
others were interested somewhere in the middle of the draft.
Mainly NFC West teams of course. Only that division would have the out-of-the-box thinking to draft a guy like Mathieu. We all know it is a move Jeff Fisher would have tried because he is the perfect combination of willing to give a guy a second chance while also being a disciplinarian who doesn't stand for a player's bullshit.
Oakland GM Reggie McKenzie said the health scare "became a non-issue for us'' once Raiders medical officials cleared him.
When I heard the Raiders took D.J. Hayden in the first round I thought that was the kind of move an AFC West team would try to pull. That's SO AFC West to draft a guy who almost died on the football field!
Can he? Hayden hasn't been in a football practice or game since that fateful day last November in Houston. He said he's rough-housed with friends around his home, but hasn't had the kind of contact he'll have come July in Raiders camp. Will he be able to put the accident out of his mind when bigger, stronger and faster players come at him from all directions?
"Great question,'' he said. "I definitely understand that. You don't know 'til you get out there. The chance of it happening again are slim and none. But I can tell you I think the more reps I get, the more comfortable I will be and the better I will do. I am not worried about it.''
Hmmm...this doesn't exactly instill confidence that Hayden won't be a little gun-shy once he gets out on the football field. "You don't know until you get out there," while probably true, isn't exactly making me believe Hayden won't be affected the first time he tries to tackle an opposing player.
Nix and Marrone both judged Manuel the best quarterback in the crop. Buffalo traded from No. 8 t in the first round to No. 16, picked Manuel at 16, and stashed an extra second-round pick in the process.
When I talked to Marrone on Sunday, it was apparent that even though the pick was three days old, the impact of it -- all of it -- was still fresh. And it still bothered him.
"I don't know if words can explain it,'' Marrone said from his office.
Yeah, you can explain it. You like Manuel better than Nassib. It's business. Drafting Nassib in the first round simply to show sort of loyalty to him despite not thinking he was the best quarterback for the Bills would have been doing Nassib any good, Marrone any good, and the Bills any good.
"The responsibility I had was to get the best player we could get. There are a lot of people relying on me to get the best players we can get here -- all the people in the organization and all the fans who buy tickets to see us play.''
NFL coaches pass on their ex-players all the time. Pete Carroll passed on Taylor Mays a few years ago and he still hasn't regretted that decision.
I don't see it as disloyal. I see it as a coach who got a job and whose new job is to look at a pool of players and pick the best one. Why would he automatically pick the one he'd been with, just because he'd been with him and had success?
I'm not sure any rational person has stated that Doug Marrone should have drafted Ryan Nassib purely out of loyalty. He's arguing with no one. I feel like there is a future JemeHill column titled, "Everyone Who Thinks Doug Marrone Should Have Drafted Ryan Nassib Out of Loyalty is Wrong."
Should he put on blinders because he'd won with one player and pick a player he felt deep down was inferior to another one? No. His loyalty is with the Buffalo Bills now, not to the players had at Syracuse.
Again, this seems pretty obvious. I really don't know who would argue with Marrone not taking Nassib if he didn't think he was the best quarterback for Buffalo.
Now about the Manuel pick. Marrone didn't want to get into comparison shopping here, because saying what one guy does better than the other is going to leave the second guy looking like a loser. But Manuel, though a questionable decision-maker, was more accurate last season. He's two inches taller and a better athlete. Now, there are things Nassib did better. He's more instinctive in the pocket and appears to be better at picking the right target downfield.
So Nassib has better instincts for a quarterback and throws the ball to the right guy better. Manuel looks more like a quarterback, which is something I thought was seeming less and less important, but that's neither here nor there.
No. But who wouldn't be impressed with Barkley's demeanor after he was the 98th overall pick, a year after choosing to stay in school when he could have been a top 10 pick after his third straight standout season at USC?
So it is the time of the column where we compliment Matt Barkley for having all of the measurables of a starting NFL quarterback except the skill set required?
"Whether I'm the first pick or whether I'm Mr. Irrelevant, I'm in the NFL now. My jersey's not going to say, 'Fourth round Barkley.' It's going to say, 'Barkley.' ''
Well, that's assuming Barkley even gets a jersey on Sundays. He could end up wearing the Clausen line of sideline wear that includes a mike in his ear, a team t-shirt, and a sad look on his face. This is what the inactive NFL quarterback rocks while on the sidelines.
"Repetitive accuracy is the No. 1 quality we're looking for in a quarterback,'' Kelly said Saturday, and when he was asked about Barkley's average arm strength, he said, "We're not trying to knock over milk cartons at the county fair.''
Repetitive accuracy is the No. 1 quality Chip Kelly wants in a quarterback? Kelly does realize his starting quarterback has a career completion percentage of 56.3% (though Vick's accuracy has been much better in Philadelphia)?
But the consensus was he'd have been a top 10 pick. Tannehill's deal: four years, $12.7 million. The 98th pick last year, Ravens center Gino Gradkowski, signed for four years and $2.58 million. Turns out it was a $10.1 million year of school for Matt Barkley.
Man, I hope it was worth it. Go on take the money and run is what I always say. Don't give the scouts time to pick you apart and decide why you aren't a Top-10 pick.
Cleveland made two of the three trades for next year's picks, which is something Bill Belichick always has liked to do -- and Cleveland GM Mike Lombardi goes to the Belichick school of draft maneuvering.
This is where the similarities between these two begin and end. Otherwise, Bill Belichick is Bill Belichick and Mike Lombardi is Mike Lombardi. He can't ride those Belichick coattails forever and the comparisons between the two end quickly.
Browns fans: Just remember when Josh Gordon is crushed over the middle by the heir to Troy Polamalu, Syracuse strong safety Shamarko Thomas, Thomas is the guy your team let the Steelers have.
Well, Doug Marrone also passed on Thomas (Thomas went to Syracuse) to take Duke Williams, so there's a chance Shamarko Thomas isn't the heir apparent to Troy Polamalu.
