So the early reviews on Manti Te'o are positive in San Diego, but what would they be, really, when the players aren't in pads and it's only the rookies out there?
Peter is very suspicious in this week's MMQB. He says everyone in San Diego loves Manti Te'o right now, but that shouldn't be a surprise. The real surprise to me is that if the positive feedback doesn't merit real attention why Peter is giving it heed in MMQB?
San Diego coach Mike McCoy told me Sunday, after the rookie minicamp,
that the staff expects Te'o to be an every-down linebacker.
It's always nice when an NFL team drafts a linebacker in the second round and that linebacker ends up being able to play all three downs.
That's assuming Te'o can even make it out of his house/apartment/condo in the morning for fear the Loch Ness monster will knock on his door and ask for tree-fiddy. This keeps happening to him. It looked like just a cute Girl Scout at first glance but now that Te'o looks at her harder he notices she is 500 feet tall and from the Paleolithic era. Manti ain't got no tree-fiddy, Loch Ness monster! It's best for him to just stay inside all day.
No running back was taken until the 37th pick; the presumptive top quarterback, Geno Smith, went 39th. The most famous pick in the draft, Te'o, went 38th,
It's good to know that once again fame has gotten confused with notoriety. Te'o isn't exactly more famous than he is notorious for a good reason. Even before he was fooled by an elaborate hoax he was run down on national television by the NFL-bound Alabama offensive line. Let's not mix up notorious and famous. They should be two different things.
It's always nice when an NFL team drafts a linebacker in the second round and that linebacker ends up being able to play all three downs.
"Our plan is for him to play three downs, and when we scouted him, we
believed that's what he'd be,'' McCoy said. "But he'll have to earn
that, obviously. We're going to play the best guys, and if he's the best
guy on all three downs, he'll be in there.''
That's assuming Te'o can even make it out of his house/apartment/condo in the morning for fear the Loch Ness monster will knock on his door and ask for tree-fiddy. This keeps happening to him. It looked like just a cute Girl Scout at first glance but now that Te'o looks at her harder he notices she is 500 feet tall and from the Paleolithic era. Manti ain't got no tree-fiddy, Loch Ness monster! It's best for him to just stay inside all day.
No running back was taken until the 37th pick; the presumptive top quarterback, Geno Smith, went 39th. The most famous pick in the draft, Te'o, went 38th,
It's good to know that once again fame has gotten confused with notoriety. Te'o isn't exactly more famous than he is notorious for a good reason. Even before he was fooled by an elaborate hoax he was run down on national television by the NFL-bound Alabama offensive line. Let's not mix up notorious and famous. They should be two different things.
he doesn't have a lot of rookie peers around the league to take the
media pressure off him. For now, anyway. He knows he'll have to live
with the specter of the girlfriend hoax as well as becoming a defensive
leader in real time.
The good news is that if the Chargers coaching staff tells Te'o he is becoming a defensive leader then he will probably believe it when told and this could accelerate his development in real time.
The good news is that if the Chargers coaching staff tells Te'o he is becoming a defensive leader then he will probably believe it when told and this could accelerate his development in real time.
I've thought all along that whatever happens with the fraternal hazing
Te'o gets, he'll be measured among his teammates by performance. If the
guy can play and is an earnest worker, he'll get respect in time.
Peter has thought all along in regard to Te'o that if he can play that's all his teammates care about. Of course this "we respect you if we know you can perform" attitude probably goes for most NFL rookies, but I probably shouldn't take away from what Peter thought all along.
Will he hold the point of attack when big and fast Oakland back Darren McFadden lowers his head up the gut on 3rd-and-2? Will he be able to pivot and cover Denver tight end Jacob Tamme, and hold his own when he's caught in a mismatch against versatile Chiefs back Dexter McCluster? He'll be tested by good weapons in the AFC West.
