You all have probably felt the void. The patron saint of Bottom of the Barrel, David Eckstein, currently doesn't have a job playing professional baseball. As the ex-co-owner of David Eckstein's Baseball-Reference page, we need to keep David in our thoughts at this time. It doesn't appear he is struggling emotionally, but I think he's just keeping on a scrappy face for us. As Mike DiGiovanna tells us Eckstein isn't retired, but has made a decision not to play baseball at this point. Then DiGiovanna goes Eckstein-crazy over David Eckstein's massive amount of grit and starts writing gibberish.
I do realize my Twitter page says I am the proud co-owner of David Eckstein's Baseball-Reference page, and I don't plan to update it. I figure if Eckstein can continuously live off his 2006 World Series MVP award and "helping" the Angels win the 2002 World Series I can live off once co-owning his Baseball-Reference page. Let's see what's new in Scrappy McFuckstein's world.
David Eckstein is not playing baseball, but the scrappy 36-year-old infielder
It's like a disease or a reflex. Whenever a sportswriter says "David Eckstein," the word "scrappy" has to appear somewhere in the sentence. Actually, it is just lazy writing to fall back on a description like that since simply saying "....not playing baseball, but the 36-year-old infielder..." would suffice.
who helped the Angels win the 2002 World Series and won World Series most-valuable-player honors with the St. Louis Cardinals in 2006 has not officially retired.
It's always awkward when a player hasn't officially retired and he doesn't currently have a job with a team yet. At a certain point, you need to save face and just officially retire, because very few things are sadder than a player who can't get a job with a professional team but insists he hasn't retired. I would probably rather see a player get a job with another team and struggle than a player who insists he isn't retired, but can't seem to find a job. At some point, this refusal to submit to reality leads a player to Japan, Russia or another country to play professionally in another league.
What's sadder to think about in these two situations:
-Stephon Marbury retires when getting no interest from NBA teams and goes about his life.
-Stephon Marbury doesn't retire and is now playing for the Foshan Dralions in China.
Personally, I think combined with his bizarre offseason webcam antics last year, it is more sad Marbury is playing in China. Think about how you felt when you learned Allen Iverson was going to play basketball in Turkey. Personally, I was sad.
I'm not sad about Eckstein not currently having a job, simply because it prevents the media from shoving the typical "scrappy, plays the game right, and he hustles" storylines down my throat. Apparently, even when Eckstein isn't officially retired, we still get the same stories about him, so maybe there is no avoiding this crap.
Nor has the game retired him, like it has so many veterans who simply fade away.
Wow, this is uncomfortable. Yeah...it has. If no MLB teams want to pay him to play for them in a capacity Eckstein believes he deserves, he may still have the game running through his grit-based veins, but the game doesn't appear to want him at this time.
Eckstein, who played the 2009 and 2010 seasons with the San Diego Padres, got an offer to sign with a club four weeks ago and turned it down.
I can understand that decision though, look what club offered to sign Eckstein.
David Eckstein wants you to know Rancho San Diego Little League, David Eckstein won't just sign with any team. Quit offering him the position to compete at shortstop on the 11-12 team. Little Jimmy Morell will move to second base from shortstop if you want David Eckstein on your team because an ex-World Series MVP won't compete with anyone for a starting job.
He said he received more offers — including major league deals —last winter than he ever has a free agent but has spent the last few months working for his wife,
This is getting even more sad. When a player has to explain, that yes, he is receiving offers from Major League teams, and yes, he wants to continue to play baseball it tells me two things:
1. The player is getting offered a minor league deal.
2. Eckstein's ego believes he deserves more than a minor league deal. So assuming this is correct, I am supposed to feel sympathy and be able to relate to a baseball player who miscalculates his own current skill set? No thanks, I won't do that.
So I am sad that Eckstein, a guy who claims to only think about the team and just loves to play the game of baseball, has too much ego to accept a lesser role on a team.
and not diving around infields and driving up pitch counts.
And OPSing 0.647 last year, while getting on-base at a 0.321, which is the lowest percentage of his career.
"I made a decision not to play," said Eckstein, who was in Angel Stadium on Wednesday to visit his brother Rick, the Nationals' batting coach.
Are there any physical reasons? "No," Eckstein said.
Gritty. Hustling. Eckstein.
Asked whether he hoped to play again, Eckstein, who also visited Manager Mike Scioscia and several players in the Angels clubhouse, shrugged his shoulders.
"As soon as some team panics because of a lack of infield depth and chooses to give me a Major League deal to where my ego is satisfied, I will play again. Mainly it is just about what I believe myself to be worth, not what my actual worth may be. Have I ever mentioned I have read all the press about how awesome I am and I believe it all?"
"It totally has to be the right situation, but when you say that, it's like you're disrespecting the clubs that have talked to you," Eckstein said.
You certainly sound like a bit of a diva who doesn't want to compete for a job or take a minor league deal because you are "too good for that" or don't perceive that as your current value. Of course, this is David Eckstein, so he would NEVER be guilty of doing this because we've been told for years just how perfect and unselfish he truly is.
Much of David Eckstein's value goes well beyond statistics —
And here we go with this crap again...
I have always found it interesting many of the same people who defend David Eckstein against the ire of the grit-hating public are also people who love the intangibles of a player, but these people also don't enjoy going beyond basic statistics to evaluate a player. Maybe I'm stereotyping here, but that's the way I feel. It is the use of statistics when it goes to prove a point these people want to prove. Statistics show that Player X is better than Player Y when determining the Cy Young/MVP, which is why wins and RBI's aren't misleading numbers. This is while Player Z may only have 35 RBI's, but his value can't be measured in statistics because it isn't convenient for the point trying to be proven.
When it is convenient to see CC Sabathia has 21 wins and Felix Hernandez has 13 wins that's when the statistics speak for themselves, but once a player seems to exhibit some sort of scrappiness then the statistics no longer speak for what that player provides to a team and that player has intangibles.
So basically, if Felix Hernandez was a short (most likely) white pitcher who "got the most out of his ability" then everyone would have supported him to win the Cy Young last year. Unfortunately, only intelligent people supported and helped him win the Cy Young.
his grit and desire,
No other players care as much as David Eckstein cares. It's an intangible he has which can't be measured, but is measured to be more than anyone else currently playing baseball.
his knowledge of and instincts for the game,
"He does what it takes to win."
his willingness to sacrifice himself for the good of the team by advancing runners with ground-ball outs.
Listen here people! David Eckstein is not afraid to get a ground ball out. While Rickie Weeks is trying to get a base hit to selfishly get himself on-base, David Eckstein cares more about the team than himself and doesn't care if he gets on-base as long as the runners advance. Trying to get a base hit to advance the runners is selfish, getting out to advance the runners helps the team in a way trying to selfishly get on-base doesn't.
It appeared several teams focused on Eckstein's statistics, which are not overwhelming — he had a .280 average, .345 on-base percentage and 1,414 hits in 10 big league seasons —
What? Why would a team focus on a player's statistics when paying him to play baseball? Albert Pujols is a great baseball player, but the smart teams won't focus on this when he becomes a free agent and will focus on the delicious chocolate chip pancakes he makes in the clubhouse before games. THAT'S the real value to the team, breakfast creations, not his selfish insistence on getting on-base at the expense of the team. These are the intangibles that make Albert Pujols worth millions, not getting all over-focused on his statistics.
Given the choice between signing Rickie Weeks to play second base and signing David Eckstein, the stupid teams would choose Weeks based on the simple premise he is actually very good at his job and is the better baseball player. The smart teams don't focus on statistics and choose Eckstein because you can't measure his value with a tangible benefit, but you measure his value using only non-existent measurements called intangibles.
and not his overall value.
Did David Eckstein pay Mike DiGiovanna to write this column? No sportswriter worth a crap would actually write teams pay too much attention to a player's statistics and not the player's "overall value." Aren't statistics part of a player's overall value? How can any person with a straight face truly believe Eckstein has more grit and desire than another player? Eckstein seems to be trying really hard because he is so damn small and he seriously has the weakest throwing arm I've ever seen on a grown man.
If Eckstein had so much grit and desire why doesn't he grit it out and desire to play professional baseball in situation he doesn't feel is ideal? What kind of leader, who claims he loves the game of baseball so much it hasn't left him, avoids any situation he feels isn't good enough for him to play baseball? A real leader would accept a job that pays him to play baseball, because he loves the game so much, and then use his leadership abilities to help the team out. A player who was really willing to sacrifice himself for the betterment of the team would accept a situation that isn't "right" if it makes the team better. Eckstein doesn't seem to want to do any of these things.
"I think in this game you get to a point where you know what you can do, and you want to be in a situation where people believe in you," Rick Eckstein said.
Translation: Eckstein wants either (a) a Major League contract, not a minor league contract and/or (b) an opportunity to start for a MLB team. It isn't selfish to want this, but it is also hard to believe if Eckstein is truly holding out for this then he is as selfless and team-oriented as we are made to believe. If Eckstein's skill set was as great as we are led to believe and he only cares about the team as much as we are led to believe, then I would think any opportunity he received to play in the majors would be welcome.
"David has been a great attribute to baseball for 10 years. He brings a certain element to every team he's been a part of, and at some point, what he brings, people don't see it as a value. So, he's decided [he won't play]."
This scrappy, hustling, team-oriented-only guy is taking his ball and going home because teams don't see just how fucking great he is. Sounds pretty selfish and not selfless doesn't it?
Does Rick Eckstein, who seven months ago donated a kidney to another Eckstein brother, Kenny, think David will play again?
"If the right situation presents itself, absolutely," he said.
Rick sounds about as insufferable as I imagine David Eckstein truly may be.
"David knows who he is. It's that simple."
Here's a startling revelation. We know who David Eckstein is as well. He is a career .280/.345/.355 hitter with a career OPS+ of 83 and WAR of 21.2 for his career.
Eckstein, the clutchiest of postseason players, also has a .278/.345/.335 line in the postseason. If this performance could be measured by statistics, which I am constantly told it can't, I would say he is about as good in the postseason as he is in the regular season.
It seems the rest of the majors know who David Eckstein is as well, and based on this knowledge, it may explain why a major league contract or starting job isn't being handed to a declining 36 year old second baseman. I think the problem is that David Eckstein and those around him can't accept who Eckstein is. It certainly seems that way.
I hope this is the last David Eckstein "hustle, grit, scrappy, intangibles, the statistics don't matter" piece I ever read. I doubt it though.
Showing posts with label Scrappy Mcfuckstein. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Scrappy Mcfuckstein. Show all posts
Monday, July 11, 2011
Monday, June 13, 2011
3 comments Apparently Doug Glanville Thinks Sam Fuld is Superman
Doug Glanville used to be an MLB player and now he writes for ESPN.com. He thinks Sam Fuld is much like Superman. He probably thinks this because some people have given Fuld the nickname "Superman." Now Glanville realizes Fuld isn't the best baseball player on the Rays, in their outfield or perhaps even the best left fielder in the Rays organization, but he has grit and hustle that makes him superhuman. Glanville believes Fuld's glove holds superpowers. He may also believe in leprechauns, the Tooth Fairy, and innate goodness of people, all of which are fictional as well. So Glanville decides to write about Fuld's superpowers at length and continue with the Superman comparison until it has been beaten in the ground and has become more than just hyperbole. It's been a while since I have been able to do a post about a writer who believes a player is gritty and hustles. Thanks to Dave for emailing me the link to this article or I would have missed out on a gem.
I think my biggest question about Doug Glanville is why his photo on the ESPN.com site looks like it was taken at "Glamour Shots." He has his head tilted with his hand under his chin, like he just done with a serious thought and is proud of the conclusion he reached.
As a kid, I did believe in Superman, at least the spirit of him. And baseball has always been a sport where Superman fits in.
There is no world where Superman fits in! He's an outcast I tell you! Haven't you seen the movies?
On the other hand, he is the superhero we have come to seek in the skies, just as in baseball it takes a Superman spirit to endure, as both fan and player.
(my head begins hurting upon reading this sentence)
It really doesn't take a Superman spirit to endure as a fan. Sports are entertainment. If you feel it takes a Superman spirit to endure being a fan of a baseball team, you need to find more obstacles to overcome in life.
Yet Superman had the ability to achieve greatness through powers beyond our reach, despite having a great weakness. He was super not only because of these powers, but because he was human enough to not understand them and sometimes not even want them.
This is just like Sam Fuld. He has the power to hit over .250 with 20 home runs with 80 stolen bases, all while fighting inner-city crime in every major city, he just doesn't want to do it because he understands him being on the field isn't the best thing for the Rays future and he can fight crime later in life. He doesn't need to lower the crime rate in all major cities by 15% right now because he has to inspire Rays fans. Fuld holds back his abilities for the greater good of society, except he also gives 110% every night. He's quite a contradiction.
When Manny Ramirez walked out the door, the distortion of Superman may have left with him. Ramirez exited hand-in-hand with a time we called the "steroid era."
So the steroid era exited with Manny Ramirez? Did no one tell Alex Rodriguez or David Ortiz they had retired? Actually, how come no one who follows baseball got Ramirez was the "last" of the PED users to exit baseball?
Ramirez isn't the last accused steroid user to still be playing in MLB. There are others, so the distortion of Superman didn't exactly leave with him.
A time when Supermen were able to hit baseballs onto rooftops and pitchers could throw nearly 100 mph at age 40. No one seemed to age, no one got tired and, worst of all, no one was allowed to be Clark Kent.
I haven't read any of Doug Glanville's other writing, but if this is indicative of how he writes then he should be kept away from a keyboard at all costs.