Then Peter gives credit to Ted Thompson for having Eddie Lacy and Jonathan Franklin fall to him. I like both picks, but after writing about the running back position has been devalued Peter shouldn't act so surprised top running backs are available in the second and fourth rounds. After all, Peter just pointed out how many of the leading rushers during the 2012 season were not early round picks. So Ted Thompson was merely smart and knew he could get the guy he wanted in the draft given the current state of the running back position.
On a trade you paid no attention to.
Stop telling me what I did or did not pay attention to.
Now as the picks ticked by, they knew they risked losing the linebacker they liked most at this point, Kansas State's Arthur Brown. So the Ravens dealt the 62nd pick along with fifth- and sixth-round picks to Seattle for the 56th pick. They picked Brown.
It's a fucking riveting story and I originally had Brown mocked to the Ravens in the first round, but backed off it because I'm a wimp. Boy, I wish I had paid more attention to this trade. Thanks for pointing out what I do or don't pay attention to, Peter.
Brown's a potential captain, the kind of leader the Ravens hope two or three years down the road will start to fill the void left by Ray Lewis. Great trade.
A great trade, no, a fantastic trade. If only I had paid more attention to it.
I write quite a bit in the magazine in my Rams story about the trade from 22 to 30 for Alec Ogletree. The Rams coveted Ogletree, and they took a calculated risk they'd lose him by not picking him at 22. In fact, had they lost Ogletree between 22 and 30, it would have cast a pall over the entire draft.
No, it would have cast a pall over the entire universe as a whole. The Rams had to have Alec Ogletree. Fortunately they have the best GM and head coach in the history of the NFL.
But that's why they pay Jeff Fisher and Les Snead the big dough.
And boy are they worth it! (Marvin Demoff smiles happily)
The trade brought back Atlanta's third-round pick, and with that pick, the Rams picked West Virginia wideout Stedman Bailey, who led college football with 25 touchdown catches last year. Bailey and Tavon Austin could remake the Rams' attack into a latter-day Greatest Show on Turf with their quickness and playmaking ability downfield.
Again, these two guys also played in an incredibly wide receiver-friendly college offense and are both under six feet. I feel like this needs to be mentioned before we start comparing them to Torry Holt and Isaac Bruce.
And it never would have happened if Snead and Fisher hadn't taken the risk of potentially losing Ogletree. Win some, lose some. But the weekend, as I'll explain in my story this week, was a big win for the Rams -- assuming Ogletree is a solid citizen as well as a playmaking linebacker.
"Jeff Fisher and Les Snead are risk-takers! But not such big risk-takers that they take bad risks. Oh no, they are smart risk-takers, the perfect blend of pretty much anything any head coach and GM should be. Under the management of rising genius COO Kevin Demoff the Rams are on an upper trajectory in the NFC West."
I would imagine that's how Marvin Demoff demanded the first sentence of Peter's column on the Rams would begin.
"I'm all in for Week 1, just like you guys are."
-- Robert Griffin III, the rehabbing Washington quarterback, at the club's draft party for fans over the weekend. He jumped up and down on stage, and the crowd reacted like a packed house at a Jay-Z show.
"...reacted like a packed house at a Jay-Z show." Peter is hip with his urban music analogies. He knows what a "Jay-Z" is, he can Superman that ho' and knows all the modern dance moves (Peter starts doing the Macarena).
Then Peter begins absolutely salivating all over Tavon Austin to the point it is embarrassing.
I enlisted SI college football guru Andy Staples to help me with the math on something that amazes me about the smurfy Austin, the first pick of the St. Louis Rams and the only offensive skill player to be picked in the top 15 of the 2013 draft. Austin told me he missed one practice in his four years at West Virginia. Doing the math with Staples, if you figure Austin went through three sets of spring practices (15 per year, 45 total), four preseasons (25 per year, 100 total), four bowl games (15 per year, 60 total) and about 50 regular-season practices per year (100 total), that adds up to 405 practices.
Austin practiced 404 out of 405 West Virginia practices, then, and played in 52 of 52 WVU games.
More bonus facts about Austin: In his first 48 college games, he rushed the ball only 51 times, mostly on end-arounds and options. In his 49th game, against Oklahoma, he rushed 21 times for 344 yards. Imagine having a game with runs of 74, 56, 54 and 47 yards ... in one half (the second).
The Big 12 record for all-purpose yards in a game prior to that game was 375. Against Oklahoma, Austin had 572.
I realize Austin is an exciting player, but Peter isn't doing much to make my kooky conspiracy theory that he is pumping up the Rams' draft and Jeff Fisher simply because his agent (Marvin Demoff) represents Fisher and King, while Demoff's song is the COO of the Rams. It just all seems too perfect in my mind, though I know it probably isn't true. Maybe if Peter wrote something negative about the Rams it would help, but good luck with that happening.
The first names of the seven Denver draft picks: Sylvester, Montee, Kayvon, Quanterus, Tavarres, Vinston and Zac.
Peter loves to bring up when a minority player has a funny name. He is never not shocked at how creative minorities can be with these names they give their children. They so crazy!
Mr. Starwood Preferred Member Travel Note of the Week
And as Marvin Demoff instructed, Peter did take a tour of St. Louis. He notes this in his weekly travel note.
Here in St. Louis, with a couple of hours free Thursday afternoon and not wanting to obsess about the draft, I took a walk from my downtown hotel over to the Gateway Arch. I've seen it before, but not really up close. I walked around both bases of it -- it's much wider than I thought.
Why does it not shock me that the Gateway Arch is wider than Peter thought?
And there was a tour group of what looked to be junior-high kids hearing a guide give some of the facts and figures of the Arch, so I loitered in the back and listened.
Let's call this what it really was, Peter King leered in the background as innocent school children took a tour of the Gateway Arch, causing the adult chaperones to get a step or two closer to the children for their own protection.
It's beautiful, by the way.
Thanks for the information. I can't wait for Peter's visit to the Grand Canyon where he remarks it is deeper than he expected, but more majestic than he ever imagined.