I mean this in the nicest possible way, nope actually I don't, but if your example of three good weapons out of the AFC West are Darren McFadden (always hurt), Jacob Tamme (555 yards receiving) and Dexter McCluster (452 yards receiving) then there aren't really that many tough weapons Te'o will face. I would worry more about Te'o being matched up on Wes Welker when facing the Broncos, but McFadden/Tamme/McCluster isn't exactly Percy Harvin/Frank Gore/Vernon Davis (okay, not the Vernon Davis from last year) or Doug Martin/Lance Moore/Jimmy Graham.
I'm most interested in seeing Te'o against Peyton Manning. Luckily for the Chargers, their new defensive centerpiece will learn a lot before he sees Manning in Weeks 10 and 15. McCoy was Manning's offensive coordinator last year, and he'll have some simple advice for Te'o -- and for the rest of the Chargers defense.
Peyton Manning eats linebackers and defenses for lunch anyway. Te'o will have more experience in Weeks 10 and 15, but he is still going to look like an asshole quite a few times going against Manning regardless of when he faces him.
"Don't get caught up in all of that. Peyton's going to embarrass you and expose you. He does it to everyone. You've just got to hang in there, play your assignment. You'll make plays. Don't make it more than it is."
It's sort of like how Te'o played his assignment, hung in there and didn't make the Alabama offensive line more than it was? Okay, I know that game wasn't all Te'o's fault and I will stop now, I promise.
Two NFL deaths, two very different people.
But wasn't it so much fun to read their obituaries in "The New York Times"? People dying makes for some wonderful prose.
Jack Butler and George Sauer died in the past week, and you should know them both.
Ironically, Butler died of the same staph infection in his knee that caused him to retire early, in 1959. The knee was never totally right, and the staph infection resurfaced last year in the area around his knee replacement, and it ended up killing him at 85.
Is this really ironic though? Let's think about the definition of the word "irony" for a minute. I'm not entirely sure this is really irony. Also, if I retire for medical reasons and then 54 years later I die from what forced me to retire then I'm probably not going to be too upset. This is ssuming I don't live the rest of my life in pain or poor, of course, but otherwise if I live 54 years after I retire then I'm a happy person...possible misuse of the word "irony" be damned.
To me, Ronde Barber is football's Carl Yastrzemski.
Or football's Cal Ripken. I realize because Peter is a Boston Red Sox fan he is contractually obligated (much like Bill Simmons) to only compare any current athlete to an ex-Boston area athlete, but in this case I think we could make an exception.
Always there, always playing well, a fixture.
Sort of like the baseball player who played the most consecutive games in MLB history, all with the same team? Wouldn't this be a better comparison to Barber?
One superb year (Yaz, the Triple Crown year in 1967; Barber, the 10-interception All-Pro season in 2001), lots of clutch moments, played through pain.
Two MVP awards in 1983 and 1991.
Last week Barber, 38, retired after starting 215 straight games in the defensive backfield for Tampa Bay, a record for consecutive starts by an NFL defensive back. He played right corner, left corner, slot corner and free safety.
Hey, Ripken played third base and shortstop. The comparisons continue. I give up, Carl Yastrzemski is a much better comparison to Ronde Barber obviously.
"It was time. It was right for me, it was right for them. It had to be done. You never really want to retire. I kind of needed to. If I stayed the year, I'd have had to change my role, and that didn't resonate with me.
"I'm a team player. If I don't get to start this year, then I am retiring."
Let the sun shine into NFL draft rooms.
I'll never understand what the big secret is about letting people see what really happens in a draft room.
Really? You don't understand why NFL teams don't want other NFL teams to know their draft board and which players they do or do not really want to draft? NFL teams are all about setting up smoke screens on which players they do or do not want to draft, so if there was more transparency then their attempts at a smoke screen or attempts to pretend they don't want to draft a player they really do want to draft would be wasted. One weekend in the Rams draft war room and Peter wants every NFL team to have a reporter embedded with them.