But someone walked in the door as Manny walked out. Sam Fuld landed on our planet,
Finally, someone who can hit .230/.280/.351 has landed on our planet. Do you know how hard it is to find a 29 year old major league baseball player and corner outfielder with no power who is also a mediocre hitter when it comes to hitting for average AND this guy plays everyday? It is incredibly tough to find players like this because most of these players are still playing in the minor leagues.
So if Superman is a person who has the talent to land on Earth and actually be worse at his job than his fellow Earth people, than Sam Fuld is Superman. Apparently he has landed to make the other MLB players look good when it comes to hitting.
a solid minor league player who made contact,
He's on pace for 600 at-bats and will strike out approximately (projected) 84 times in those at-bats. So he is solid in that he makes contact, but it doesn't do much good when he's getting on-base at a 29% clip. Combined with his lack of power, I am not impressed with him enough to compare him to Superman.
stole a few bases
"A few" literally. He had 14 stolen bases when I wrote this and had gotten caught 6 times. That's a not-so-Supermanlike 70% stolen base success percentage.
and seemed to fly with his glove.
Except he didn't fly with his glove. He is a very good left fielder, but he is essentially a defensive replacement getting regular at-bats. That's not good for the Rays when they are middle of the pack in the majors in runs scored and 4th in their own division in runs scored.
Super Sam had not been in the Chicago Cubs' plans as a solution to much of anything other than a defensive replacement,
This is probably because Super Sam isn't so super at being anything but a defensive replacement. Yet, he is on pace for 600 at-bats and Doug Glanville is celebrating this. I don't know why this is supposed to be a good thing. Fuld isn't a shortstop, catcher or a second baseman. He is a corner outfielder where traditionally a player with the ability to hit for power or average is a necessity for a team. So I hate to feel like I am dumping on Sam Fuld, but I am not a person to celebrate mediocrity or averageness.
so they did him a favor
And themselves a favor by getting rid of a guy who was too old to be a prospect anymore...
and let him soar south to Tampa, cape and all, to finally get the shot he needed to shake the perception of him as an aging, non-starting player whose 30th birthday was on the horizon.
They let Fuld go shake the perception as an aging (29 years old), non-starting player (his OPS+ for this year is currently 81) whose birthday is on the horizon (November). What has Fuld done? Played great defense and then lent credence to the perception he is an aging, non-starting MLB player. For this, Doug Glanville shall celebrate him.
Through grit and determination,
He has zero athletic skill. It is all grit, determination and maybe even a little magic that has gotten Sam Fuld to where he is today. Fuld is completely unathletic or skilled, yet somehow managed to be a professional baseball player due to the fact he tries harder than anyone else.
His numbers at the plate do not evoke Legion of Doom fear, especially compared to what we have come to expect from a corner outfielder.
But if you lower your expectations for what a corner outfielder should do at the plate, Sam Fuld is a regular Joe DiMaggio. If you feel it necessary to compare Sam Fuld to other corner outfielders in the majors, and I don't know why that is necessary to ruin the perception of Sam Fuld as a Superman, then he isn't even Dom or Vince DiMaggio.
He is hitting .227 and he doesn't have the requisite power game (sporting only three homers in 52 games), but he is playing and just about every day.
He's playing everyday for two reasons:
1. He is a hustling, gritty player who has grabbed the 17,000 Rays fans in attendance by the heart and squeezed their heart with the scrappiness he is known for until their heart can't handle the passion he has in his body and they are forced, through Fuld's own unique will and want, to love him and want to watch him play baseball.
2. The Rays haven't called Desmond Jennings up yet.
Only in the Bizarro World would we have accepted this kind of offensive production from a left fielder.
Only in a world where a team has a payroll limitations and doesn't want to commit to a long-term starter in left field because one of their top prospects can play that position is this short-term offensive production accepted.
Fuld is playing left field daily for a couple of reasons, none of which have to do with him being Superman, which is why Glanville's gushing review of Fuld is uncalled for.
1. He's playing because Manny Ramirez retired, which moved Johnny Damon to DH.
2. There is no other solution on the roster for left field.
3. The Rays don't have a ton of money to go and sign a better hitting LF.
4. Even if the Rays had a ton of money for this, they wouldn't do it because Desmond Jennings will be in the majors very, very soon.
5. Fuld plays pretty good defense.
So Fuld is playing due to circumstances, the lack of a want by the Rays organization to get a better hitter in LF, and because he's the only one left to play LF. I don't think a "hustle-grit" piece on him is necessary.
Despite his quantifiable work, he has been a force to be reckoned with by his fans and opponents alike, so much so that the Tampa Bay Rays had a Super Sam Fuld Cape Day in his honor on Sunday.
You can't measure what Fuld does by trying to measure in actual quantifiable terms. You have to think of some useless bullshit (or talk about his defense, which isn't useless) like talking about his heart, hustle or him being Superman to measure what a great player is.
You need to use the completely unmeasurable, intangible positive attributes of Fuld in order to measure how great he is. So you measure his greatness by using things that can't be measured.
This takes us back. In the '80s, as a fan it was a time when you could expect Omar Moreno or Gary Pettis to be playing every day mostly because of their speed and defense. It was a time when stopping teams from scoring was as important as driving runs in.
I'm pretty sure a couple of teams have paid extra attention to having a great team defense lately and have had mixed results. It didn't work out for the Mariners last year because they had a shit lineup. The Rays are near the bottom of the league in runs scored, they need to pay attention to making sure they score more runs and Fuld doesn't help too much in that respect.
So stopping the other team from scoring is very important, but teams that have trouble scoring don't have the luxury of having players who are in their for their speed and defense. So while Glanville's reasoning may be somewhat sound, in respect to the current Rays team, getting nostalgic and crediting Fuld for being a throwback doesn't help the current Rays team.
So Larry Bowa played, Ozzie Smith played, Jim Sundberg played, Mark Belanger played, Rick Manning played. No one could get the ball past these guys and it was understood that they needed to be out there every day to be fielding a winning team.
Larry Bowa played on a team with Mike Schmidt, Tug McGraw, Steve Carlton, and an aging Pete Rose. His defense could have been afforded in that lineup.
Ozzie Smith is one of the best defensive shortstops in the history of baseball and wasn't a power hitter but he got on base at a great clip in the prime of his career and he stole bases very successfully. From 1982 to 1993 he stole 20 or more bases and never got caught stealing more than 9 times.
Jim Sundberg won a World Series in 1985, but other than that he was a great defensive catcher and that is about it. He isn't Hall of Fame worthy.
Mark Belanger was on Orioles teams that had great pitching and great hitting. So his great defense was a luxury they could afford.
Yes, there have been players throughout the history of baseball that are good fielders and not great hitters, but I think to compare Sam Fuld to any of these players like Ozzie Smith, Jim Sundberg, and Mark Belanger is doing them a disservice. Plus, the fact other teams had these type of players doesn't necessarily justify Fuld playing everyday. I think Fuld is a great defensive player and would be handy off the bench, but it is silly to think he will be the long-term answer.
But the obsession with the home run overwhelmed this train of thought and, one by one, these players faded onto Triple-A rosters and into defensive replacement columns.
The priority became to score as many runs as possible and then worry about stopping the other team in the ninth inning.
Starting pitchers over the last decade or so have pitched underhand to the plate, not even caring if the other team scored runs or not. Sometimes teams didn't even have any players fielding the ball, it was just the pitcher and the catcher playing the field. All the other players were in the dugout using steroids and working on new techniques to hit home runs. That is, until the 9th inning. At that point, it was time to care about stopping the other team from scoring and so teams would bring out their best pitcher.
Doug Glanville remembers these days of when teams didn't care about giving up runs vividly as his mind slowly begins to give into the onset of dementia.
Yet I remember as a fan jumping out of my chair when I saw a great defensive play. I remember how that changed the momentum of a game or gave a pitching staff a boost of confidence.
So does Doug Glanville think Derek Jeter making great fielding plays during the playoffs were the catalyst behind the Yankees winning four World Championships from 1996-2000? If so, I love hyperbolic evidence like this. I'm not exactly sure how to measure if a fielding played did increase a pitcher's confidence or changed the momentum of a game.
You know what made me jump out of my seat and caused the momentum of a game to change? When a player hits a home run that puts runs on the board for his team. Those seem to change the momentum of the game. I don't even have to use hyperbolic evidence to prove this, much to Doug "The Big Hyperbole" Glanville's dismay, I have quantifiable evidence.
Kirby Puckett's home run in Game 6 of the 1991 World Series.
Joe Carter's home run in Game 6 of the 1993 World Series.
David Justice's home run in Game 6 of the 1995 World Series (my personal favorite).
Jim Leyritz (may he burn in Hell) in Game 3 of the 1996 World Series.
Derek Jeter's Game 1 home run against the Orioles in the 1996 ALDS.
Kirk Gibson's Game 1 home run against the A's in the 1988 World Series.
Now, I've become bored...but you get the point. There are plenty of examples of home runs that have ended games or changed the momentum of games. Great hitting changes the momentum of games also, just like good defense is necessary as well and really isn't overlooked.
I also remember when I was particularly upset at my offensive performance over a stretch and teammate Curt Schilling said to me, "Don't worry about it, just keep catching that ball."
Here is really why Glanville is writing this "hustle-grit" piece, because he wasn't a great hitter himself. So by propping up Sam Fuld for his fielding even though he isn't a great hitter, Doug Glanville is essentially trying to ensure everyone remembers he was a good baseball player as well.
Also, Doug Glanville sponsors his own Baseball-Reference page. Take from that what you will. I can't decide if this is more pathetic or more egotistical.
Super Sam Fuld has helped us find something again. The underdog, the guy who plays it straight, the guy who isn't supposed to be penciled in every day without a second thought -- but is.
Super Sam Fuld has helped us discover the player whose hitting skill level is actually below the replacement player. He is a guy who the replacement player would replace if Fuld didn't have so much fucking heart to not allow this to happen.
He's like Darin Erstad on steroids. Except Sam Fuld wouldn't do steroids because he plays it straight. In fact, he doesn't he even play it straight because he's too good for that. He plays the game of baseball Full Fuld. That's the highest of compliments, like a Nobel Peace Prize only given to the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize. That's what Sam Fuld is.
He plays the game like it was meant to be played by players who are below average hitters. Sam Fuld represents the mediocrity baseball has been missing since the steroid days (except guys like Darin Erstad and David Eckstein would fawned over during the Steroid Era, so this really isn't true). Welcome back mediocrity, Doug Glanville has missed you.
He has challenged a time when a little pill or a shot made him and his kind fall off of the face of the earth while tricking us into believing that Supermen only do things that no one else can do.
Remember Sam Fuld has done this. Not the players like Albert Pujols or Jose Bautista who play at a high level without the aid of steroids. Not them. The players in Doug Glanville's world who remind us great things are possible in baseball are the players like Sam Fuld who aren't actually capable of great things, not the players like Roy Halladay or Joey Votto who are capable of greatness.
That they are supposed to leap Green Monsters, power home runs over Death Valley, see through the weakness of anxiety without emotion. A time when humanity seemed to become irrelevant.
Seriously, we can't allow Doug Glanville to continue to write about these type things.
But Fuld also tells us that anything is possible not just for himself, but for the world that watches him play. He is able to leap tall buildings in part because he carries the strength of an honest "everyday" effort on his shoulders.
As opposed to guys like Evan Longoria or actual superstars that are just really damn lazy and don't put in an honest effort,yet somehow play at an elite level?
He is relatable; he does not have any particular power other than showing up every day and leaving it on the field with a magic glove that he made with his own hands.
Let's break this crap sentence down to get to the real juicy shitty writing.
he does not have any particular power other than showing up every day
He shows up everyday, just like nearly every other everyday position player in the major leagues does, except other players who show up everyday don't "try as hard" apparently. This is terrible use of hyperbole.
and leaving it on the field with a magic glove
Really? A magic glove? This sentence has both the cliche of "leaving it on the field" while also referring to "a magic glove." This sentence should go in the bad sportswriting Hall of Fame. Too bad Fuld's magic doesn't extend to any other facet of playing baseball.
that he made with his own hands.
Sam Fuld did not make his "magic" glove with his own two hands. I'm on hyperbole and cliche overload right now.
Here is a list of other things Sam Fuld has made with his own two hands:
-Broccoli
-A time machine that he doesn't use because he plays it straight. He did create the time machine though and immediately destroyed it after it served its one true purpose.
-Baby Jesus
-The gun that killed Osama bin Laden
-The ability for small children to feel humanity
-Kittens
-A stairway to heaven
-A unicorn with two horns---a tunicorn
-The state of Maine
-Christmas caroling
-A vaccine that avoided a plague in the early 18th century---he used his time machine for this one purpose.
And that is truly what Superman is about. A very human soul almost trapped with powers that he doesn't quite know how to harness.
Or in the case of Sam Fuld, powers he doesn't actually possess.
His humanity is what allows him to be real, to be possible even when he sees through walls. Such is the life of a major league player -- with great talent, you worry so much about your performance, your Kryptonite, your arch-enemies, that you forget that you can inspire people by just being human.
Sometimes baseball players are so concerned with helping their team win and not being a liability as a hitter, they forget that if they play for a team that is using them as a stopgap player until their best hitting prospect can make it to the majors, then by inspiring people they will forget you are a terrible hitter and you most likely should be replaced very soon despite your excellent and scrappy defense.
The PEDs just gave us and the game hollow souls. Pimping Superman to make him out to be invincible, someone who never had doubt, who used his powers to erase history and destroy mankind.