Ten Things I Think I Think
2. I think if I'm Mark Sanchez, I ask John Idzik very respectfully to put me out of my misery and release me.
I think if I am John Idzik then I wouldn't release Mark Sanchez until I know Geno Smith could be a good backup and that David Gerrard can be a temporary starter. I don't know if I would go about releasing Sanchez until I know a rookie and a guy who didn't play football last year could hold down the starting quarterback job. We all know Sanchez isn't a great quarterback, he isn't even an average quarterback, but take it from a guy who has watched Jimmy Clausen start at quarterback, it can be much worse than having Sanchez as the Jets starting quarterback.
Whether you think it was smart to take Smith or not, the fact is he's in Jersey now, and the Jets are going to give him a fair shot to be the long-term quarterback. It's silly to think it's not going to be a total zoo around that team if Sanchez stays this season. I'd rather have a prayer with team peace while developing a new quarterback and spending $91 million on players than mayhem and spending $103 million.
This isn't a bad plan, but it is always a zoo in New York anyway. Plus, if Rex Ryan has any say left in the organization then he isn't about to start to get his season-ending firing started in May by developing a new quarterback and giving himself zero backup options at the quarterback position that he trusts at least 20% to win games.
I think the Jets should release Sanchez, but not necessarily be in a rush to do so.
5. I think this illustrates the bizarre nature of this year's draft: One team I spoke with Friday, not in the market to draft a quarterback but stunned at the descent of Ryan Nassib, told me Nassib was the second-rated quarterback on its board. And one team I spoke with Sunday had 10 quarterbacks rated higher than Nassib.
It's almost like each NFL team has a very different draft board that reflects how each team values the collegiate players entering the NFL Draft.
b. GM David Caldwell saw Denard Robinson for what he was -- a versatile weapon who loves football -- and plucked him 135th overall. What will he be? A running back, probably. Or a slot receiver, or a wide receiver, or a Brad Smith-esque quarterback/receiver. What I've said about Tim Tebow for a year holds true for Robinson:
He's worthless and shouldn't be considered a quarterback by any stretch of the imagination?
Just get the guy on your team and find something for him to do. He'll find a way with his hands on the ball to be a factor.
Except Tebow didn't do anything with the football in his hands on the ball over the last year. I know, I know, these are just small details. Tebow is awesome and no one will give him a shot. NFL teams are famous for not giving talented players a chance to show what they can do on the football field.
c. Skeptical about the smurfy (5-7, 173-pound) receiver/returner Ace Sanders in the fourth round? Understandable. But Sanders was the guy the Rams would have targeted in the third or fourth round if they weren't able to move up for Tavon Austin.
Oh, well I didn't know the Rams were going to draft Ace Sanders if they couldn't get Tavon Austin. The fact the Rams were going to draft Sanders totally changes my opinion of Sanders as a receiver. I didn't realize Ace Sanders was such an NFC West-type pick. Now if the Vikings were going to draft Sanders if they didn't get Corradelle Patterson, well then obviously that means Sanders would suck as a wide receiver.
7. I think, not that it's going to tell the tale of the guy's career, there was a little bit too much woe-is-me head-hanging out of Geno Smith Thursday night. Buck up, fella.
He had booked a hotel room for Thursday night and didn't get drafted so he had to make the decision to stay in town one more night or stay behind and show up after he didn't get drafted in the first round. It's embarrassing. I think it's natural to hang your head when you are being shown on national television every five minutes with the fact you haven't been chosen yet being discussed constantly.
9. I think Manti Te'o at 25 would have been eminently justified. Manti Te'o at 38 is a value pick for San Diego.A value pick when they traded up to get him? Speaking of woe-is-me head-hanging, how about the ESPN draft analysts mentioning the fact Te'o had not gotten chosen every five minutes?
10.I think these are my non-football thoughts of the week:
a. Been a little busy with football thoughts this week to have non-football ones, but I'll give it a go.
That was Peter's first thought. His first non-football thought was that he didn't have many non-football thoughts.
e. Thanks for putting Houston in the American League, whoever did that.
Yeah, "whoever did that." I'm pretty sure it is easy to figure out who put Houston in the American League. I'm surprised Peter even knows there is an MLB team in Houston. He probably wasn't aware of this until the Red Sox played the Astros recently. Peter loves baseball, you know. He just seems to know very little about the sport.
f. Red Sox and Yankees, 33-16. Rays and Jays, 21-30. Wasn't it supposed to be the other way around this year?
It's almost like the preseason narratives don't perfectly describe exactly how the season is going to end up progressing. The Blue Jays were good on paper and the Red Sox weren't, how could reality be different? Peter's world is shaken.
g. Coffeenerdness: St. Louis has Peet's coffee, which automatically makes it a place worth visiting. It's in the casino down by the Arch.
I'm guessing this isn't the same casino that Peter visited in New Orleans after the Super Bowl where he was shocked that there were drunk people and not a lively, spirited crowd at 6am. Who knew casinos could be a place for such ruffians at 6am?
j. Forgive me my limited non-football notes this week. I'll be better next week.
Actually, by doing better you would have even more limited set of non-football notes.
The Adieu Haiku
Vikes picked a punter.
Chris Kluwe, endangered dude?
Come write for SI.
Just average punter.
Peter likes his politics.
CFL next stop.
(Four days before the NFL Draft, Peter King and Jeff Fisher's agent Marvin Demoff calls Peter)...
(Peter is whistling a U2 song when his cell rings) "Brett, is that you?"
(Marvin Demoff) "Peter, you have to stop answering the phone that way. How many times have I told you that? I will let you have Brett Favre's cell phone number at the end of the 2014 season. No sooner, no less. Your habit has to be broken."
(Peter King) "Sorry, sir."
(Marvin Demoff) "Don't you think Jeff Fisher is doing a great job in St. Louis?"
(Peter King) "Oh, I think he's doing a right splendid job down there in St.---"
(Marvin Demoff) "Over there, Peter, not 'down there.'"
(Peter King) "Oh...right. I think he's doing a right splendid job over there in St. Louis. I've been telling my readers just like you like me to what a fantastic team the Rams are putting together. I let my readers know what a fine coach Mr. Fisher is."