Within reason, I think a team opening its draft room for journalistic interest is a win-win for everyone ... unless the team absolutely blows it and misses out on a player or players it wants, and then has either no plan or a poor plan in reserve.
Peter throws this "unless" into the conversation here, but a team has no idea if they are going to miss on a player or have a poor plan in reserve until the draft actually starts. So it's not like they could just cut off journalistic access when they feel the need to. Obviously if a team starts not relaying information or not allowing the journalist access to their conversations then he/she would know something is going wrong or it would defeat the purpose of giving the journalist access. Basically, once a journalist has access he/she gets to see everything. The strategy used, players the team does/does not like, and any players the team missed on, but wanted. That is a lot of access to an NFL team.
Not that teams should be telling reporters and other teams what they're planning to do. But why don't more teams do what the Rams did with me in Round 1 of the draft?
Because Peter, not every NFL team is as well run and set up for seven straight decades of Super Bowl dominance like the St. Louis Rams are. The rest of the NFL can only aspire to be as great as the Rams and have a journalist in their war room who will just brazenly glaze over the fact in this column that Les Snead claims to know another team's draft board but won't say how he came upon this knowledge.
The Rams had two picks in the round, 16 and 22, at the start of the night, and I thought with GM Les Snead's fledgling rep for action, there was a good chance the Rams would be active on draft night and it would make a good story.
Again Peter, you can't compare the perfection that is the Rams war room to every other NFL team. Why try to attain perfection when it simply can't be attained?
The team had some concern what might happen if their plans -- unspoken to me at the time, a few days before the draft -- failed and they didn't get the players they wanted. My point is what I said a couple of paragraphs ago: If the team had a plan that was well-conceived, regardless what happened, why be concerned about having someone write about it?
Translation: Marvin Demoff promised his son that Peter wouldn't write about the Rams draft in any negative manner.
There were some other concessions I made...And if someone inside the draft room maligned a player or a team (as in: "Boy, those guys on Team X are worthless foofs'') I wouldn't use the chance to take a cheap shot.
The issue is that other journalists wouldn't necessarily do this. They would want full access to a team's draft room, warts and all.
Of course, it could have all blown up, and the Rams could have run out of trading partners and looked bad. But what chance did that have of happening, really? Not much -- when you have two first-round picks.
No, it very easily could have happened even with two first round draft picks. Tavon Austin could have been picked before the Rams could choose him and then Alec Ogletree could have gone to the Broncos. Many things could go wrong and every NFL team doesn't have two first round draft picks to use in case they think they could miss out on a player they really want. Peter is using his experience in the Rams' draft room as an example of why every team should allow a journalist in their draft room, but the Rams were in a unique position with two first round draft choices, so they can scramble and grab a player they may have a chance of missing on. If a journalist is embedded in the Patriots draft room then they didn't have as much ammunition this year to grab a player they may have really wanted. So the picture may not look as rosy if they have to reluctantly trade back for less compensation than they wanted to or took a player that wasn't their first choice if they could not trade back.
Along the way, there was some suspense that I was able to capture -- and that made the Rams look like brilliant gamblers.
Not that it was Marvin Demoff's intention to make his son and the Rams look like brilliant gamblers of course. Not at all. This was completely unintentional and Peter is being his usual journalistic neutral self by calling the Rams "brilliant gamblers," especially since he wrote the column that made them look that way.
And don't forget there is a sequence in the column where Les Snead is on the phone with a person he refused to name and he seemed to obtain the Broncos' draft board from the person on the other end of the call. This causes me to believe (or not believe) two things:
1. I can't believe other journalists would let him/herself be cut off from information such as this in a team's draft room. These are the types of conversations that go on in a draft room which a team doesn't want heard or written about. These are also the types of conversations that a journalist is going to want to hear and write about.
2. The Rams didn't want Peter to hear who Snead was talking to, so they weren't quite as open and forthcoming as Peter seems to want to paint them.