Again, the person who saved us from this is not one of the many baseball players that perform at a high level without the use of PEDs, but the players like Sam Fuld who perform at a low level without PEDs. They are a reminder of the mediocrity small market teams are forced to endure until a better player currently in the minors is ready to be called up to the majors.
Steroids thought they could make everyone Superman but in reality were just letting Lex Luthor get his way.
This is idiocy.
So let Sam Fuld be super today, he can wear his cape, play a corner outfield position and not have 25 homers in 52 games,
Few players are able to have 25 homers in 52 games. Many players are able to hit well enough to play everyday, while also having an excellent glove, and these players should be celebrated. These players are not Sam Fuld.
Don't worry about the numbers because he has made it
Yeah Rays fans, you don't need Desmond Jennings or an upgrade for your team. You have a 29 year old journeyman left fielder. So ignore the quantifiable evidence that says there should be an easy upgrade over Fuld in left field, that quantifiable evidence doesn't win games. Hustle, heart and grit does. Look, Rays fans! Something shiny!
and he has made the most of it, with what he has within.
As has nearly every other baseball player in the majors, it is just their "most" in many cases is better than Fuld's "most."
And watching him do what he does tells us all that we can be super, if given just a little chance.
It also tells us the Rays will be replacing Fuld as their everyday left fielder, as soon as a better option appears. Because no matter what nickname he is given, he isn't super in most facets of playing baseball.
Doug Glanville, consider yourself bookmarked.
I think my biggest question about Doug Glanville is why his photo on the ESPN.com site looks like it was taken at "Glamour Shots." He has his head tilted with his hand under his chin, like he just done with a serious thought and is proud of the conclusion he reached.
As a kid, I did believe in Superman, at least the spirit of him. And baseball has always been a sport where Superman fits in.
There is no world where Superman fits in! He's an outcast I tell you! Haven't you seen the movies?
On the other hand, he is the superhero we have come to seek in the skies, just as in baseball it takes a Superman spirit to endure, as both fan and player.
(my head begins hurting upon reading this sentence)
It really doesn't take a Superman spirit to endure as a fan. Sports are entertainment. If you feel it takes a Superman spirit to endure being a fan of a baseball team, you need to find more obstacles to overcome in life.
Yet Superman had the ability to achieve greatness through powers beyond our reach, despite having a great weakness. He was super not only because of these powers, but because he was human enough to not understand them and sometimes not even want them.
This is just like Sam Fuld. He has the power to hit over .250 with 20 home runs with 80 stolen bases, all while fighting inner-city crime in every major city, he just doesn't want to do it because he understands him being on the field isn't the best thing for the Rays future and he can fight crime later in life. He doesn't need to lower the crime rate in all major cities by 15% right now because he has to inspire Rays fans. Fuld holds back his abilities for the greater good of society, except he also gives 110% every night. He's quite a contradiction.
When Manny Ramirez walked out the door, the distortion of Superman may have left with him. Ramirez exited hand-in-hand with a time we called the "steroid era."
So the steroid era exited with Manny Ramirez? Did no one tell Alex Rodriguez or David Ortiz they had retired? Actually, how come no one who follows baseball got Ramirez was the "last" of the PED users to exit baseball?
Ramirez isn't the last accused steroid user to still be playing in MLB. There are others, so the distortion of Superman didn't exactly leave with him.
A time when Supermen were able to hit baseballs onto rooftops and pitchers could throw nearly 100 mph at age 40. No one seemed to age, no one got tired and, worst of all, no one was allowed to be Clark Kent.
I haven't read any of Doug Glanville's other writing, but if this is indicative of how he writes then he should be kept away from a keyboard at all costs.
But someone walked in the door as Manny walked out. Sam Fuld landed on our planet,
Finally, someone who can hit .230/.280/.351 has landed on our planet. Do you know how hard it is to find a 29 year old major league baseball player and corner outfielder with no power who is also a mediocre hitter when it comes to hitting for average AND this guy plays everyday? It is incredibly tough to find players like this because most of these players are still playing in the minor leagues.
So if Superman is a person who has the talent to land on Earth and actually be worse at his job than his fellow Earth people, than Sam Fuld is Superman. Apparently he has landed to make the other MLB players look good when it comes to hitting.
a solid minor league player who made contact,
He's on pace for 600 at-bats and will strike out approximately (projected) 84 times in those at-bats. So he is solid in that he makes contact, but it doesn't do much good when he's getting on-base at a 29% clip. Combined with his lack of power, I am not impressed with him enough to compare him to Superman.
stole a few bases
"A few" literally. He had 14 stolen bases when I wrote this and had gotten caught 6 times. That's a not-so-Supermanlike 70% stolen base success percentage.
and seemed to fly with his glove.
Except he didn't fly with his glove. He is a very good left fielder, but he is essentially a defensive replacement getting regular at-bats. That's not good for the Rays when they are middle of the pack in the majors in runs scored and 4th in their own division in runs scored.
Super Sam had not been in the Chicago Cubs' plans as a solution to much of anything other than a defensive replacement,
This is probably because Super Sam isn't so super at being anything but a defensive replacement. Yet, he is on pace for 600 at-bats and Doug Glanville is celebrating this. I don't know why this is supposed to be a good thing. Fuld isn't a shortstop, catcher or a second baseman. He is a corner outfielder where traditionally a player with the ability to hit for power or average is a necessity for a team. So I hate to feel like I am dumping on Sam Fuld, but I am not a person to celebrate mediocrity or averageness.
so they did him a favor
And themselves a favor by getting rid of a guy who was too old to be a prospect anymore...
and let him soar south to Tampa, cape and all, to finally get the shot he needed to shake the perception of him as an aging, non-starting player whose 30th birthday was on the horizon.
They let Fuld go shake the perception as an aging (29 years old), non-starting player (his OPS+ for this year is currently 81) whose birthday is on the horizon (November). What has Fuld done? Played great defense and then lent credence to the perception he is an aging, non-starting MLB player. For this, Doug Glanville shall celebrate him.
Through grit and determination,
He has zero athletic skill. It is all grit, determination and maybe even a little magic that has gotten Sam Fuld to where he is today. Fuld is completely unathletic or skilled, yet somehow managed to be a professional baseball player due to the fact he tries harder than anyone else.
His numbers at the plate do not evoke Legion of Doom fear, especially compared to what we have come to expect from a corner outfielder.
But if you lower your expectations for what a corner outfielder should do at the plate, Sam Fuld is a regular Joe DiMaggio. If you feel it necessary to compare Sam Fuld to other corner outfielders in the majors, and I don't know why that is necessary to ruin the perception of Sam Fuld as a Superman, then he isn't even Dom or Vince DiMaggio.
He is hitting .227 and he doesn't have the requisite power game (sporting only three homers in 52 games), but he is playing and just about every day.
He's playing everyday for two reasons:
1. He is a hustling, gritty player who has grabbed the 17,000 Rays fans in attendance by the heart and squeezed their heart with the scrappiness he is known for until their heart can't handle the passion he has in his body and they are forced, through Fuld's own unique will and want, to love him and want to watch him play baseball.
2. The Rays haven't called Desmond Jennings up yet.
Only in the Bizarro World would we have accepted this kind of offensive production from a left fielder.
Only in a world where a team has a payroll limitations and doesn't want to commit to a long-term starter in left field because one of their top prospects can play that position is this short-term offensive production accepted.
Fuld is playing left field daily for a couple of reasons, none of which have to do with him being Superman, which is why Glanville's gushing review of Fuld is uncalled for.
1. He's playing because Manny Ramirez retired, which moved Johnny Damon to DH.
2. There is no other solution on the roster for left field.
3. The Rays don't have a ton of money to go and sign a better hitting LF.
4. Even if the Rays had a ton of money for this, they wouldn't do it because Desmond Jennings will be in the majors very, very soon.
5. Fuld plays pretty good defense.
So Fuld is playing due to circumstances, the lack of a want by the Rays organization to get a better hitter in LF, and because he's the only one left to play LF. I don't think a "hustle-grit" piece on him is necessary.
Despite his quantifiable work, he has been a force to be reckoned with by his fans and opponents alike, so much so that the Tampa Bay Rays had a Super Sam Fuld Cape Day in his honor on Sunday.
You can't measure what Fuld does by trying to measure in actual quantifiable terms. You have to think of some useless bullshit (or talk about his defense, which isn't useless) like talking about his heart, hustle or him being Superman to measure what a great player is.
You need to use the completely unmeasurable, intangible positive attributes of Fuld in order to measure how great he is. So you measure his greatness by using things that can't be measured.
This takes us back. In the '80s, as a fan it was a time when you could expect Omar Moreno or Gary Pettis to be playing every day mostly because of their speed and defense. It was a time when stopping teams from scoring was as important as driving runs in.
I'm pretty sure a couple of teams have paid extra attention to having a great team defense lately and have had mixed results. It didn't work out for the Mariners last year because they had a shit lineup. The Rays are near the bottom of the league in runs scored, they need to pay attention to making sure they score more runs and Fuld doesn't help too much in that respect.
So stopping the other team from scoring is very important, but teams that have trouble scoring don't have the luxury of having players who are in their for their speed and defense. So while Glanville's reasoning may be somewhat sound, in respect to the current Rays team, getting nostalgic and crediting Fuld for being a throwback doesn't help the current Rays team.
So Larry Bowa played, Ozzie Smith played, Jim Sundberg played, Mark Belanger played, Rick Manning played. No one could get the ball past these guys and it was understood that they needed to be out there every day to be fielding a winning team.
Larry Bowa played on a team with Mike Schmidt, Tug McGraw, Steve Carlton, and an aging Pete Rose. His defense could have been afforded in that lineup.
Ozzie Smith is one of the best defensive shortstops in the history of baseball and wasn't a power hitter but he got on base at a great clip in the prime of his career and he stole bases very successfully. From 1982 to 1993 he stole 20 or more bases and never got caught stealing more than 9 times.
Jim Sundberg won a World Series in 1985, but other than that he was a great defensive catcher and that is about it. He isn't Hall of Fame worthy.
Mark Belanger was on Orioles teams that had great pitching and great hitting. So his great defense was a luxury they could afford.
Yes, there have been players throughout the history of baseball that are good fielders and not great hitters, but I think to compare Sam Fuld to any of these players like Ozzie Smith, Jim Sundberg, and Mark Belanger is doing them a disservice. Plus, the fact other teams had these type of players doesn't necessarily justify Fuld playing everyday. I think Fuld is a great defensive player and would be handy off the bench, but it is silly to think he will be the long-term answer.
But the obsession with the home run overwhelmed this train of thought and, one by one, these players faded onto Triple-A rosters and into defensive replacement columns.
The priority became to score as many runs as possible and then worry about stopping the other team in the ninth inning.
Starting pitchers over the last decade or so have pitched underhand to the plate, not even caring if the other team scored runs or not. Sometimes teams didn't even have any players fielding the ball, it was just the pitcher and the catcher playing the field. All the other players were in the dugout using steroids and working on new techniques to hit home runs. That is, until the 9th inning. At that point, it was time to care about stopping the other team from scoring and so teams would bring out their best pitcher.
Doug Glanville remembers these days of when teams didn't care about giving up runs vividly as his mind slowly begins to give into the onset of dementia.
Yet I remember as a fan jumping out of my chair when I saw a great defensive play. I remember how that changed the momentum of a game or gave a pitching staff a boost of confidence.
So does Doug Glanville think Derek Jeter making great fielding plays during the playoffs were the catalyst behind the Yankees winning four World Championships from 1996-2000? If so, I love hyperbolic evidence like this. I'm not exactly sure how to measure if a fielding played did increase a pitcher's confidence or changed the momentum of a game.
You know what made me jump out of my seat and caused the momentum of a game to change? When a player hits a home run that puts runs on the board for his team. Those seem to change the momentum of the game. I don't even have to use hyperbolic evidence to prove this, much to Doug "The Big Hyperbole" Glanville's dismay, I have quantifiable evidence.
Kirby Puckett's home run in Game 6 of the 1991 World Series.
Joe Carter's home run in Game 6 of the 1993 World Series.
David Justice's home run in Game 6 of the 1995 World Series (my personal favorite).
Jim Leyritz (may he burn in Hell) in Game 3 of the 1996 World Series.
Derek Jeter's Game 1 home run against the Orioles in the 1996 ALDS.
Kirk Gibson's Game 1 home run against the A's in the 1988 World Series.
Now, I've become bored...but you get the point. There are plenty of examples of home runs that have ended games or changed the momentum of games. Great hitting changes the momentum of games also, just like good defense is necessary as well and really isn't overlooked.
I also remember when I was particularly upset at my offensive performance over a stretch and teammate Curt Schilling said to me, "Don't worry about it, just keep catching that ball."
Here is really why Glanville is writing this "hustle-grit" piece, because he wasn't a great hitter himself. So by propping up Sam Fuld for his fielding even though he isn't a great hitter, Doug Glanville is essentially trying to ensure everyone remembers he was a good baseball player as well.
Also, Doug Glanville sponsors his own Baseball-Reference page. Take from that what you will. I can't decide if this is more pathetic or more egotistical.
Super Sam Fuld has helped us find something again. The underdog, the guy who plays it straight, the guy who isn't supposed to be penciled in every day without a second thought -- but is.
Super Sam Fuld has helped us discover the player whose hitting skill level is actually below the replacement player. He is a guy who the replacement player would replace if Fuld didn't have so much fucking heart to not allow this to happen.