(Marvin Demoff) "Yeah, you are doing great. I need you to ask your bosses if you can be in the Rams war room for this year's NFL Draft. I just need you to be in the war room and report on what a fine organization is being run by Fisher and Les Snead. No big deal, just say nothing negative about the job Jeff Fisher is doing, exactly like you have been doing so far even though Fisher has hired a coach who placed bounties on opposing players and then hired that coach's son when he not ready for the position."
(Peter King) "Oh, sir, you know I'd never say nothing negative about the Fisher team being run down there in St. Louis."
(Marvin Demoff) "Again, it's 'over there,' not 'down there.' While you are in St. Louis writing about all the great things the Rams organization is doing, take a tour of St. Louis and get to know the city so you know where the hell it is. Just convince your bosses this is the team you need to be embedded with or I will never give you Favre's cell phone number."
(Peter King) "I'll get done, sir. I do the good work and will make Mr. Fisher seem like the next Bob Lombardi---"
(Marvin Demoff) "It's 'Vince Lombardi," Peter, not 'Bob Lombardi.'"
(Peter King) "Either way, you'll be real impressed with the work I'll do. I'm gonna make him look real good and see if I can't help you land him another contract in St. Louis."
(Marvin Demoff) "That's real good Peter. I'm proud of you. Make me even prouder and remember to never ever say anything bad about the Rams and say only good things about who they draft."
(Peter King) "I won't forget, I promise sir. And I'm taking that tour of St. Louis while I'm there. Nebraska is such a beautiful state I bet."
(Marvin Demoff) "St. Louis is in Missou---ok, just go convince your bosses, Peter. Talk to you later."
Being with the coaches, GM, scouts and execs of the Rams for Round 1, I saw and heard what a rush the draft is for football-freak 30- and 40-somethings.
The NFL is popular and those who have jobs with NFL teams like their job. Apparently this is a concept Peter had never come to understand prior to spending time in the Rams' war room. Peter just figured everyone read MMQB for his sharp wit and astute observations on the Red Sox team.
There's gambling -- which the Rams did especially well in moving from pick 22 to pick 30.
(Marvin Demoff nods his head in encouragement and rubs his hands together excitedly at how Peter is starting MMQB off)
There are big-screen TVs, and the occasional chuckle at a Kiper or Mayock statement, and catered swordfish and strip steaks, and you're with all your friends (mostly), doing what guys love to do: talk football.
I feel like I am really there in the war room. What a descriptive narrative by Peter King. There is big-screen televisions and catered swordfish? It's not like Peter to bring up any interesting perks he gets while doing his job, so you know this must have been some really good catered swordfish.
I was here to write a story on the Rams for this week's issue of Sports Illustrated (shameless plug -- on iPads Wednesday and newsstands Thursday!).
So we get a preview of the article on the Rams in MMQB AND we get an entire full article in "Sports Illustrated" this week? It's going to be interesting to read about the Rams war room, but it is such a coincidence that Peter was embedded with Jeff Fisher's team. I'm interested to learn more about Jeff Fisher's plan to go 8-8 this upcoming year. I am kidding of course, the Rams seemingly did a great job in the draft and it is just a coincidence Peter breathlessly reported on Fisher's decision between the Dolphins and the Rams over a year ago. It was just a coincidence and had nothing to do with Peter throwing his agent a solid by driving up the interest in his client.
Well, I lucked out, as you'll read in the story this week, because GM Les Snead, coach Jeff Fisher and COO Kevin Demoff made stuff happen.
Wait, wait...Kevin Demoff? That must be a misspelling because there is a Marvin Demoff that represents Fisher and Peter King. It turns out this is not a misspelling and Kevin Demoff his Marvin Demoff's son.
So for those of you keeping track, Jeff Fisher was hired by his agent's son and now that same agent has another of his clients who is a respected reporter in the Rams war room reporting on the Rams draft day dealings and selections. A more jaded person would say Marvin Demoff worked this all out so his client, who is a reporter, could report positive things about another one of his clients, Jeff Fisher, so that his son who happens to be the COO of the Rams would look good. I am not jaded and would never suggest anything like this was ever thought nor happened. It was all just a coincidence.
You saw the Rams trade twice -- from 16 up to eight, to take wideout/returner Tavon Austin, and from 22 down to 30, to take versatile linebacker Alec Ogletree -- but what you didn't see was the glee in the room when both picks were made.
You also won't hear from Peter about the red flags that came along with Alec Ogletree and how Austin is a bit of a risk because he put up his fantastic numbers in a very wide receiver-friendly college system and is not built like the typical #1 wide receiver.
Twenty-five or so football people in the room, not in cliques or camps, but together, and pretty excited when the moves were made. Case in point: When Ogletree was picked, special teams coach John Fassel and linebackers coach Frank Bush high-fived and considered the impact of the first two picks.
My question to Peter would be this...the Rams traded up to get Tavon Austin and Alec Ogletree, so why would anyone expect the Rams organization to be upset about these picks specifically when they traded up to get these players? Is it really news that the Rams organization was happy about these picks? They traded up to specifically acquire these players.
"Wait,'' Fassel said. "I don't want him to block the punts -- I want to see Tavon return 'em!''
And they both laughed the kind of laugh you hear in a draft room when you've just had a good day.
It's all rainbows and sunshine in the Rams war room. Well played Marvin Demoff, well played.
Will Austin be the electric player he was at West Virginia? Don't know.
But Peter does know the Rams were excited to pick Austin and that has to mean something, right? Usually the staff of an NFL team mopes around after selecting a player they specifically traded up to acquire.
Will Ogletree be all player and no distraction, which made him tumble down the board in Round 1? Don't know that either. But for one night, the Rams seemed to help their team quite a bit, and it's obvious from the view I got why football's such a drug to so many.
BREAKING NEWS: An NFL team liked their draft picks.
Topics of the day:
1. I admire what Doug Marrone did. I think passing on the quarterback who helped him get an NFL head-coaching job was tough -- but it was the loyal thing to his organization, and the honorable thing to do once he found he liked E.J. Manuel more than his own Ryan Nassib.