Then Peter starts quoting his "SI" column about the Rams in a desperate attempt to kill space. I hope Marvin Demoff calls Peter and tells him it has been three weeks, he can stop writing about the Rams war room now.
I maintain even if Ogletree had been picked before 30, the Rams would have found a partner to move down once or twice, then taken Kentucky guard Larry Warford, their fallback guy.
Great plan, except in the article Peter mentions that Warford was a fallback guy and not someone the Rams were too keen to draft at #30. That's probably not information the Rams would want Warford to know if they had drafted him at that spot.
And they would have looked fine, because they had a plan, and because they still got the guy they wanted the most, Austin.
But they would have drafted a player the article makes fairly clear isn't their first choice at that spot in the first round. Peter has to be able to see the issue with the Rams choosing a player that is a clear 3rd/4th choice for them and this being noted in a column about the Rams' draft.
One thing I didn't write that night. Well after the round ended: Snead's mentor, Atlanta GM Thomas Dimitroff, called Snead and said, "You've got big balls."
"I got 'em from you,'' Snead said.
Son of a bitch, Peter! We get it! The Rams had a great draft and Les Snead is Jesus/Bill Walsh/Bill Belichick/Mother Teresa/Ghandi/Iron Man/Wonder Woman/Bill Gates/Albert Einstein/Garry Kasparov/Thomas Edison/Phil Jackson/Buddha/Abraham Lincoln/Caesar Augustus/Tywin Lannister/Walter White/Tom Hanks/Spongebob Square Pants/Ernest Hemingway all wrapped up into one person. We understand. Snead has balls, his gambles worked and the Rams had a great draft. This doesn't mean every NFL team should want a journalist in their draft war room.
The Lions, because of injuries and ineffectiveness, have had receiver and running back needs for the last three years. In the 2011 draft, they chose Titus Young in the second round, 44th overall.
Now comes the part where Peter criticizes the Lions for drafting Titus Young. Young had some issues at Boise State, but Young is the type of player who had red flags coming out of college that an NFL team just has to take a chance on. You know, a guy like Sir Alec Ogletree the Greatest Linebacker Ever that the Rams just won the 2013 NFL Draft by drafting at the #30 spot in the first round. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. That's the bottom line.
The Lions cut bait with Young after the season was over and in that time span he was signed by (ahem) the Rams, cut 8 days later, then the following happened:
Was stopped in California for making an illegal left turn, charged on suspicion of DUI, and arrested hours later for attempting to steal his own car from a police impounding lot.
Was arrested for suspected burglary, and charged with resisting arrest and assault on a peace officer.
The Lions screwed up in drafting Titus Young, but they have gotten rid of him now. I don't see the point of thrashing them any further, especially when it is well-known that teams take risks on players who have a history of personnel and legal issues. Teams take a chance on these types of players and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Jeff Fisher took a risk on Pacman Jones that didn't pay off and now he is taking a risk on Janoris Jenkins and Alec Ogletree and the risk seems to be paying off (at least on Jenkins) at this point.
Then Peter provides a chart of the players the Lions could have had drafted which includes Torrey Smith, Randall Cobb, Denarius Moore, and Stevan Ridley. I get Peter's criticism of the Lions for drafting Young, but there are plenty of other teams that could have had Cobb/Smith/Moore/Ridley as well. The Rams wouldn't have had to draft Tavon Austin if they had taken Torrey Smith or Randall Cobb. Instead the Rams drafted Lance Kendricks. The Colts, Chiefs, and Chargers all could have chosen to take any of these four players as well instead of the players they took. Instead, Peter chooses to focus on Titus Young because he got in trouble so often with the Lions. The Lions swung and missed big. I don't think it will happen, but this could happen with the Rams and Ogletree, so then Peter's "The Rams are the big winners of the draft" column will look pretty funny in retrospect. I would, of course, expect Peter at that point to rake the Rams over the coals for drafting Ogletree as he has done to the Lions.