He's like Darin Erstad on steroids. Except Sam Fuld wouldn't do steroids because he plays it straight. In fact, he doesn't he even play it straight because he's too good for that. He plays the game of baseball Full Fuld. That's the highest of compliments, like a Nobel Peace Prize only given to the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize. That's what Sam Fuld is.
He plays the game like it was meant to be played by players who are below average hitters. Sam Fuld represents the mediocrity baseball has been missing since the steroid days (except guys like Darin Erstad and David Eckstein would fawned over during the Steroid Era, so this really isn't true). Welcome back mediocrity, Doug Glanville has missed you.
He has challenged a time when a little pill or a shot made him and his kind fall off of the face of the earth while tricking us into believing that Supermen only do things that no one else can do.
Remember Sam Fuld has done this. Not the players like Albert Pujols or Jose Bautista who play at a high level without the aid of steroids. Not them. The players in Doug Glanville's world who remind us great things are possible in baseball are the players like Sam Fuld who aren't actually capable of great things, not the players like Roy Halladay or Joey Votto who are capable of greatness.
That they are supposed to leap Green Monsters, power home runs over Death Valley, see through the weakness of anxiety without emotion. A time when humanity seemed to become irrelevant.
Seriously, we can't allow Doug Glanville to continue to write about these type things.
But Fuld also tells us that anything is possible not just for himself, but for the world that watches him play. He is able to leap tall buildings in part because he carries the strength of an honest "everyday" effort on his shoulders.
As opposed to guys like Evan Longoria or actual superstars that are just really damn lazy and don't put in an honest effort,yet somehow play at an elite level?
He is relatable; he does not have any particular power other than showing up every day and leaving it on the field with a magic glove that he made with his own hands.
Let's break this crap sentence down to get to the real juicy shitty writing.
he does not have any particular power other than showing up every day
He shows up everyday, just like nearly every other everyday position player in the major leagues does, except other players who show up everyday don't "try as hard" apparently. This is terrible use of hyperbole.
and leaving it on the field with a magic glove
Really? A magic glove? This sentence has both the cliche of "leaving it on the field" while also referring to "a magic glove." This sentence should go in the bad sportswriting Hall of Fame. Too bad Fuld's magic doesn't extend to any other facet of playing baseball.
that he made with his own hands.
Sam Fuld did not make his "magic" glove with his own two hands. I'm on hyperbole and cliche overload right now.
Here is a list of other things Sam Fuld has made with his own two hands:
-Broccoli
-A time machine that he doesn't use because he plays it straight. He did create the time machine though and immediately destroyed it after it served its one true purpose.
-Baby Jesus
-The gun that killed Osama bin Laden
-The ability for small children to feel humanity
-Kittens
-A stairway to heaven
-A unicorn with two horns---a tunicorn
-The state of Maine
-Christmas caroling
-A vaccine that avoided a plague in the early 18th century---he used his time machine for this one purpose.
And that is truly what Superman is about. A very human soul almost trapped with powers that he doesn't quite know how to harness.
Or in the case of Sam Fuld, powers he doesn't actually possess.
His humanity is what allows him to be real, to be possible even when he sees through walls. Such is the life of a major league player -- with great talent, you worry so much about your performance, your Kryptonite, your arch-enemies, that you forget that you can inspire people by just being human.
Sometimes baseball players are so concerned with helping their team win and not being a liability as a hitter, they forget that if they play for a team that is using them as a stopgap player until their best hitting prospect can make it to the majors, then by inspiring people they will forget you are a terrible hitter and you most likely should be replaced very soon despite your excellent and scrappy defense.
The PEDs just gave us and the game hollow souls. Pimping Superman to make him out to be invincible, someone who never had doubt, who used his powers to erase history and destroy mankind.
Again, the person who saved us from this is not one of the many baseball players that perform at a high level without the use of PEDs, but the players like Sam Fuld who perform at a low level without PEDs. They are a reminder of the mediocrity small market teams are forced to endure until a better player currently in the minors is ready to be called up to the majors.
Steroids thought they could make everyone Superman but in reality were just letting Lex Luthor get his way.
This is idiocy.
So let Sam Fuld be super today, he can wear his cape, play a corner outfield position and not have 25 homers in 52 games,
Few players are able to have 25 homers in 52 games. Many players are able to hit well enough to play everyday, while also having an excellent glove, and these players should be celebrated. These players are not Sam Fuld.
Don't worry about the numbers because he has made it
Yeah Rays fans, you don't need Desmond Jennings or an upgrade for your team. You have a 29 year old journeyman left fielder. So ignore the quantifiable evidence that says there should be an easy upgrade over Fuld in left field, that quantifiable evidence doesn't win games. Hustle, heart and grit does. Look, Rays fans! Something shiny!
and he has made the most of it, with what he has within.
As has nearly every other baseball player in the majors, it is just their "most" in many cases is better than Fuld's "most."
And watching him do what he does tells us all that we can be super, if given just a little chance.
It also tells us the Rays will be replacing Fuld as their everyday left fielder, as soon as a better option appears. Because no matter what nickname he is given, he isn't super in most facets of playing baseball.
Doug Glanville, consider yourself bookmarked.
Monday, December 13, 2010
4 comments David Eckstein, Consider Yourself Replaced
There is nothing a sportswriter likes more than a white, undersized athlete. It's like going to a "Twilight" movie for a teenage girl. Nothing gets them more excited. Unfortunately much like teen idols and boy bands, scrappy-gritty-gutsy white guys get replaced over time. David Eckstein's time has come. Sports journalists have now put posters of Danny Woodhead on the walls of their office and they aren't afraid to scream their lungs out when he walks in the room. Peter Richmond tells us why.
I'm not sure this is actually bad journalism, but more cliche and hyperbole-filled journalism in the form of a fluff-piece.
This is an everyman. This is the guy in front of you in line at the DMV, getting new plates for his pickup.
He's getting plates for the pickup that he can't even reach the brake and gas pedals on. How's he reach them? He scraps and claws until his legs reach the brake and gas. Then he uses pure grit to pull the pickup truck on the road where it runs, not on fuel, but on the pure will of Danny Woodhead to drive it.
If you happened to run across Danny Woodhead somewhere out in the real world, where, at 5-foot-8, he actually stands only one inch shorter than the average 25-year-old American male, you wouldn't give him a second glance. Especially if he were wearing the ensemble he's wearing in the Patriots' locker room after one recent practice: a floppy blue sweatshirt, a red Patriots skull cap pulled low over his head, a sprig of a chin-beard that looks like a caterpillar in need of a trim, and a wary, heavy-lidded expression that says, Hey, I'm a Division II nobody from a railroad town in Nebraska. Let's keep it that way. Talking isn't what I do. Please -- go talk to Brady.
Is this a fluff piece about a scrappy white guy. Let's check the first paragraph to make sure:
1. He wants no part of the spotlight.
2. His underdog beginnings are mentioned.
3. His height is mentioned.
4. He's JUST like you and me...except he has pro-level talent.
5. There is at least one mention that you wouldn't notice him in public.
6. He is called "scrappy" for some form of this word at least once.
7. No one believed in him. Except for him.
8. This somehow makes him more humble than other athletes.
I guess 7 out of 8 isn't bad and this article has 7 out of the 8 characteristics necessary.
It's only on a football field where Danny Woodhead weekly stands out as the most unlikely of highlighters, etched against a panorama of enlarged NFL humanoids. Where he regularly ducks beneath the swat of defensive linemen, a foot taller and 100 pounds heavier,
Really? There is a regular group of NFL players that are 6'8" tall? I know there are a few, but I didn't realize every week Danny Woodhead was facing down a large group of 6'8" defenders. Is he sure he didn't accidentally walk onto an NBA basketball court?
Where blitzers don't even see him until he blocks them to the ground.
WOODHEAD CAN'T BLOCK! Just ask Gregg Easterbrook.
Or when, against the Colts a few weeks ago, a few minutes after skittering for a 36-yard touchdown, he made the tackle on the ensuing kickoff, playing special teams, flattening Brandon James the way a bowling ball on amphetamines might flatten a chipmunk on Quaaludes.
Wow. I'm guessing this sentence took at least five minutes to write. You just can't think of hyperbole and terrible analogies like this in a minute or less.
Admit it: you don't just love Danny Woodhead because he's the underdog, the little guy who grew up in a Midwestern town best known for its railroad freight yard (and the nearby Museum of the Fur Trade);
I don't love Danny Woodhead. My question is this...why don't "scrappy fluff pieces" get written about minority players? Woodhead took over Kevin Faulk's job duties on the Patriots, did Faulk ever have a fluff piece like this written about him? He is 5'8", has had a great NFL career on 3 Super Bowl winning teams, made the Patriots 50th Anniversary team, and is from a small town in Louisiana. He's scrappy too dammit!
Doesn't that qualify him for scrappy status? Woodhead hasn't even played a full season in the NFL and already tales of his great adventures are being told. I wonder how many have been written about Kevin Faulk, a guy who has actually had extended success in the NFL? Why are short white guys the only ones who are considered hustlers and just like you and me? Isn't it possible Woodhead is a talented guy, just like Faulk is a talented guy? Why must he be painted as an overachiever who uses every little bit of his talent to succeed in the NFL? I guess sports journalist are working under the assumption that Kevin Faulk doesn't use all of his talent...I wonder why they do that?
was then snubbed by home state University of Nebraska despite being named the state's high school player of the year;
And the Cornhuskers haven't made a bowl appearance since...
Wait, that's not right.
In defense of Nebraska, Bill Callahan was probably responsible for not recruiting Woodhead. Callahan was just a generally clueless head coach, so there's that. Of course it could be Frank Solich's fault for not recruiting Woodhead in which case there is no excuse.
attended a college named Chadron State with a stadium capacity of 3,000; and then went undrafted despite winning Division II's Heisman two years in a row; and was then waived by the Jets three months ago, despite, in training camp the year before, running for 158 yards and two touchdowns in an exhibition game.
Don't you know he ran for 158 yards one year ago in a meaningless exhibition game one year ago? This is a man you keep based solely on that. Plus, couldn't the Jets see his grit and scrap?
No, you love him because he plays football like a grunt from the mercenary NFL of the 1940s. Balls out. Gimme your best shot. Two go in, one comes out. And it's usually Woodhead who comes out.
Plus he's white. White players who are short always are trying harder than anyone else. They have no talent, but only succeed because of the amount of grit they show. Other players don't try hard, only white short players do.
Woodhead does it all consistently enough, with at least one spectacular head-shaking play per game, to have just been awarded a contract through 2012 that (with incentives that no one now doubts he'll meet)
Who cares what these "incentives" are? Woodhead will meet them.
He has to plow a 300 acre farm weekly? Show him where to find the tractor.
Herd a group of cattle across the border into Mexico to be sold at an illegal auction? Give him one week and he'll be back with a handful of cash and dirt under his fingernails.
Throw 50 touchdown passes during a season? Get out of his way Tom Brady, you long-haired hipster, Danny Woodhead is the new quarterback.
is worth more than $3 million -- which isn't small change for a small guy who, three months ago, with a pink slip from the Jets in hand, was driving back home with his wife to Nebraska in his '08 Tahoe. Without a job.
Woodhead isn't a millionaire. He's just a guy with a fairly new truck who was probably going back to Nebraska to find a job doing something really gritty and blue collar. Like build houses using only a mound of dirt, a hammer and two nails.
So is he now going to upgrade the ride?
It's a 2008 Tahoe. It is not like he is driving a 1996 Camry.
"Nope -- no way," Woodhead says, his eyes low-lidded, his face routinely expressionless.
When Woodhead sneezes only grit and the fear of absolutely nothing comes out of his nose and mouth.
But trust me: We won't see the unguarded glee too much in the camera-lit near future, as Woodhead goes from anomaly to spotlight. Surrounded by media in this plush locker room (not just a locker room, but the Patriots' locker room, where the first thing rookies are shown on an indoctrination tour is the Patriot emblem, the way a rookie Egyptian pharaoh might be shown King Tut's mummy) Woodhead's face is intentionally impassive, as if to deflect any and all attention.
Yep, Peter Richmond just compared a tour of the Patriots locker room to being shown the mummy of an Egyptian pharaoh. There has to be a random analogy creator somewhere on the Internet that Richmond uses. You put in two or three phrases and out spits a random analogy.
"Why get a different car?," Woodhead says. "I'm tellin' you man, I'm going to be the same person I've always been."
Unselfish. Grit.
"That's not what I'm playing for. You know what I'm sayin'? It's my job.
Passion. Dedication.
I'm older now. And I'm married, and I need a job.
White. Short. Scrappy.
The money is not something I think about. It's not something I ever want to think about. That's not what I'm about. That's not who I am."
Just imagine a column being written like this about Darren Sproles or Dexter McCluster. You can't. They are white and naturally talented. Yes, they probably will have 1-2 articles written about them, but the entire media has jumped on the Woodhead train. Other players don't deserve puff pieces like the completely untalented Danny Woodhead.
See, Peter Richmond wants us to know Danny Woodhead has talent, just not enough talent to make it in the NFL without trying as hard as he does. So he's talented, but better than all other NFL players because he tries so much harder.
"We're all pretty tight as a family," says Woodhead's mother, Annette. "We don't even look at Danny as a football player. He's our kid. Football is his job,
That's a humble, well-grounded mother right there. She's better than your selfish, delusional whore of a mother.
"He's who he is, and who he was three years ago. He's a little boy playing a game he loves.
No, he's not. He's a 27 year old man. Calling him a little boy is borderline retarded. This fluff piece must end soon. It's getting out of hand.