So Peter admires Doug Marrone for choosing the quarterback he likes best who will also best enable him to keep his NFL head coaching job? It doesn't take much to get Peter's admiration it seems. Do what is best for you to keep your current job and Peter thinks you are a peachy guy.
Why would Marrone draft a quarterback he doesn't believe is the best option at #16 in the first round? Is there an NFL head coach who would do this completely out of loyalty to one of his college players?
2. Who doesn't love what the Vikings did? Sharrif Floyd 23rd?
Players sometimes fall for a reason, plus he has short arms, which apparently is a bad thing for a defensive lineman.
The most dangerous deep-threat receiver in the pool, Cordarrelle Patterson, 29th?
I remember the last time the Vikings selected a dangerous deep-threat and a defensive lineman in the first round it was Troy Williamson and Erasmus James. I'm not saying Patterson and Floyd are going to be busts, but let's not crown the Vikings quite yet. They appear to have had a great draft, but Patterson isn't exactly a non-risk at #29.
4. Cleveland does the Belichickian thing, trading into the future.
Except unlike Belichick's Patriots teams the Browns need good players right now. There's a small difference in the Belichick approach for the Patriots and the Browns.
5. The quarterbacks didn't go 6-29-31-33-40, the way we were sold that they might. They went 16-39-73-98-110. They fell because we all bought the hype --
What's this "we" shit? I didn't buy into any hype. My mock draft had one quarterback going in the first round. Granted, I was WAY off on when Nassib would go, but there isn't a "we" in the conversation. Peter King bought into the hype.
As one personnel man told me Sunday: "I think we just couldn't believe there wasn't a run on them late in the first round, and it's because it turned out teams just didn't see them as their quarterbacks of the future.''
Thank God I have this quote from an anonymous personnel guy to tell me that teams who don't like a quarterback won't draft that quarterback in the first round. This is completely new knowledge to me.
Here will be one of the great trivia questions five years from now: Who was the first running back picked in the 2013 draft? Even this morning, you have to think hard to say Giovani Bernard (37th, to Cincinnati). This was the first time since 1973 a runner wasn't picked in the first round, and no wonder. In 2010, an undrafted back (Arian Foster) won the rushing title. In 2011, the top five in the rushing race were drafted 60th, 55th, 154th, 53rd and not at all. And of course last year, the 173rd pick, a rookie, Alfred Morris, finished second in the rushing race to Adrian Peterson.
Where was Adrian Peterson drafted again? That's right, the first round. So there may not have been a franchise running back in this year's draft, but it still may be worth it from time-to-time to draft running backs in the first round.
There can still be great running backs picked high, but why do it unless you have a combo speed/power guy like Peterson -- especially when rushing gems drop out of the sky on Day 3?
What if a team has found it's speed/power guy in the 2014 draft and wants to make sure they get this running back by drafting him in the first round? Does that make it a bad pick or did they simply draft the guy they wanted when they wanted him? Say Eddie Lacy has a great rookie season, wouldn't it make sense for an NFL team to look at T.J. Yeldon and think, "It may be worth it to take him with a first round pick"?
13. Two Philly thoughts: I have no idea what Chip Kelly's going to do on offense, and I think he likes it that way. If two of his three quarterbacks (Nick Foles and Matt Barkley) are pocket guys, is he really going to make his quarterback pocket a movable feast? I think Tony Dungy's right (his son played for Kelly at Oregon) when he says he expects Kelly's NFL offense to be like Buffalo's under Jim Kelly -- very fast-paced, but not necessarily with a quarterback who has to run to win
Is having a fast-paced offense not necessarily with a quarterback who has to run to win any different from the hurry-up offense the Patriots run or the no-huddle offense the Falcons ran at times last year? I fully expect Chip Kelly to do some different things in terms of running the Eagles offense, but there are NFL teams who run a fast-paced offense without a quarterback who has to run to win.
14. Stop killing the Cowboys. Just stop. Dallas got the No. 1 center on many boards at 31 (Travis Frederick), filling a gaping hole; an offensive tight end to someday replace Jason Witten (Gavin Escobar) at 47; and a 51-game starter at wideout from Baylor, Terrance Williams (who averaged 19 yards a catch last year) at 74. As one GM told me Sunday: "Frederick might be a reach, but if you get a starter for your team for six or eight years -- at any position -- isn't that worth the 31st pick overall in a lousy draft?"
This wasn't a lousy draft at all. If anything this is one of the deepest drafts over the last decade. There were quality players to be found in the fourth and fifth round. It certainly wasn't considered a top-heavy draft, but the draft wasn't lousy.
When Arizona took Mathieu early in the third round, I immediately thought that was the kind of move other teams in the NFC West would have tried.
Upon hearing this I immediately think you are an idiot and I have no idea what you mean by this comment.
Seattle went the risky route with Bruce Irvin in the first round last year (and took cornerback Tharold Simon two days after he was arrested this year).
There is a big difference in drafting Bruce Irvin in the first round and taking Mathieu in the third round. There is less money involved and there are more questions about Mathieu's ability to be mature and thrive in the NFL. Bruce Irvin was more of a risk because he was seen as being drafted too early. Irvin broke a sign in March of 2012 and had spent 2.5 weeks in jail five years before being drafted. Mathieu's red flags were more numerous and also spread over a shorter period of time.
"It's uncharacteristic of our organization to take chances on guys with troubled pasts,'' Cardinals general manager Steve Keim told me Sunday night. "But we thought this was a good player and person for us to take.''
"He is good at football," is all Steve Keim had to say. That's what he really means.
The Cardinals, one league source told me earlier Sunday, will randomly drug test Mathieu as often as weekly after he signs his NFL contract -- a contract, I'm told, that will not include any guaranteed money. Rather, Mathieu will earn bonus money in the form of roster bonuses, to ensure that the club is protected in the event that he lapses and the team chooses to cut him. If that happens, the Cardinals will be out a prime draft choice, but not any guaranteed money. Last year's 69th pick, wideout T.J. Graham of the Bills, signed a four-year deal with a $671,000 bonus. For Mathieu to make that money, he'll have to be a member of the Cardinals in good standing week to week -- and clean.