Midway through the current roster of the Dallas Cowboys is this free-agent candidate:
Darrell Green's son. That Darrell Green. From Washington. Hated rival of the Cowboys.
He was in Carolina's Training Camp last year, but that wasn't as interesting of a story of course because it didn't involve the Cowboys and Redskins. I get it. Still, it's noteworthy in that it shouldn't be noteworthy. It's the dawn of free agency when players (especially undrafted free agents) will go to the team that pays them the most money or gives them the best chance to play.
"Scout to me before Titus Young was drafted, 'I don't know if he'll ever be in trouble, but he's just not a good person.' ''
-- @Schottey, Bleacher Report NFL writer Michael Schottey, on Sunday.
I don't know how telling this quote actually is. There are probably quite a few NFL players who aren't good people and they turn out to be very good football players. The NFL isn't a league where the kindest people in the world play, but it is a sports league full of men with big egos who are used to being treated well and in some ways worshiped. So I don't know if just being a bad person is reason enough to look back and say, "We should have expected this type of behavior."
Ten Things I Think I Think
1. I think the logical question for the Ford family to ask its Lions personnel department this morning (if it hasn't already been asked six or eight times) is: How on God's green earth did you let Titus Young pass through our checking system and grade out high enough to be the 44th overall pick in 2011?
It was a risk the personnel department of the Lions felt like taking. It was clearly a bad risk. Let's not forget the Rams picked up Young after he was released by the Lions (I don't set out to bash the Rams, but they have been all over this MMQB). Granted, the Rams didn't draft Young, but they were willing to give him a chance after he had four separate incidents with the Lions that led to him being cut by them. Maybe while Peter was in the Rams draft room he could have asked them how on God's green earth they signed Young, even for 8 days, after knowing the trouble he had caused the Lions?
But Young missed much of his second season at Boise State for fighting a teammate. I liked the pick at the time, because he filled a major need to take pressure off Calvin Johnson. Young, if well-adjusted, would have been a great asset to Detroit.
Notice how Peter liked the pick at the time. So for many of the same reasons Peter liked the pick the Lions felt like they could take a chance on Young behaving and not causing any problems.
Character problems, maturity issues. Those are flaws we in the media can't know nearly as well as the teams. The Lions, I'm betting, knew what a risk Young might be.
Oh, of course. The media is able to give their opinion of the pick and have no cause for having to stand by their opinion, because they don't have all of the information. Giving an opinion with less information means not having to stand by your opinion. Nice way to live.
Now, if you want to question the Rams for taking Janoris Jenkins in the second round last year and the Cards for taking Tyrann Mathieu in the third a few weeks ago, those are valid questions. Jenkins already missed a game for violating team rules last year, and Mathieu is no lock to stay on the straight and narrow. But the Rams had multiple high picks last year and have said openly that they are willing to take chances on players because they think Jeff Fisher can handle risky guys.
Oh, so it's fine to take a chance on a risky player as long your team has multiple high picks. Got it? The Lions in 2011 had picks at #13, #44, and #57, but this did not entitle them to take a risky player with those picks. The Rams in 2012 had picks at #14, #33, #39, and #50, which entitled them to take a risky player with one of those selections. I think Peter needs to write down these rules for me.
Time will tell if they're right on the Jenkinses and the Alec Ogletrees, and I could be throwing stones at them in coming years. The Cardinals don't have a track record for taking questionable character guys. They thought the talent of Mathieu was worth the risk. That's one I think the team will end up regretting.
Jenkins has already missed a game for violating team rules, so we have evidence he hasn't stayed on the straight and narrow, but Peter thinks Mathieu was the bad risk. It's his opinion and he is entitled to it of course. I think Jeff Fisher could draft Jodi Arias and Peter wouldn't criticize the selection.