As a senior at North Platte High, where Woodhead would set every record the state could come up with, Iowa, Wisconsin and Colorado invited him to their camps. But the Big Boys lay too far away, and scholarship money was a pipe dream. Nebraska? Sorry, kid: You can walk on ... as a kick returner.
Danny Woodhead is scrappy and will do anything to make it at Nebraska if they would just pay attention to him...as long as he doesn't have to make any sacrifices like not start or do something he doesn't want to do to be on the team like return kicks. This is perceived as unselfish.
Nebraska has a popular and fairly extensive walk-on program, so I would think any chance a player gets to go to the school "he wants to go to" he would take it. Not Danny Woodhead, the man with no ego, he doesn't want to be a kick returner, so he chooses a different school.
He and his brothers twisted the football off the top of one of his Harlon Hill trophies and used the base as a stool for three-way video game tournaments. Which more or less sums up Danny Woodhead's regard for glitz.
And it shows a fair amount of disrespect for the people who awarded the trophy to him. Would Cam Newton be lauded for using the Heisman Trophy base as a table to eat his dinner off? Probably not, but he's not Danny Woodhead.
One man's disrespect is a scrappy man's disregard for glitz. Danny Woodhead may take a shit in the Super Bowl trophy the Patriots (could possibly) get. Who knows and who cares? That's not disrespectful, that just shows how much he hates glitz.
On NFL draft weekend, Danny was happy to get a call from the Jets after the final round: Come on in, as an undrafted free agent.
BUT DANNY WANTED TO BE A FIRST ROUND DRAFT PICK, SO HE CHOSE TO PLAY IN THE CFL? THIS IS ADMIRABLE!
The Jets had one slot left, and two running backs on the bubble. The journeyman Woodhead, who despite weighing a solid 200 pounds, with a sprinter's speed, had played college ball against Fort Lewis, Nebraska-Kearney and Adams State. The other candidate was a running back the Jets had traded up to snag in the fourth round, a guy named Joe McKnight, who had rushed for more than 1,000 yards as a senior for USC.
To be fair, anyone who saw "Hard Knocks" knows Woodhead should have been kept over McKnight. It's a gritty, humble white guy against the flashy black guy. That's all the fluff piece writing media sees.
Of course, McKnight had his family displaced during Hurricane Katrina and had to live in a one-bedroom apartment, so he has a pretty good story too. Let's ignore that though because McKnight doesn't meet the necessary requirements for a fluff piece.
He was 6-feet tall. Case closed.
Plus he was a 4th round draft pick who hadn't torn his ACL the year before.
After trading Laurence Maroney, Belichick needed a backup third back behind Kevin Faulk and the undrafted BenJarvus Green-Ellis. When Faulk went down with a season-ending injury,
Pussy-ass third down back.
"Well, I always thought that if I could get a chance, I really thought I could play at this level," Woodhead admits now, reluctant to praise himself.
Actually, it sounds like he was eager to praise his ability to compete at the NFL level. Read that quote again.
So how has he gone from a too small also-ran to a versatile almost-star? Playing against defenders twice his size? He lowers the eyelids a little more.
I mean, come on. How can a person get paid to write this crap?
And if you continue on this path? Become an actual superstar?
Except for the whole "I don't want to walk-on at Nebraska as a kick returner" thing and the whole "I can play in this league" thing...nope, not a bit of ego.
"I'm very proud. But you know what? I'm proud because he's a good kid. He's a citizen. What he's doing for the Patriots? Icing on the cake. I guarantee you that in North Platte, we have not erected a shrine for what he's done. He wouldn't want us to.
He would just cut the base of the shrine off and use it as a chair he can put on his porch.
"I don't think I'm going to want them to look at me as a football player," he says. "I'll want them to look at me as their dad. This is my job. Not who I am. I don't look at my dad as a teacher or coach. I look at him as my dad. And the kind of man he is.
Your move David Eckstein. Better get that uniform really fucking dirty this year. Your time as the scrappy sports idol has come to a close.
I'm not sure this is actually bad journalism, but more cliche and hyperbole-filled journalism in the form of a fluff-piece.
This is an everyman. This is the guy in front of you in line at the DMV, getting new plates for his pickup.
He's getting plates for the pickup that he can't even reach the brake and gas pedals on. How's he reach them? He scraps and claws until his legs reach the brake and gas. Then he uses pure grit to pull the pickup truck on the road where it runs, not on fuel, but on the pure will of Danny Woodhead to drive it.
If you happened to run across Danny Woodhead somewhere out in the real world, where, at 5-foot-8, he actually stands only one inch shorter than the average 25-year-old American male, you wouldn't give him a second glance. Especially if he were wearing the ensemble he's wearing in the Patriots' locker room after one recent practice: a floppy blue sweatshirt, a red Patriots skull cap pulled low over his head, a sprig of a chin-beard that looks like a caterpillar in need of a trim, and a wary, heavy-lidded expression that says, Hey, I'm a Division II nobody from a railroad town in Nebraska. Let's keep it that way. Talking isn't what I do. Please -- go talk to Brady.
Is this a fluff piece about a scrappy white guy. Let's check the first paragraph to make sure:
1. He wants no part of the spotlight.
2. His underdog beginnings are mentioned.
3. His height is mentioned.
4. He's JUST like you and me...except he has pro-level talent.
5. There is at least one mention that you wouldn't notice him in public.
6. He is called "scrappy" for some form of this word at least once.
7. No one believed in him. Except for him.
8. This somehow makes him more humble than other athletes.
I guess 7 out of 8 isn't bad and this article has 7 out of the 8 characteristics necessary.
It's only on a football field where Danny Woodhead weekly stands out as the most unlikely of highlighters, etched against a panorama of enlarged NFL humanoids. Where he regularly ducks beneath the swat of defensive linemen, a foot taller and 100 pounds heavier,
Really? There is a regular group of NFL players that are 6'8" tall? I know there are a few, but I didn't realize every week Danny Woodhead was facing down a large group of 6'8" defenders. Is he sure he didn't accidentally walk onto an NBA basketball court?
Where blitzers don't even see him until he blocks them to the ground.
WOODHEAD CAN'T BLOCK! Just ask Gregg Easterbrook.
Or when, against the Colts a few weeks ago, a few minutes after skittering for a 36-yard touchdown, he made the tackle on the ensuing kickoff, playing special teams, flattening Brandon James the way a bowling ball on amphetamines might flatten a chipmunk on Quaaludes.
Wow. I'm guessing this sentence took at least five minutes to write. You just can't think of hyperbole and terrible analogies like this in a minute or less.
Admit it: you don't just love Danny Woodhead because he's the underdog, the little guy who grew up in a Midwestern town best known for its railroad freight yard (and the nearby Museum of the Fur Trade);
I don't love Danny Woodhead. My question is this...why don't "scrappy fluff pieces" get written about minority players? Woodhead took over Kevin Faulk's job duties on the Patriots, did Faulk ever have a fluff piece like this written about him? He is 5'8", has had a great NFL career on 3 Super Bowl winning teams, made the Patriots 50th Anniversary team, and is from a small town in Louisiana. He's scrappy too dammit!
Doesn't that qualify him for scrappy status? Woodhead hasn't even played a full season in the NFL and already tales of his great adventures are being told. I wonder how many have been written about Kevin Faulk, a guy who has actually had extended success in the NFL? Why are short white guys the only ones who are considered hustlers and just like you and me? Isn't it possible Woodhead is a talented guy, just like Faulk is a talented guy? Why must he be painted as an overachiever who uses every little bit of his talent to succeed in the NFL? I guess sports journalist are working under the assumption that Kevin Faulk doesn't use all of his talent...I wonder why they do that?
was then snubbed by home state University of Nebraska despite being named the state's high school player of the year;
And the Cornhuskers haven't made a bowl appearance since...
Wait, that's not right.
In defense of Nebraska, Bill Callahan was probably responsible for not recruiting Woodhead. Callahan was just a generally clueless head coach, so there's that. Of course it could be Frank Solich's fault for not recruiting Woodhead in which case there is no excuse.
attended a college named Chadron State with a stadium capacity of 3,000; and then went undrafted despite winning Division II's Heisman two years in a row; and was then waived by the Jets three months ago, despite, in training camp the year before, running for 158 yards and two touchdowns in an exhibition game.
Don't you know he ran for 158 yards one year ago in a meaningless exhibition game one year ago? This is a man you keep based solely on that. Plus, couldn't the Jets see his grit and scrap?
No, you love him because he plays football like a grunt from the mercenary NFL of the 1940s. Balls out. Gimme your best shot. Two go in, one comes out. And it's usually Woodhead who comes out.
Plus he's white. White players who are short always are trying harder than anyone else. They have no talent, but only succeed because of the amount of grit they show. Other players don't try hard, only white short players do.
Woodhead does it all consistently enough, with at least one spectacular head-shaking play per game, to have just been awarded a contract through 2012 that (with incentives that no one now doubts he'll meet)
Who cares what these "incentives" are? Woodhead will meet them.
He has to plow a 300 acre farm weekly? Show him where to find the tractor.
Herd a group of cattle across the border into Mexico to be sold at an illegal auction? Give him one week and he'll be back with a handful of cash and dirt under his fingernails.
Throw 50 touchdown passes during a season? Get out of his way Tom Brady, you long-haired hipster, Danny Woodhead is the new quarterback.
is worth more than $3 million -- which isn't small change for a small guy who, three months ago, with a pink slip from the Jets in hand, was driving back home with his wife to Nebraska in his '08 Tahoe. Without a job.
Woodhead isn't a millionaire. He's just a guy with a fairly new truck who was probably going back to Nebraska to find a job doing something really gritty and blue collar. Like build houses using only a mound of dirt, a hammer and two nails.
So is he now going to upgrade the ride?
It's a 2008 Tahoe. It is not like he is driving a 1996 Camry.
"Nope -- no way," Woodhead says, his eyes low-lidded, his face routinely expressionless.
When Woodhead sneezes only grit and the fear of absolutely nothing comes out of his nose and mouth.
But trust me: We won't see the unguarded glee too much in the camera-lit near future, as Woodhead goes from anomaly to spotlight. Surrounded by media in this plush locker room (not just a locker room, but the Patriots' locker room, where the first thing rookies are shown on an indoctrination tour is the Patriot emblem, the way a rookie Egyptian pharaoh might be shown King Tut's mummy) Woodhead's face is intentionally impassive, as if to deflect any and all attention.
Yep, Peter Richmond just compared a tour of the Patriots locker room to being shown the mummy of an Egyptian pharaoh. There has to be a random analogy creator somewhere on the Internet that Richmond uses. You put in two or three phrases and out spits a random analogy.
"Why get a different car?," Woodhead says. "I'm tellin' you man, I'm going to be the same person I've always been."
So the sudden money means nothing?
"Unh-unh. Not at all," he says.Unselfish. Grit.
"That's not what I'm playing for. You know what I'm sayin'? It's my job.
Passion. Dedication.
I'm older now. And I'm married, and I need a job.
White. Short. Scrappy.
The money is not something I think about. It's not something I ever want to think about. That's not what I'm about. That's not who I am."
Just imagine a column being written like this about Darren Sproles or Dexter McCluster. You can't. They are white and naturally talented. Yes, they probably will have 1-2 articles written about them, but the entire media has jumped on the Woodhead train. Other players don't deserve puff pieces like the completely untalented Danny Woodhead.
See, Peter Richmond wants us to know Danny Woodhead has talent, just not enough talent to make it in the NFL without trying as hard as he does. So he's talented, but better than all other NFL players because he tries so much harder.
"We're all pretty tight as a family," says Woodhead's mother, Annette. "We don't even look at Danny as a football player. He's our kid. Football is his job,
That's a humble, well-grounded mother right there. She's better than your selfish, delusional whore of a mother.
"He's who he is, and who he was three years ago. He's a little boy playing a game he loves.
No, he's not. He's a 27 year old man. Calling him a little boy is borderline retarded. This fluff piece must end soon. It's getting out of hand.
As a senior at North Platte High, where Woodhead would set every record the state could come up with, Iowa, Wisconsin and Colorado invited him to their camps. But the Big Boys lay too far away, and scholarship money was a pipe dream. Nebraska? Sorry, kid: You can walk on ... as a kick returner.
Danny Woodhead is scrappy and will do anything to make it at Nebraska if they would just pay attention to him...as long as he doesn't have to make any sacrifices like not start or do something he doesn't want to do to be on the team like return kicks. This is perceived as unselfish.
Nebraska has a popular and fairly extensive walk-on program, so I would think any chance a player gets to go to the school "he wants to go to" he would take it. Not Danny Woodhead, the man with no ego, he doesn't want to be a kick returner, so he chooses a different school.
He and his brothers twisted the football off the top of one of his Harlon Hill trophies and used the base as a stool for three-way video game tournaments. Which more or less sums up Danny Woodhead's regard for glitz.
And it shows a fair amount of disrespect for the people who awarded the trophy to him. Would Cam Newton be lauded for using the Heisman Trophy base as a table to eat his dinner off? Probably not, but he's not Danny Woodhead.
One man's disrespect is a scrappy man's disregard for glitz. Danny Woodhead may take a shit in the Super Bowl trophy the Patriots (could possibly) get. Who knows and who cares? That's not disrespectful, that just shows how much he hates glitz.
On NFL draft weekend, Danny was happy to get a call from the Jets after the final round: Come on in, as an undrafted free agent.
BUT DANNY WANTED TO BE A FIRST ROUND DRAFT PICK, SO HE CHOSE TO PLAY IN THE CFL? THIS IS ADMIRABLE!