I'm not sure Peter is completely understanding the issue with Mathieu. It isn't the money the Cardinals should be worried most about. For them, taking a chance on a player who will earn a $700,000 isn't a huge risk. This is the team that gave Kevin Kolb a huge contract, so if Mathieu doesn't stick I don't think money would be the Cardinals biggest concern. The concern is mostly about spending an early third round draft choice on a player who has red flags when it comes to his personal life and behavior. It's smart for the Cardinals to protect themselves in terms of bonus money, but I wouldn't think the money spent on a third round draft choice is the main concern here.
Some team was going to take Mathieu,
Most likely an NFC West team, because drafting Mathieu is the kind of move other NFC West teams would have tried.
others were interested somewhere in the middle of the draft.
Mainly NFC West teams of course. Only that division would have the out-of-the-box thinking to draft a guy like Mathieu. We all know it is a move Jeff Fisher would have tried because he is the perfect combination of willing to give a guy a second chance while also being a disciplinarian who doesn't stand for a player's bullshit.
Oakland GM Reggie McKenzie said the health scare "became a non-issue for us'' once Raiders medical officials cleared him.
When I heard the Raiders took D.J. Hayden in the first round I thought that was the kind of move an AFC West team would try to pull. That's SO AFC West to draft a guy who almost died on the football field!
Can he? Hayden hasn't been in a football practice or game since that fateful day last November in Houston. He said he's rough-housed with friends around his home, but hasn't had the kind of contact he'll have come July in Raiders camp. Will he be able to put the accident out of his mind when bigger, stronger and faster players come at him from all directions?
"Great question,'' he said. "I definitely understand that. You don't know 'til you get out there. The chance of it happening again are slim and none. But I can tell you I think the more reps I get, the more comfortable I will be and the better I will do. I am not worried about it.''
Hmmm...this doesn't exactly instill confidence that Hayden won't be a little gun-shy once he gets out on the football field. "You don't know until you get out there," while probably true, isn't exactly making me believe Hayden won't be affected the first time he tries to tackle an opposing player.
Nix and Marrone both judged Manuel the best quarterback in the crop. Buffalo traded from No. 8 t in the first round to No. 16, picked Manuel at 16, and stashed an extra second-round pick in the process.
When I talked to Marrone on Sunday, it was apparent that even though the pick was three days old, the impact of it -- all of it -- was still fresh. And it still bothered him.
"I don't know if words can explain it,'' Marrone said from his office.
Yeah, you can explain it. You like Manuel better than Nassib. It's business. Drafting Nassib in the first round simply to show sort of loyalty to him despite not thinking he was the best quarterback for the Bills would have been doing Nassib any good, Marrone any good, and the Bills any good.
"The responsibility I had was to get the best player we could get. There are a lot of people relying on me to get the best players we can get here -- all the people in the organization and all the fans who buy tickets to see us play.''
NFL coaches pass on their ex-players all the time. Pete Carroll passed on Taylor Mays a few years ago and he still hasn't regretted that decision.
I don't see it as disloyal. I see it as a coach who got a job and whose new job is to look at a pool of players and pick the best one. Why would he automatically pick the one he'd been with, just because he'd been with him and had success?
I'm not sure any rational person has stated that Doug Marrone should have drafted Ryan Nassib purely out of loyalty. He's arguing with no one. I feel like there is a future JemeHill column titled, "Everyone Who Thinks Doug Marrone Should Have Drafted Ryan Nassib Out of Loyalty is Wrong."
Should he put on blinders because he'd won with one player and pick a player he felt deep down was inferior to another one? No. His loyalty is with the Buffalo Bills now, not to the players had at Syracuse.
Again, this seems pretty obvious. I really don't know who would argue with Marrone not taking Nassib if he didn't think he was the best quarterback for Buffalo.
Now about the Manuel pick. Marrone didn't want to get into comparison shopping here, because saying what one guy does better than the other is going to leave the second guy looking like a loser. But Manuel, though a questionable decision-maker, was more accurate last season. He's two inches taller and a better athlete. Now, there are things Nassib did better. He's more instinctive in the pocket and appears to be better at picking the right target downfield.
So Nassib has better instincts for a quarterback and throws the ball to the right guy better. Manuel looks more like a quarterback, which is something I thought was seeming less and less important, but that's neither here nor there.
No. But who wouldn't be impressed with Barkley's demeanor after he was the 98th overall pick, a year after choosing to stay in school when he could have been a top 10 pick after his third straight standout season at USC?
So it is the time of the column where we compliment Matt Barkley for having all of the measurables of a starting NFL quarterback except the skill set required?
"Whether I'm the first pick or whether I'm Mr. Irrelevant, I'm in the NFL now. My jersey's not going to say, 'Fourth round Barkley.' It's going to say, 'Barkley.' ''
Well, that's assuming Barkley even gets a jersey on Sundays. He could end up wearing the Clausen line of sideline wear that includes a mike in his ear, a team t-shirt, and a sad look on his face. This is what the inactive NFL quarterback rocks while on the sidelines.
"Repetitive accuracy is the No. 1 quality we're looking for in a quarterback,'' Kelly said Saturday, and when he was asked about Barkley's average arm strength, he said, "We're not trying to knock over milk cartons at the county fair.''
Repetitive accuracy is the No. 1 quality Chip Kelly wants in a quarterback? Kelly does realize his starting quarterback has a career completion percentage of 56.3% (though Vick's accuracy has been much better in Philadelphia)?
But the consensus was he'd have been a top 10 pick. Tannehill's deal: four years, $12.7 million. The 98th pick last year, Ravens center Gino Gradkowski, signed for four years and $2.58 million. Turns out it was a $10.1 million year of school for Matt Barkley.
Man, I hope it was worth it. Go on take the money and run is what I always say. Don't give the scouts time to pick you apart and decide why you aren't a Top-10 pick.