4. I think there was no more loyal -- even to the point of sometimes straining credulity -- club employee in the NFL than Amy Trask to the Raiders. To Al Davis, more specifically. With Davis deceased and change the order of the day in Oakland, Trask resigned after a quarter-century with the club Saturday, amid signs the team would get a chief executive handpicked by Mark Davis and Reggie McKenzie. I've sparred with Trask over the years, but she's been a bullish Raiders loyalist always, and I've appreciated where she was coming from. She also took her role as a female trailblazer in the league seriously and mentored many young women who wanted to rise in the business. I hope someone's smart enough to see how important a good, tough woman is to the bottom line of a sports franchise, and Trask is hired somewhere in the business soon.
Jason Collins comes out of the closet and Amy Trask "resigns" after spending 25 years with the Raiders. It's all a part of the conspiracy David Steele was talking about.
5.I think if Geno Smith wins the Jet starting job to start the season, I wouldn't be remotely surprised if the Jets traded Mark Sanchez for a low-round draft pick or cut him before Week 1.
This statement should be filed under the category for "No Shit, Sherlock." If Geno Smith proves he can be the Jets starter then the Jets may trade or cut their 2012 starter who struggled mightily last year? I'm shocked to the point I am having trouble typing.
7.I think, regarding Tavon Austin saying everyone from his life is asking for money, there's a reason more than one team was afraid of him entering draft weekend. Austin, from all accounts, avoided the pitfalls that have befallen lots of inner-city draftees over the years. But some around the league think acquaintances from Austin's past (he is from one of the toughest neighborhoods in the country, in Baltimore) could follow him into the NFL.
So the Rams drafted two guys in the first round with either a red flag or whispers of red flags. It's fine for them to do this of course because they had multiple high draft picks. So, no big deal.
10. I think these are my non-football thoughts of the week:
c. Bryce Harper and Dustin Pedroia have the hardest swings I see in baseball.
They are the Carl Yastremzki of modern day baseball.
d. Why it's impossible to predict baseball: Jason Grilli, Manny Machado.
Why Peter doesn't know much about baseball: Manny Machado was the #3 overall pick in the 2010 draft and he tore up the minor leagues until he made the majors. Machado's success wasn't even close to being impossible to predict. For someone who claims to love the sport of baseball I am continuously amazed at how little Peter knows about it.
f. Machado, an Oriole, has more hits than any third baseman but Cabrera, and more RBIs than David Wright and Adrian Beltre.
Machado was considered the second-best positional prospect in the 2010 draft and Keith Law stated he is a potential All-Star shortstop who is average at worst with his glove when he was drafted. But boy, his success came out of nowhere didn't it?
Does Bo Porter know the rules of baseball? I'm sure he does; that's a wiseacre question. But what kind of bran freeze does a manager have when he pulls an uninjured pitcher who hasn't faced a batter yet?
He probably has Raisin "Bran freeze."
n. Knowledgeless NBA Dept.:
Why even bother commenting on the NBA if you don't know anything about it?
If Tony Parker wasn't a guard, he could be great at ballet ...
See, this is what happens when Peter comments on the NBA without knowing anything about it. For God's sake, just stop writing and get to the Adieu Haiku if you can't contribute to a discussion on the NBA.
Gregg Popovich doesn't take any crap, does he? ...
(stabs self in the eye with a pencil)
Break up the Celtics. It's time.
They are no longer the Carl Yastrzemski of NBA teams.
The Adieu Haiku
Meet the vets, Manti.
Bolts' full squad reports today.
Local forecast: haze.
I read an interview with Peter on Awful Announcing last week and he said his new microsite will be football-only. Usually when Peter makes a statement like, "I don't comment on the NBA" or "I am not smart enough to judge whether the Oscars got the award winners correct," it is immediately followed by Peter commenting on the NBA or judging whether the Oscars got the award winners correct. So it is probably safe to assume his new microsite will have at least 50% non-football related content.