The Jets had one slot left, and two running backs on the bubble. The journeyman Woodhead, who despite weighing a solid 200 pounds, with a sprinter's speed, had played college ball against Fort Lewis, Nebraska-Kearney and Adams State. The other candidate was a running back the Jets had traded up to snag in the fourth round, a guy named Joe McKnight, who had rushed for more than 1,000 yards as a senior for USC.
To be fair, anyone who saw "Hard Knocks" knows Woodhead should have been kept over McKnight. It's a gritty, humble white guy against the flashy black guy. That's all the fluff piece writing media sees.
Of course, McKnight had his family displaced during Hurricane Katrina and had to live in a one-bedroom apartment, so he has a pretty good story too. Let's ignore that though because McKnight doesn't meet the necessary requirements for a fluff piece.
He was 6-feet tall. Case closed.
Plus he was a 4th round draft pick who hadn't torn his ACL the year before.
After trading Laurence Maroney, Belichick needed a backup third back behind Kevin Faulk and the undrafted BenJarvus Green-Ellis. When Faulk went down with a season-ending injury,
Pussy-ass third down back.
"Well, I always thought that if I could get a chance, I really thought I could play at this level," Woodhead admits now, reluctant to praise himself.
Actually, it sounds like he was eager to praise his ability to compete at the NFL level. Read that quote again.
So how has he gone from a too small also-ran to a versatile almost-star? Playing against defenders twice his size? He lowers the eyelids a little more.
I mean, come on. How can a person get paid to write this crap?
And if you continue on this path? Become an actual superstar?
"It's not going to change me," he says. "That's the truth. This is a team game. And that's what awesome about it, having everyone work together, toward a goal."
The quotes sound cliched, don't they? Scripted, robotic. Not a single word of resentment? Not an iota of ego?Except for the whole "I don't want to walk-on at Nebraska as a kick returner" thing and the whole "I can play in this league" thing...nope, not a bit of ego.
"I'm very proud. But you know what? I'm proud because he's a good kid. He's a citizen. What he's doing for the Patriots? Icing on the cake. I guarantee you that in North Platte, we have not erected a shrine for what he's done. He wouldn't want us to.
He would just cut the base of the shrine off and use it as a chair he can put on his porch.
"I don't think I'm going to want them to look at me as a football player," he says. "I'll want them to look at me as their dad. This is my job. Not who I am. I don't look at my dad as a teacher or coach. I look at him as my dad. And the kind of man he is.
"I'm hoping that's something I'll be able to do. Think of me as the type of man I'm going to be. Or will be. Or was."
Seriously, why do short white guys get articles written about them like this? I give up if I have to live in a world where articles like this get written.Your move David Eckstein. Better get that uniform really fucking dirty this year. Your time as the scrappy sports idol has come to a close.
Monday, February 8, 2010
9 comments MMQB: Peyton Manning Pulled a Favre Edition
Well thankfully the Super Bowl last night did not go to to overtime. I was getting a bit concerned about that around the time the Saints converted the 2 point conversion. If was afraid the Super Bowl would go into overtime and Peter King would lose his mind. Fortunately that didn't happen, but Manning did throw probably the worst (or most untimely) interception of his career to Tracy Porter. Of course a Monday morning wouldn't be completely without Peter King's take on the last game of football for this NFL season. (I still can't believe what a terrible interception Manning threw to Tracy Porter. That was terrible. Did he not notice the Saints were jumping the short routes a lot in the 2nd half? Did I notice this once and then latch on to it but it isn't true? I thought he could see they were jumping those routes.)
Today Peter sums up the Super Bowl in his MMQB.
It's right, it's fair, it's just, it's good, it's shocking. You were not dreaming (or nightmaring, if you live in Indiana). The Saints have won the Super Bowl.
Ok Peter, let's be honest here. The Saints were IN the Super Bowl and were only 1 of 2 teams that could have won the game. It wasn't shocking they won the game. They were a 4.5 point underdog, it's not like they shocked the world.
"Oh when the Saints ... come marching in ...'' They did that one for a while. And "You Are My Sunshine,'' the state song, which has roots to former Louisiana governor Jimmie Davis, and a couple of "Who Dat'' songs.
I am over the "Who Dat" crap. My rule is I get tired of shit like that when a team wins the Super Bowl or other title. It's motivating and cool to the point a team wins a championship, then it's annoying to me.
It got quiet for a minute, and Carville piped up loudly: "I still can't believe we won the Super Bowl!''
James Carville should be reminded he did not win anything. I am pretty sure he is not on the Saints team. And yes, though I find him mildly amusing, my idea of hell is being stuck on a tour bus with James Carville.
(I didn't realize this, but I am a little bitter that an NFC South team won the Super Bowl)
The play that signifies it all was on the mind of everyone on the bus. In the middle of the rolling party, someone else piped up: "Can you believe we called that onside kick?''
It's the Super Bowl, and I'm going to write about an onside kick, and about two absolute nobodies who so powerfully influenced the outcome of the biggest game in the history of the New Orleans Saints.
Can we write about 2 Hall of Fame quarterbacks who picked the absolute worst time to make terrible throws in back-to-back games against the Saints? Does this warrant a discussion at some point you think?
I like Peyton Manning, I have borderline defended him on this blog several times, but he does have a tendency to lose some big games. I know he personally doesn't lose them, but it is something I have noticed. Sort of like how I noticed Tony Dungy's teams do better after he quits coaching said team.
Perfect. Ambush. That's the name of the Saints' onside kick, the one that continued the Colts' downfall in Super Bowl 44. The reason it's so perfect is that it's right for Payton, and right for this derring-do team with the cocky defensive coordinator and the only slightly less cocky head coach and players and fans who have yearned for so long to deserve to be cocky. In this case, Ambush was so mind-blowing because:
A. It was the first successful onside kick not in the fourth quarter of a Super Bowl game?
B. If it failed, it was stupid to give Peyton Manning short field position?
C. Cockiness really had nothing to do with it, but really it was more of a move that showed confidence in Morstead and the Saints defense?
And so Payton walked by Morstead's locker and dropped that little bomb on him, and he told the rest of the special-teams leaders, and 25 minutes still were left before the start of the second half. Morstead sat at his locker, looked straight ahead and tried to keep his heart from pounding out of his chest.
"I wasn't worried,'' Morstead said later. "I was terrified. He dropped it on me near the start of halftime, not near the end, and it's such a long halftime. All I could think of was how stupid I'd look if the kick doesn't go 10 yards, or if I blow it.''
Who said pro athletes are cocky and overconfident? Thomas Morstead sounds like the type of punter that would shit his pants if the opposing team tried an all-out rush to block one of his kicks. If Jim Caldwell was alive, possibly someone should have told him this little nugget prior to the Super Bowl...if he were alive of course and wanting to coach an NFL team.
In each of their three practices last week, the Saints worked on the onside kick five times. They christened it "Ambush'' for the element of surprise, obviously.
Thanks Peter. Some things don't need to be explained. This was one of them. But thanks for believing your audience consists of people with an IQ of 95 and little ability to reason logically.
He put his trust in the hands of a kicker, Morstead, kicking the first onside kick of his life, and in a special-teamer, third-year safety Chris Reis, perhaps the most anonymous of the 45 Saints who dressed Sunday. Morstead because he was the kicker, Reis because he was the feistiest of his kick-chasers and would scratch and claw for the ball if he had to.
Chris Reis is David Eckstein with football pads on. He would claw, kick and scratch if he had to in order to get the football. Unfortunately, any idiot would probably realize clawing and scratching would also require the freedom of at least one hand. Which isn't a good way to keep a hold of a football if scrappy-ass actually Reis ended up with it.
The ball at first lay underneath Reis' legs as bodies flew in trying to get it. "I was able to get the ball into my hands and just cradle it here,'' Reis demonstrated for me later in the locker room, with his hands cradled around his stomach, slightly bent over. "So I just pulled it tight to my body and held on.''
(Peter King) "Chris, show me how you cradled that ball in your strong manly arms. Demonstrate on me if you if care to, I don't mind. Pretend I am the ball."
(Chris Reis) "Um, no thanks Peter. (screams loudly) "Can someone get me a damn football!"
(Peter King) "No football is necessary. Just use me and pretend I am a football. I am sort of shaped like one."
(Chris Reis begins to break into a sweat until someone throws him a football) "Ok, it's like this..."
(Peter's face looks disappointed)
"So I just figured I better hang onto it for dear life,'' he said. "The Colts were punching at it and grabbing for it, trying to get it out. But I didn't care if they broke all my fingers. There was absolutely no way in the world I was going to let go of that ball. That was our ball.''
No, Chris. If they had broken all of your fingers, they were going to be able to get the ball at that point.
Oh, this is hyperbole? I think it is much more interesting and funny if I pretend it isn't hyperbole.
"I can't believe it,'' said Morstead, a rookie from SMU. He's a tall kid, wiry and athletic and thoughtful. "I still can't. You've got to love playing for a coach who puts that much trust in his players.
It is always easier to put trust in players when the head coach doesn't have players who execute poorly. That always helps. For example, it doesn't make sense for Jim Schwartz to put a ton of faith in his players, because they aren't all very good players.
I thought Indianapolis lost this game as much as the Saints won it.
Well of course Peter King doesn't think Peyton Manning and the Colts lost the game. Peyton has never lost a game, other people on the team are to blame for the loss of course.
Two: I hated the decision by the Colts, on third-and-one in the final minute of the first half with two timeouts left by the Saints, to run into the middle of the line.
Did anybody else notice the lack of coaching that Jim Caldwell did during the game? No disrespect to him, but he really hasn't had to coach all year and he sure as hell wasn't going to start now. I know the fact a coach is just standing there doesn't mean he isn't coaching and that there isn't much for a head coach to actually teach Peyton Manning, but I just don't feel like Caldwell is paying attention to the game.
I immediately thought of what Lilja told me during the week: "Sometimes we'll be standing there during the Anthem, and we'll look across the field at the size of the other team, and it's like they're the varsity and we're the junior varsity.''
There are downsides to having a small, speed based offensive line. One of those downsides being that a run up the middle on third-and-short just may not work that well. No one told the Colts this apparently.
On the news of the selections: We considered 10 all-decade players among the 14 players nominated. This was the best group of candidates I've had to consider in 18 years on the committee. You might wonder why Cris Carter and Shannon Sharpe (or whoever else didn't make it) fell short. In Carter's case, I was surprised that Andre Reed passed him and made the cutdown from 15 to 10 while Carter didn't.
Ridiculous in my mind. Andre Reed does not deserve to be in the Hall of Fame more than Cris Carter.
The difference there might be that Reed's team won bigger games, but that's just a guess.
When will this "team reasoning" for the Hall of Fame go away? So Andre Reed was a better wide receiver than Cris Carter because Andre Reed's team was better than Cris Carter's team? What kind of idiotic logic is this? Is the Hall of Fame a team award or an individual award?
On Little's election: I did not support the Denver running back because I felt his numbers and impact were shy (3.9 yards per carry, one 1,000-yard rushing season, 54 rush yards per game), but as I've said on many occasions, I'm one voter, with an equal vote to the other 43 voters, and the will of the voters spoke loudly. Senior Committee nominees need 80 percent of the vote to be inducted, and both Little and LeBeau got at least the requisite 36 votes to get in.
Floyd Little getting in the Hall of Fame is a sham. Those numbers Peter just showed us all, that is a good reason for Floyd Little not to make the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Though I can't tell you what Legwold said in his presentation, I can tell you I discussed this with him after the presentation and Legwold said he kept records of each carry and where Little was first contacted by a defender behind a subpar Denver offensive line. Legwold said about 30 percent of the time, Little was first hit behind the line.
So Floyd Little made the Hall of Fame because one journalist from the city where he played "viewed" his games and said 30% of the time he was contacted by a defender behind the line of scrimmage? It's this data that got him in the Hall of Fame? So the voters ignored the statistical data that said Little didn't deserve to make the Hall of Fame and paid attention to the memory and records of a journalist instead.
Is the Pro Football Hall of Fame trying to make the baseball Hall of Fame look smart and logical or something?
Over the last two decades, the best three-technique player is Randle, whose 137.5 sacks for someone who played inside is remarkable. I consider him the best three-technique since the position became prominent. I've heard Brett Favre say it a couple of times: He's the best defensive player he played against.
Well maybe Brett Favre should be the one who gets to vote for the Hall of Fame. Obviously if Favre says something it has to be true right? Brett Favre would certainly never lie or have an incorrect memory in any fashion.
Also, that extends Peter's streak of mentioning Brett Favre in every MMQB since at least last January. I can't wait to see how far this goes. I am tempted to count back from January 2009 and see how far back Peter has mentioned Favre in every MMQB.
On Grimm making it. I always thought a Hog should be in the Hall because Washington's offensive line is the best over time of the last 30 years.
(Bengoodfella getting a headache) So because the ENTIRE offensive line was good, one individual player should get in the Hall of Fame? How does this make sense?
2. Indianapolis (16-3). I know everyone's concentrating on the Colts not being able to convert third-and-one late in the first half, gifting the Saints with three points before halftime, and for allowing New Orleans to recover an onside kick. But for my money, the Pierre Garcon drop midway during the second quarter was just as big.
You mean the drop where Garcon ended up negating a third down conversion and a 30 yard gain in the Super Bowl? Are we sure this was a big play Peter? Great insight, Captain Obvious.
3. Minnesota (13-5). So if Brett Favre does retire, who's next?
Brett Favre is not retiring. Shut up about this. I refuse to pay attention to Favre's retirement/non-retirement crap this spring and summer (and fall?).