Cleveland made two of the three trades for next year's picks, which is something Bill Belichick always has liked to do -- and Cleveland GM Mike Lombardi goes to the Belichick school of draft maneuvering.
This is where the similarities between these two begin and end. Otherwise, Bill Belichick is Bill Belichick and Mike Lombardi is Mike Lombardi. He can't ride those Belichick coattails forever and the comparisons between the two end quickly.
Browns fans: Just remember when Josh Gordon is crushed over the middle by the heir to Troy Polamalu, Syracuse strong safety Shamarko Thomas, Thomas is the guy your team let the Steelers have.
Well, Doug Marrone also passed on Thomas (Thomas went to Syracuse) to take Duke Williams, so there's a chance Shamarko Thomas isn't the heir apparent to Troy Polamalu.
Then Peter gives credit to Ted Thompson for having Eddie Lacy and Jonathan Franklin fall to him. I like both picks, but after writing about the running back position has been devalued Peter shouldn't act so surprised top running backs are available in the second and fourth rounds. After all, Peter just pointed out how many of the leading rushers during the 2012 season were not early round picks. So Ted Thompson was merely smart and knew he could get the guy he wanted in the draft given the current state of the running back position.
On a trade you paid no attention to.
Stop telling me what I did or did not pay attention to.
Now as the picks ticked by, they knew they risked losing the linebacker they liked most at this point, Kansas State's Arthur Brown. So the Ravens dealt the 62nd pick along with fifth- and sixth-round picks to Seattle for the 56th pick. They picked Brown.
It's a fucking riveting story and I originally had Brown mocked to the Ravens in the first round, but backed off it because I'm a wimp. Boy, I wish I had paid more attention to this trade. Thanks for pointing out what I do or don't pay attention to, Peter.
Brown's a potential captain, the kind of leader the Ravens hope two or three years down the road will start to fill the void left by Ray Lewis. Great trade.
A great trade, no, a fantastic trade. If only I had paid more attention to it.
I write quite a bit in the magazine in my Rams story about the trade from 22 to 30 for Alec Ogletree. The Rams coveted Ogletree, and they took a calculated risk they'd lose him by not picking him at 22. In fact, had they lost Ogletree between 22 and 30, it would have cast a pall over the entire draft.
No, it would have cast a pall over the entire universe as a whole. The Rams had to have Alec Ogletree. Fortunately they have the best GM and head coach in the history of the NFL.
But that's why they pay Jeff Fisher and Les Snead the big dough.
And boy are they worth it! (Marvin Demoff smiles happily)
The trade brought back Atlanta's third-round pick, and with that pick, the Rams picked West Virginia wideout Stedman Bailey, who led college football with 25 touchdown catches last year. Bailey and Tavon Austin could remake the Rams' attack into a latter-day Greatest Show on Turf with their quickness and playmaking ability downfield.
Again, these two guys also played in an incredibly wide receiver-friendly college offense and are both under six feet. I feel like this needs to be mentioned before we start comparing them to Torry Holt and Isaac Bruce.
And it never would have happened if Snead and Fisher hadn't taken the risk of potentially losing Ogletree. Win some, lose some. But the weekend, as I'll explain in my story this week, was a big win for the Rams -- assuming Ogletree is a solid citizen as well as a playmaking linebacker.
"Jeff Fisher and Les Snead are risk-takers! But not such big risk-takers that they take bad risks. Oh no, they are smart risk-takers, the perfect blend of pretty much anything any head coach and GM should be. Under the management of rising genius COO Kevin Demoff the Rams are on an upper trajectory in the NFC West."
I would imagine that's how Marvin Demoff demanded the first sentence of Peter's column on the Rams would begin.
"I'm all in for Week 1, just like you guys are."
-- Robert Griffin III, the rehabbing Washington quarterback, at the club's draft party for fans over the weekend. He jumped up and down on stage, and the crowd reacted like a packed house at a Jay-Z show.
"...reacted like a packed house at a Jay-Z show." Peter is hip with his urban music analogies. He knows what a "Jay-Z" is, he can Superman that ho' and knows all the modern dance moves (Peter starts doing the Macarena).
Then Peter begins absolutely salivating all over Tavon Austin to the point it is embarrassing.
I enlisted SI college football guru Andy Staples to help me with the math on something that amazes me about the smurfy Austin, the first pick of the St. Louis Rams and the only offensive skill player to be picked in the top 15 of the 2013 draft. Austin told me he missed one practice in his four years at West Virginia. Doing the math with Staples, if you figure Austin went through three sets of spring practices (15 per year, 45 total), four preseasons (25 per year, 100 total), four bowl games (15 per year, 60 total) and about 50 regular-season practices per year (100 total), that adds up to 405 practices.
Austin practiced 404 out of 405 West Virginia practices, then, and played in 52 of 52 WVU games.
More bonus facts about Austin: In his first 48 college games, he rushed the ball only 51 times, mostly on end-arounds and options. In his 49th game, against Oklahoma, he rushed 21 times for 344 yards. Imagine having a game with runs of 74, 56, 54 and 47 yards ... in one half (the second).
The Big 12 record for all-purpose yards in a game prior to that game was 375. Against Oklahoma, Austin had 572.
I realize Austin is an exciting player, but Peter isn't doing much to make my kooky conspiracy theory that he is pumping up the Rams' draft and Jeff Fisher simply because his agent (Marvin Demoff) represents Fisher and King, while Demoff's song is the COO of the Rams. It just all seems too perfect in my mind, though I know it probably isn't true. Maybe if Peter wrote something negative about the Rams it would help, but good luck with that happening.
The first names of the seven Denver draft picks: Sylvester, Montee, Kayvon, Quanterus, Tavarres, Vinston and Zac.
Peter loves to bring up when a minority player has a funny name. He is never not shocked at how creative minorities can be with these names they give their children. They so crazy!
Mr. Starwood Preferred Member Travel Note of the Week
And as Marvin Demoff instructed, Peter did take a tour of St. Louis. He notes this in his weekly travel note.