Peter has thought all along in regard to Te'o that if he can play that's all his teammates care about. Of course this "we respect you if we know you can perform" attitude probably goes for most NFL rookies, but I probably shouldn't take away from what Peter thought all along.
Will he hold the point of attack when big and fast Oakland back Darren McFadden lowers his head up the gut on 3rd-and-2? Will he be able to pivot and cover Denver tight end Jacob Tamme, and hold his own when he's caught in a mismatch against versatile Chiefs back Dexter McCluster? He'll be tested by good weapons in the AFC West.
I mean this in the nicest possible way, nope actually I don't, but if your example of three good weapons out of the AFC West are Darren McFadden (always hurt), Jacob Tamme (555 yards receiving) and Dexter McCluster (452 yards receiving) then there aren't really that many tough weapons Te'o will face. I would worry more about Te'o being matched up on Wes Welker when facing the Broncos, but McFadden/Tamme/McCluster isn't exactly Percy Harvin/Frank Gore/Vernon Davis (okay, not the Vernon Davis from last year) or Doug Martin/Lance Moore/Jimmy Graham.
I'm most interested in seeing Te'o against Peyton Manning. Luckily for the Chargers, their new defensive centerpiece will learn a lot before he sees Manning in Weeks 10 and 15. McCoy was Manning's offensive coordinator last year, and he'll have some simple advice for Te'o -- and for the rest of the Chargers defense.
Peyton Manning eats linebackers and defenses for lunch anyway. Te'o will have more experience in Weeks 10 and 15, but he is still going to look like an asshole quite a few times going against Manning regardless of when he faces him.
"Don't get caught up in all of that. Peyton's going to embarrass you and expose you. He does it to everyone. You've just got to hang in there, play your assignment. You'll make plays. Don't make it more than it is."
It's sort of like how Te'o played his assignment, hung in there and didn't make the Alabama offensive line more than it was? Okay, I know that game wasn't all Te'o's fault and I will stop now, I promise.
Two NFL deaths, two very different people.
But wasn't it so much fun to read their obituaries in "The New York Times"? People dying makes for some wonderful prose.
Jack Butler and George Sauer died in the past week, and you should know them both.
Ironically, Butler died of the same staph infection in his knee that caused him to retire early, in 1959. The knee was never totally right, and the staph infection resurfaced last year in the area around his knee replacement, and it ended up killing him at 85.
Is this really ironic though? Let's think about the definition of the word "irony" for a minute. I'm not entirely sure this is really irony. Also, if I retire for medical reasons and then 54 years later I die from what forced me to retire then I'm probably not going to be too upset. This is ssuming I don't live the rest of my life in pain or poor, of course, but otherwise if I live 54 years after I retire then I'm a happy person...possible misuse of the word "irony" be damned.
To me, Ronde Barber is football's Carl Yastrzemski.
Or football's Cal Ripken. I realize because Peter is a Boston Red Sox fan he is contractually obligated (much like Bill Simmons) to only compare any current athlete to an ex-Boston area athlete, but in this case I think we could make an exception.
Always there, always playing well, a fixture.
Sort of like the baseball player who played the most consecutive games in MLB history, all with the same team? Wouldn't this be a better comparison to Barber?
One superb year (Yaz, the Triple Crown year in 1967; Barber, the 10-interception All-Pro season in 2001), lots of clutch moments, played through pain.
Two MVP awards in 1983 and 1991.
Last week Barber, 38, retired after starting 215 straight games in the defensive backfield for Tampa Bay, a record for consecutive starts by an NFL defensive back. He played right corner, left corner, slot corner and free safety.
Hey, Ripken played third base and shortstop. The comparisons continue. I give up, Carl Yastrzemski is a much better comparison to Ronde Barber obviously.
"It was time. It was right for me, it was right for them. It had to be done. You never really want to retire. I kind of needed to. If I stayed the year, I'd have had to change my role, and that didn't resonate with me.