9. Baltimore (10-8). If I'm the Ravens, I pounce on Donte' Stallworth with a totally incentive-laden contract. It's just what they need (a veteran receiver who still has a chance to be good) at low guaranteed money. And it's just what he needs -- a blank canvas. A chance.
Then he and Ray Lewis can have discussions on what it is like to have killed another human being! Great idea Peter. Can the Ravens sign Leonard Little too?
10. Philadelphia (11-6). Breakout Eagle of 2010: LeSean McCoy.
Hold back on these bold predictions Peter! I am not sure the Eagles potential starting running back for next year and 2nd round pick this past year could have a good year.
13. Carolina (8-8). I realize Julius Peppers is coming off a good season, but I'll believe he won't be a Panther when I see it. Who else is going to step up and pay him more than $15 million a year, on average?
Um, not the Panthers unless something drastic changes. Usually if a team hasn't made any contact with a free agent they franchised the year before, that is not good news for the hopes of that player being re-signed by that team.
Dolphins fans must be puking this morning. On their own field, the player Nick Saban and Miami doctors passed on outdueled the great Manning to win the Super Bowl.
NO, NO, NO, NO! I am so tired of this lie. The Dolphins and Chargers DID NOT pass on Drew Brees. They did not offer him enough guaranteed money and he turned them down. They made him contract offers but they weren't big enough with guaranteed money for Brees, so BREES TURNED THEM DOWN. I like Drew Brees but I hate this revisionist history.
Last week, Favre throws the late pick to blow it. This week, it's Manning who, down 24-17 with 3:25 left to play and driving, threw errantly to Wayne, allowing Porter to romp 74 yards with the insurance touchdown.
What a terrible, terrible pass by Manning. What makes it even more difficult to believe he threw that pass is that just a few plays earlier he had almost gotten picked off on the same side of the field. If he had thrown the ball across his body, I would say it was as bad as Favre's from two weeks ago, but it was a bad pass regardless. I don't want to over react to this loss and interception by Manning, but I thought the Colts had a good chance and should have won this game.
3. South Florida is an odd mix. At the Broward County Convention Center, where the media worked last week, there's an adjoining strip mall with a French bakery and some lunch items. I went in and ordered a tuna on croissant, and the woman behind the counter had trouble understanding me. She was French, and spoke no English. "Croissant ... tuna?'' I said, and she said a bunch of things in French, and I'm not fluent, so I just nodded, and I looked around at the other help there, and no one seemed to know English, and I thought: How odd. A real French bakery, in the midst of an American/Hispanic area. I wonder who goes in there, and what happens if they want to order something more complicated?
I think people go in there and then point to what they want. It's a French bakery, how much really complicated shit could they be cooking?
(I know nothing about cooking, but it's a bakery, the food is probably already laid out in front of the customer. The customer should point and signal in some fashion to the food he/she wants. It shouldn't be overly difficult to order for Peter. Maybe I am underestimating the complexity of this, but I don't think so.)
4. I will say this about the rooms at the very nice Doral Golf Resort and Spa, where I stayed Saturday night after a speaking engagement there: Not sure whether the rooms are separated by cardboard or oak tag, but I was able to hear a fairly intense conversation between a couple of golfers ticked off at their round the previous day. And it was nice of them to let me hear the proflowers.com commercial 64 times on various ESPN shows.
I am sure they appreciated hearing Peter's conversations and complaints about how the coffee didn't taste right and Peter complaining about what's up with all these foreigners who don't speak English? If no one speaks English, how do they know what coffee Peter has just ordered? Also, where are all the dogs at? There are a ton of dogs in Boston!
These are all things the golfers had to hear coming from Peter's room.
Thus did David Sills commit to play for Lane Kiffin -- or whoever the coach for USC will be six seasons from now. It's depraved for an institute of higher education to guarantee a seventh grader a scholarship. It's irresponsible for parents to commit their son to such a major decision five-and-a-half years before he has to make it.
David Sills is not committed to USC. He hasn't signed a letter of intent and is in no way locked into the program. What is depraved is that Peter thinks a 7th grader is actually locked in to USC in 2015 and he covers football for a living (Ok, maybe it is not depraved, but it fit what I was saying).
c. Kudos, too, to Chris Mortensen, for his terrific job with Dr. James Andrews on Drew Brees' revolutionary shoulder surgery in 2006. Mort, with Andrews, saw the MRI of Brees' ruined shoulder, and Andrews said the damage from the injury suffered in the last game of the 2005 season with San Diego was so severe that there was a 360-degree tear of the labrum -- basically, that it was torn from the bone -- and that the bone broke through the skin from underneath the shoulder. Gruesome, and very valuable to know how great the surgery was ... and how incredible it was that Brees even played football in 2006.
Yet every media member is second guessing the Chargers and Dolphins decision to not offer Brees more guaranteed money in 2006. Why would they have offered him more guaranteed money when it was incredible he even played in 2006? How can it be justified for someone to criticize the Dolphins and Chargers for not giving Brees more guaranteed money in a contract to play in 2006 AND think it was incredible Brees played in 2006? I don't see how these two positions can be rectified.
5. I think the most interesting writer's comment about our Hall of Fame election process Saturday came from a J.W. Nix, of something called Bleacher Report. He decried the process that resulted in former Chargers and Cardinals coach Don Coryell not being elected to the Hall on Saturday. Wrote Nix: "This is a despicable crime still perpetrated by the voters, as shown by the recent induction process. It also shows that Canton must change their induction system. [Retired players] are the ones who truly know who belong, especially considering there are countless voters not even knowing what positions many gridiron legends played ... [This year's voting] also shows the corrupt political process involved in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.'' America. What a country.
I know! What's with this freedom of speech crap everyone is perpetuating? How can people have the audacity to express their opinions in a public format when they aren't an "expert" like Peter or work for a major organization that cares more about money than sports? Only people like Peter King should be able to give their opinion, because sportswriters like him are experts dammit!
8. I think Bill Polian won't say it, but I bet he'll think at some point this week: Are we destined to be Atlanta Braves? A team that wins divisions and pennants but only one world championship?
Hey! As a Braves fan I take exception to this. When the Colts make 5 Super Bowls in a 9 year span (one was a strike year but I will still count it), then we can compare them to the Braves. The Colts are like a Braves team that choked before they made it to the championship game (round). So in my mind, the Braves were a more successful franchise in the 90's than the Colts in the 2000's and there is no comparison between the two when it comes to playoff choking. The Braves are more elite chokers.
9. I think I'll be reminded most of today that my Player of the Decade is 9-9 in the playoffs.
This means nothing. What has Peter and others said was the difference in this game? Garcon's drop, the onside kick, Manning's late interception and the Colts failure to convert a third-and-one. Only one of those were Manning's fault. It should have an effect on his legacy, there's no doubt, but I don't know how much it should affect his legacy since the loss isn't completely on him.
Though part of me is a little concerned that Manning threw the late interception and generally couldn't produce many points in the 2nd half. Is the Saints defense really that good? I guess so.
g. The Who seems a little passed to me, and I like The Who. Time to modern-up the halftime. If I'm 52 and say meh to The Who, that's not good.
The vocals sounded terrible, Roger Daltry was lip synching at one point, it is hard to get 5 songs in a short time and not have it sound discombobulated, and it wasn't a bad performance, but a performance you would expect from a band that has been playing for 40 years, is missing 2 original members, and is using touring musicians. That's not a compliment.
j. Had a good hour Tuesday with Jason Cole's journalism class from the University of Florida, and I informed the group that the cleverest Tweet or e-mail would make this column. Uh, Dave Gardner, you sent the only e-mail or Tweet -- and so you win.
This is a shining example of what a popular writer Peter King is.
"My goal in life is to be mentioned in Monday Morning Quarterback. I've never told anyone that, but it's true.'' Inside joke (a good one), and Dave wins. Wrote Dave: "I figured if it worked for you with the New York Times, it might work with me too.''
If that's your goal in life, I hope it is a tongue-in-cheek goal and not an actual real goal. If it is a real goal, then God help you.
Fortunately, Peter is going to be writing his MMQB until June, which means I will get to critique his writings out to the masses every week until then. Oh...wonderful.
Today Peter sums up the Super Bowl in his MMQB.
It's right, it's fair, it's just, it's good, it's shocking. You were not dreaming (or nightmaring, if you live in Indiana). The Saints have won the Super Bowl.
Ok Peter, let's be honest here. The Saints were IN the Super Bowl and were only 1 of 2 teams that could have won the game. It wasn't shocking they won the game. They were a 4.5 point underdog, it's not like they shocked the world.
"Oh when the Saints ... come marching in ...'' They did that one for a while. And "You Are My Sunshine,'' the state song, which has roots to former Louisiana governor Jimmie Davis, and a couple of "Who Dat'' songs.
I am over the "Who Dat" crap. My rule is I get tired of shit like that when a team wins the Super Bowl or other title. It's motivating and cool to the point a team wins a championship, then it's annoying to me.
It got quiet for a minute, and Carville piped up loudly: "I still can't believe we won the Super Bowl!''
James Carville should be reminded he did not win anything. I am pretty sure he is not on the Saints team. And yes, though I find him mildly amusing, my idea of hell is being stuck on a tour bus with James Carville.
(I didn't realize this, but I am a little bitter that an NFC South team won the Super Bowl)
The play that signifies it all was on the mind of everyone on the bus. In the middle of the rolling party, someone else piped up: "Can you believe we called that onside kick?''
Oh, I can. It had Sean Payton written all over it.
Well no shit, Peter. He called the fucking onside kick and is the head coach of the Saints, so I would be very surprised if the onside kick call didn't have him written all over it. He had told the guys at CBS he may onside kick the opening kickoff. I don't know if anyone else caught Phil Simms saying that, so obviously this kick was something Sean Payton wanted to do.It's the Super Bowl, and I'm going to write about an onside kick, and about two absolute nobodies who so powerfully influenced the outcome of the biggest game in the history of the New Orleans Saints.
Can we write about 2 Hall of Fame quarterbacks who picked the absolute worst time to make terrible throws in back-to-back games against the Saints? Does this warrant a discussion at some point you think?
I like Peyton Manning, I have borderline defended him on this blog several times, but he does have a tendency to lose some big games. I know he personally doesn't lose them, but it is something I have noticed. Sort of like how I noticed Tony Dungy's teams do better after he quits coaching said team.
Perfect. Ambush. That's the name of the Saints' onside kick, the one that continued the Colts' downfall in Super Bowl 44. The reason it's so perfect is that it's right for Payton, and right for this derring-do team with the cocky defensive coordinator and the only slightly less cocky head coach and players and fans who have yearned for so long to deserve to be cocky. In this case, Ambush was so mind-blowing because:
A. It was the first successful onside kick not in the fourth quarter of a Super Bowl game?
B. If it failed, it was stupid to give Peyton Manning short field position?
C. Cockiness really had nothing to do with it, but really it was more of a move that showed confidence in Morstead and the Saints defense?
And so Payton walked by Morstead's locker and dropped that little bomb on him, and he told the rest of the special-teams leaders, and 25 minutes still were left before the start of the second half. Morstead sat at his locker, looked straight ahead and tried to keep his heart from pounding out of his chest.
"I wasn't worried,'' Morstead said later. "I was terrified. He dropped it on me near the start of halftime, not near the end, and it's such a long halftime. All I could think of was how stupid I'd look if the kick doesn't go 10 yards, or if I blow it.''
Who said pro athletes are cocky and overconfident? Thomas Morstead sounds like the type of punter that would shit his pants if the opposing team tried an all-out rush to block one of his kicks. If Jim Caldwell was alive, possibly someone should have told him this little nugget prior to the Super Bowl...if he were alive of course and wanting to coach an NFL team.
In each of their three practices last week, the Saints worked on the onside kick five times. They christened it "Ambush'' for the element of surprise, obviously.
Thanks Peter. Some things don't need to be explained. This was one of them. But thanks for believing your audience consists of people with an IQ of 95 and little ability to reason logically.
He put his trust in the hands of a kicker, Morstead, kicking the first onside kick of his life, and in a special-teamer, third-year safety Chris Reis, perhaps the most anonymous of the 45 Saints who dressed Sunday. Morstead because he was the kicker, Reis because he was the feistiest of his kick-chasers and would scratch and claw for the ball if he had to.
Chris Reis is David Eckstein with football pads on. He would claw, kick and scratch if he had to in order to get the football. Unfortunately, any idiot would probably realize clawing and scratching would also require the freedom of at least one hand. Which isn't a good way to keep a hold of a football if scrappy-ass actually Reis ended up with it.
The ball at first lay underneath Reis' legs as bodies flew in trying to get it. "I was able to get the ball into my hands and just cradle it here,'' Reis demonstrated for me later in the locker room, with his hands cradled around his stomach, slightly bent over. "So I just pulled it tight to my body and held on.''
(Peter King) "Chris, show me how you cradled that ball in your strong manly arms. Demonstrate on me if you if care to, I don't mind. Pretend I am the ball."
(Chris Reis) "Um, no thanks Peter. (screams loudly) "Can someone get me a damn football!"
(Peter King) "No football is necessary. Just use me and pretend I am a football. I am sort of shaped like one."
(Chris Reis begins to break into a sweat until someone throws him a football) "Ok, it's like this..."
(Peter's face looks disappointed)
"So I just figured I better hang onto it for dear life,'' he said. "The Colts were punching at it and grabbing for it, trying to get it out. But I didn't care if they broke all my fingers. There was absolutely no way in the world I was going to let go of that ball. That was our ball.''