Here in St. Louis, with a couple of hours free Thursday afternoon and not wanting to obsess about the draft, I took a walk from my downtown hotel over to the Gateway Arch. I've seen it before, but not really up close. I walked around both bases of it -- it's much wider than I thought.
Why does it not shock me that the Gateway Arch is wider than Peter thought?
And there was a tour group of what looked to be junior-high kids hearing a guide give some of the facts and figures of the Arch, so I loitered in the back and listened.
Let's call this what it really was, Peter King leered in the background as innocent school children took a tour of the Gateway Arch, causing the adult chaperones to get a step or two closer to the children for their own protection.
It's beautiful, by the way.
Thanks for the information. I can't wait for Peter's visit to the Grand Canyon where he remarks it is deeper than he expected, but more majestic than he ever imagined.
Ten Things I Think I Think
2. I think if I'm Mark Sanchez, I ask John Idzik very respectfully to put me out of my misery and release me.
I think if I am John Idzik then I wouldn't release Mark Sanchez until I know Geno Smith could be a good backup and that David Gerrard can be a temporary starter. I don't know if I would go about releasing Sanchez until I know a rookie and a guy who didn't play football last year could hold down the starting quarterback job. We all know Sanchez isn't a great quarterback, he isn't even an average quarterback, but take it from a guy who has watched Jimmy Clausen start at quarterback, it can be much worse than having Sanchez as the Jets starting quarterback.
Whether you think it was smart to take Smith or not, the fact is he's in Jersey now, and the Jets are going to give him a fair shot to be the long-term quarterback. It's silly to think it's not going to be a total zoo around that team if Sanchez stays this season. I'd rather have a prayer with team peace while developing a new quarterback and spending $91 million on players than mayhem and spending $103 million.
This isn't a bad plan, but it is always a zoo in New York anyway. Plus, if Rex Ryan has any say left in the organization then he isn't about to start to get his season-ending firing started in May by developing a new quarterback and giving himself zero backup options at the quarterback position that he trusts at least 20% to win games.
I think the Jets should release Sanchez, but not necessarily be in a rush to do so.
5. I think this illustrates the bizarre nature of this year's draft: One team I spoke with Friday, not in the market to draft a quarterback but stunned at the descent of Ryan Nassib, told me Nassib was the second-rated quarterback on its board. And one team I spoke with Sunday had 10 quarterbacks rated higher than Nassib.
It's almost like each NFL team has a very different draft board that reflects how each team values the collegiate players entering the NFL Draft.
b. GM David Caldwell saw Denard Robinson for what he was -- a versatile weapon who loves football -- and plucked him 135th overall. What will he be? A running back, probably. Or a slot receiver, or a wide receiver, or a Brad Smith-esque quarterback/receiver. What I've said about Tim Tebow for a year holds true for Robinson:
He's worthless and shouldn't be considered a quarterback by any stretch of the imagination?
Just get the guy on your team and find something for him to do. He'll find a way with his hands on the ball to be a factor.
Except Tebow didn't do anything with the football in his hands on the ball over the last year. I know, I know, these are just small details. Tebow is awesome and no one will give him a shot. NFL teams are famous for not giving talented players a chance to show what they can do on the football field.
c. Skeptical about the smurfy (5-7, 173-pound) receiver/returner Ace Sanders in the fourth round? Understandable. But Sanders was the guy the Rams would have targeted in the third or fourth round if they weren't able to move up for Tavon Austin.
Oh, well I didn't know the Rams were going to draft Ace Sanders if they couldn't get Tavon Austin. The fact the Rams were going to draft Sanders totally changes my opinion of Sanders as a receiver. I didn't realize Ace Sanders was such an NFC West-type pick. Now if the Vikings were going to draft Sanders if they didn't get Corradelle Patterson, well then obviously that means Sanders would suck as a wide receiver.
7. I think, not that it's going to tell the tale of the guy's career, there was a little bit too much woe-is-me head-hanging out of Geno Smith Thursday night. Buck up, fella.
He had booked a hotel room for Thursday night and didn't get drafted so he had to make the decision to stay in town one more night or stay behind and show up after he didn't get drafted in the first round. It's embarrassing. I think it's natural to hang your head when you are being shown on national television every five minutes with the fact you haven't been chosen yet being discussed constantly.
9. I think Manti Te'o at 25 would have been eminently justified. Manti Te'o at 38 is a value pick for San Diego.A value pick when they traded up to get him? Speaking of woe-is-me head-hanging, how about the ESPN draft analysts mentioning the fact Te'o had not gotten chosen every five minutes?
10.I think these are my non-football thoughts of the week:
a. Been a little busy with football thoughts this week to have non-football ones, but I'll give it a go.
That was Peter's first thought. His first non-football thought was that he didn't have many non-football thoughts.
e. Thanks for putting Houston in the American League, whoever did that.
Yeah, "whoever did that." I'm pretty sure it is easy to figure out who put Houston in the American League. I'm surprised Peter even knows there is an MLB team in Houston. He probably wasn't aware of this until the Red Sox played the Astros recently. Peter loves baseball, you know. He just seems to know very little about the sport.
f. Red Sox and Yankees, 33-16. Rays and Jays, 21-30. Wasn't it supposed to be the other way around this year?
It's almost like the preseason narratives don't perfectly describe exactly how the season is going to end up progressing. The Blue Jays were good on paper and the Red Sox weren't, how could reality be different? Peter's world is shaken.
g. Coffeenerdness: St. Louis has Peet's coffee, which automatically makes it a place worth visiting. It's in the casino down by the Arch.
I'm guessing this isn't the same casino that Peter visited in New Orleans after the Super Bowl where he was shocked that there were drunk people and not a lively, spirited crowd at 6am. Who knew casinos could be a place for such ruffians at 6am?
j. Forgive me my limited non-football notes this week. I'll be better next week.
Actually, by doing better you would have even more limited set of non-football notes.
The Adieu Haiku
Vikes picked a punter.
Chris Kluwe, endangered dude?
Come write for SI.
Just average punter.
Peter likes his politics.
CFL next stop.
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