No, Chris. If they had broken all of your fingers, they were going to be able to get the ball at that point.
Oh, this is hyperbole? I think it is much more interesting and funny if I pretend it isn't hyperbole.
"I can't believe it,'' said Morstead, a rookie from SMU. He's a tall kid, wiry and athletic and thoughtful. "I still can't. You've got to love playing for a coach who puts that much trust in his players.
It is always easier to put trust in players when the head coach doesn't have players who execute poorly. That always helps. For example, it doesn't make sense for Jim Schwartz to put a ton of faith in his players, because they aren't all very good players.
I thought Indianapolis lost this game as much as the Saints won it.
Well of course Peter King doesn't think Peyton Manning and the Colts lost the game. Peyton has never lost a game, other people on the team are to blame for the loss of course.
Two: I hated the decision by the Colts, on third-and-one in the final minute of the first half with two timeouts left by the Saints, to run into the middle of the line.
Did anybody else notice the lack of coaching that Jim Caldwell did during the game? No disrespect to him, but he really hasn't had to coach all year and he sure as hell wasn't going to start now. I know the fact a coach is just standing there doesn't mean he isn't coaching and that there isn't much for a head coach to actually teach Peyton Manning, but I just don't feel like Caldwell is paying attention to the game.
I immediately thought of what Lilja told me during the week: "Sometimes we'll be standing there during the Anthem, and we'll look across the field at the size of the other team, and it's like they're the varsity and we're the junior varsity.''
There are downsides to having a small, speed based offensive line. One of those downsides being that a run up the middle on third-and-short just may not work that well. No one told the Colts this apparently.
On the news of the selections: We considered 10 all-decade players among the 14 players nominated. This was the best group of candidates I've had to consider in 18 years on the committee. You might wonder why Cris Carter and Shannon Sharpe (or whoever else didn't make it) fell short. In Carter's case, I was surprised that Andre Reed passed him and made the cutdown from 15 to 10 while Carter didn't.
Ridiculous in my mind. Andre Reed does not deserve to be in the Hall of Fame more than Cris Carter.
The difference there might be that Reed's team won bigger games, but that's just a guess.
When will this "team reasoning" for the Hall of Fame go away? So Andre Reed was a better wide receiver than Cris Carter because Andre Reed's team was better than Cris Carter's team? What kind of idiotic logic is this? Is the Hall of Fame a team award or an individual award?
On Little's election: I did not support the Denver running back because I felt his numbers and impact were shy (3.9 yards per carry, one 1,000-yard rushing season, 54 rush yards per game), but as I've said on many occasions, I'm one voter, with an equal vote to the other 43 voters, and the will of the voters spoke loudly. Senior Committee nominees need 80 percent of the vote to be inducted, and both Little and LeBeau got at least the requisite 36 votes to get in.
Floyd Little getting in the Hall of Fame is a sham. Those numbers Peter just showed us all, that is a good reason for Floyd Little not to make the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Though I can't tell you what Legwold said in his presentation, I can tell you I discussed this with him after the presentation and Legwold said he kept records of each carry and where Little was first contacted by a defender behind a subpar Denver offensive line. Legwold said about 30 percent of the time, Little was first hit behind the line.
So Floyd Little made the Hall of Fame because one journalist from the city where he played "viewed" his games and said 30% of the time he was contacted by a defender behind the line of scrimmage? It's this data that got him in the Hall of Fame? So the voters ignored the statistical data that said Little didn't deserve to make the Hall of Fame and paid attention to the memory and records of a journalist instead.
Is the Pro Football Hall of Fame trying to make the baseball Hall of Fame look smart and logical or something?
Over the last two decades, the best three-technique player is Randle, whose 137.5 sacks for someone who played inside is remarkable. I consider him the best three-technique since the position became prominent. I've heard Brett Favre say it a couple of times: He's the best defensive player he played against.
Well maybe Brett Favre should be the one who gets to vote for the Hall of Fame. Obviously if Favre says something it has to be true right? Brett Favre would certainly never lie or have an incorrect memory in any fashion.
Also, that extends Peter's streak of mentioning Brett Favre in every MMQB since at least last January. I can't wait to see how far this goes. I am tempted to count back from January 2009 and see how far back Peter has mentioned Favre in every MMQB.
On Grimm making it. I always thought a Hog should be in the Hall because Washington's offensive line is the best over time of the last 30 years.
(Bengoodfella getting a headache) So because the ENTIRE offensive line was good, one individual player should get in the Hall of Fame? How does this make sense?
2. Indianapolis (16-3). I know everyone's concentrating on the Colts not being able to convert third-and-one late in the first half, gifting the Saints with three points before halftime, and for allowing New Orleans to recover an onside kick. But for my money, the Pierre Garcon drop midway during the second quarter was just as big.
You mean the drop where Garcon ended up negating a third down conversion and a 30 yard gain in the Super Bowl? Are we sure this was a big play Peter? Great insight, Captain Obvious.
3. Minnesota (13-5). So if Brett Favre does retire, who's next?
Brett Favre is not retiring. Shut up about this. I refuse to pay attention to Favre's retirement/non-retirement crap this spring and summer (and fall?).
9. Baltimore (10-8). If I'm the Ravens, I pounce on Donte' Stallworth with a totally incentive-laden contract. It's just what they need (a veteran receiver who still has a chance to be good) at low guaranteed money. And it's just what he needs -- a blank canvas. A chance.
Then he and Ray Lewis can have discussions on what it is like to have killed another human being! Great idea Peter. Can the Ravens sign Leonard Little too?
10. Philadelphia (11-6). Breakout Eagle of 2010: LeSean McCoy.
Hold back on these bold predictions Peter! I am not sure the Eagles potential starting running back for next year and 2nd round pick this past year could have a good year.
13. Carolina (8-8). I realize Julius Peppers is coming off a good season, but I'll believe he won't be a Panther when I see it. Who else is going to step up and pay him more than $15 million a year, on average?
Um, not the Panthers unless something drastic changes. Usually if a team hasn't made any contact with a free agent they franchised the year before, that is not good news for the hopes of that player being re-signed by that team.
Dolphins fans must be puking this morning. On their own field, the player Nick Saban and Miami doctors passed on outdueled the great Manning to win the Super Bowl.
NO, NO, NO, NO! I am so tired of this lie. The Dolphins and Chargers DID NOT pass on Drew Brees. They did not offer him enough guaranteed money and he turned them down. They made him contract offers but they weren't big enough with guaranteed money for Brees, so BREES TURNED THEM DOWN. I like Drew Brees but I hate this revisionist history.
Last week, Favre throws the late pick to blow it. This week, it's Manning who, down 24-17 with 3:25 left to play and driving, threw errantly to Wayne, allowing Porter to romp 74 yards with the insurance touchdown.
What a terrible, terrible pass by Manning. What makes it even more difficult to believe he threw that pass is that just a few plays earlier he had almost gotten picked off on the same side of the field. If he had thrown the ball across his body, I would say it was as bad as Favre's from two weeks ago, but it was a bad pass regardless. I don't want to over react to this loss and interception by Manning, but I thought the Colts had a good chance and should have won this game.
3. South Florida is an odd mix. At the Broward County Convention Center, where the media worked last week, there's an adjoining strip mall with a French bakery and some lunch items. I went in and ordered a tuna on croissant, and the woman behind the counter had trouble understanding me. She was French, and spoke no English. "Croissant ... tuna?'' I said, and she said a bunch of things in French, and I'm not fluent, so I just nodded, and I looked around at the other help there, and no one seemed to know English, and I thought: How odd. A real French bakery, in the midst of an American/Hispanic area. I wonder who goes in there, and what happens if they want to order something more complicated?
I think people go in there and then point to what they want. It's a French bakery, how much really complicated shit could they be cooking?
(I know nothing about cooking, but it's a bakery, the food is probably already laid out in front of the customer. The customer should point and signal in some fashion to the food he/she wants. It shouldn't be overly difficult to order for Peter. Maybe I am underestimating the complexity of this, but I don't think so.)
4. I will say this about the rooms at the very nice Doral Golf Resort and Spa, where I stayed Saturday night after a speaking engagement there: Not sure whether the rooms are separated by cardboard or oak tag, but I was able to hear a fairly intense conversation between a couple of golfers ticked off at their round the previous day. And it was nice of them to let me hear the proflowers.com commercial 64 times on various ESPN shows.
I am sure they appreciated hearing Peter's conversations and complaints about how the coffee didn't taste right and Peter complaining about what's up with all these foreigners who don't speak English? If no one speaks English, how do they know what coffee Peter has just ordered? Also, where are all the dogs at? There are a ton of dogs in Boston!
These are all things the golfers had to hear coming from Peter's room.
Thus did David Sills commit to play for Lane Kiffin -- or whoever the coach for USC will be six seasons from now. It's depraved for an institute of higher education to guarantee a seventh grader a scholarship. It's irresponsible for parents to commit their son to such a major decision five-and-a-half years before he has to make it.
David Sills is not committed to USC. He hasn't signed a letter of intent and is in no way locked into the program. What is depraved is that Peter thinks a 7th grader is actually locked in to USC in 2015 and he covers football for a living (Ok, maybe it is not depraved, but it fit what I was saying).
c. Kudos, too, to Chris Mortensen, for his terrific job with Dr. James Andrews on Drew Brees' revolutionary shoulder surgery in 2006. Mort, with Andrews, saw the MRI of Brees' ruined shoulder, and Andrews said the damage from the injury suffered in the last game of the 2005 season with San Diego was so severe that there was a 360-degree tear of the labrum -- basically, that it was torn from the bone -- and that the bone broke through the skin from underneath the shoulder. Gruesome, and very valuable to know how great the surgery was ... and how incredible it was that Brees even played football in 2006.
Yet every media member is second guessing the Chargers and Dolphins decision to not offer Brees more guaranteed money in 2006. Why would they have offered him more guaranteed money when it was incredible he even played in 2006? How can it be justified for someone to criticize the Dolphins and Chargers for not giving Brees more guaranteed money in a contract to play in 2006 AND think it was incredible Brees played in 2006? I don't see how these two positions can be rectified.
5. I think the most interesting writer's comment about our Hall of Fame election process Saturday came from a J.W. Nix, of something called Bleacher Report. He decried the process that resulted in former Chargers and Cardinals coach Don Coryell not being elected to the Hall on Saturday. Wrote Nix: "This is a despicable crime still perpetrated by the voters, as shown by the recent induction process. It also shows that Canton must change their induction system. [Retired players] are the ones who truly know who belong, especially considering there are countless voters not even knowing what positions many gridiron legends played ... [This year's voting] also shows the corrupt political process involved in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.'' America. What a country.
I know! What's with this freedom of speech crap everyone is perpetuating? How can people have the audacity to express their opinions in a public format when they aren't an "expert" like Peter or work for a major organization that cares more about money than sports? Only people like Peter King should be able to give their opinion, because sportswriters like him are experts dammit!
8. I think Bill Polian won't say it, but I bet he'll think at some point this week: Are we destined to be Atlanta Braves? A team that wins divisions and pennants but only one world championship?
Hey! As a Braves fan I take exception to this. When the Colts make 5 Super Bowls in a 9 year span (one was a strike year but I will still count it), then we can compare them to the Braves. The Colts are like a Braves team that choked before they made it to the championship game (round). So in my mind, the Braves were a more successful franchise in the 90's than the Colts in the 2000's and there is no comparison between the two when it comes to playoff choking. The Braves are more elite chokers.
9. I think I'll be reminded most of today that my Player of the Decade is 9-9 in the playoffs.
This means nothing. What has Peter and others said was the difference in this game? Garcon's drop, the onside kick, Manning's late interception and the Colts failure to convert a third-and-one. Only one of those were Manning's fault. It should have an effect on his legacy, there's no doubt, but I don't know how much it should affect his legacy since the loss isn't completely on him.
Though part of me is a little concerned that Manning threw the late interception and generally couldn't produce many points in the 2nd half. Is the Saints defense really that good? I guess so.
g. The Who seems a little passed to me, and I like The Who. Time to modern-up the halftime. If I'm 52 and say meh to The Who, that's not good.
The vocals sounded terrible, Roger Daltry was lip synching at one point, it is hard to get 5 songs in a short time and not have it sound discombobulated, and it wasn't a bad performance, but a performance you would expect from a band that has been playing for 40 years, is missing 2 original members, and is using touring musicians. That's not a compliment.
j. Had a good hour Tuesday with Jason Cole's journalism class from the University of Florida, and I informed the group that the cleverest Tweet or e-mail would make this column. Uh, Dave Gardner, you sent the only e-mail or Tweet -- and so you win.
This is a shining example of what a popular writer Peter King is.
"My goal in life is to be mentioned in Monday Morning Quarterback. I've never told anyone that, but it's true.'' Inside joke (a good one), and Dave wins. Wrote Dave: "I figured if it worked for you with the New York Times, it might work with me too.''
If that's your goal in life, I hope it is a tongue-in-cheek goal and not an actual real goal. If it is a real goal, then God help you.
Fortunately, Peter is going to be writing his MMQB until June, which means I will get to critique his writings out to the masses every week until then. Oh...wonderful.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
2 comments Its Official!
He is now sponsored by us.
Fuckin. A. Right.
Tune in later this afternoon, for Bens take down of MMQB Tuesday edition.
I planned on having Panteras "Walk" music video here, but couldnt because blogger wouldnt let me. Tell me that wouldnt be a kickass song for David Eckstein to come to the plate to.
Evan, if your still out there, let me know if there is another blog who sponsors scrappy players and tries to come up with kickass theme songs for them.
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