"I'm a team player. If I don't get to start this year, then I am retiring."
Let the sun shine into NFL draft rooms.
I'll never understand what the big secret is about letting people see what really happens in a draft room.
Really? You don't understand why NFL teams don't want other NFL teams to know their draft board and which players they do or do not really want to draft? NFL teams are all about setting up smoke screens on which players they do or do not want to draft, so if there was more transparency then their attempts at a smoke screen or attempts to pretend they don't want to draft a player they really do want to draft would be wasted. One weekend in the Rams draft war room and Peter wants every NFL team to have a reporter embedded with them.
Within reason, I think a team opening its draft room for journalistic interest is a win-win for everyone ... unless the team absolutely blows it and misses out on a player or players it wants, and then has either no plan or a poor plan in reserve.
Peter throws this "unless" into the conversation here, but a team has no idea if they are going to miss on a player or have a poor plan in reserve until the draft actually starts. So it's not like they could just cut off journalistic access when they feel the need to. Obviously if a team starts not relaying information or not allowing the journalist access to their conversations then he/she would know something is going wrong or it would defeat the purpose of giving the journalist access. Basically, once a journalist has access he/she gets to see everything. The strategy used, players the team does/does not like, and any players the team missed on, but wanted. That is a lot of access to an NFL team.
Not that teams should be telling reporters and other teams what they're planning to do. But why don't more teams do what the Rams did with me in Round 1 of the draft?
Because Peter, not every NFL team is as well run and set up for seven straight decades of Super Bowl dominance like the St. Louis Rams are. The rest of the NFL can only aspire to be as great as the Rams and have a journalist in their war room who will just brazenly glaze over the fact in this column that Les Snead claims to know another team's draft board but won't say how he came upon this knowledge.
The Rams had two picks in the round, 16 and 22, at the start of the night, and I thought with GM Les Snead's fledgling rep for action, there was a good chance the Rams would be active on draft night and it would make a good story.
Again Peter, you can't compare the perfection that is the Rams war room to every other NFL team. Why try to attain perfection when it simply can't be attained?
The team had some concern what might happen if their plans -- unspoken to me at the time, a few days before the draft -- failed and they didn't get the players they wanted. My point is what I said a couple of paragraphs ago: If the team had a plan that was well-conceived, regardless what happened, why be concerned about having someone write about it?
Translation: Marvin Demoff promised his son that Peter wouldn't write about the Rams draft in any negative manner.
There were some other concessions I made...And if someone inside the draft room maligned a player or a team (as in: "Boy, those guys on Team X are worthless foofs'') I wouldn't use the chance to take a cheap shot.
The issue is that other journalists wouldn't necessarily do this. They would want full access to a team's draft room, warts and all.
Of course, it could have all blown up, and the Rams could have run out of trading partners and looked bad. But what chance did that have of happening, really? Not much -- when you have two first-round picks.
No, it very easily could have happened even with two first round draft picks. Tavon Austin could have been picked before the Rams could choose him and then Alec Ogletree could have gone to the Broncos. Many things could go wrong and every NFL team doesn't have two first round draft picks to use in case they think they could miss out on a player they really want. Peter is using his experience in the Rams' draft room as an example of why every team should allow a journalist in their draft room, but the Rams were in a unique position with two first round draft choices, so they can scramble and grab a player they may have a chance of missing on. If a journalist is embedded in the Patriots draft room then they didn't have as much ammunition this year to grab a player they may have really wanted. So the picture may not look as rosy if they have to reluctantly trade back for less compensation than they wanted to or took a player that wasn't their first choice if they could not trade back.
Along the way, there was some suspense that I was able to capture -- and that made the Rams look like brilliant gamblers.
Not that it was Marvin Demoff's intention to make his son and the Rams look like brilliant gamblers of course. Not at all. This was completely unintentional and Peter is being his usual journalistic neutral self by calling the Rams "brilliant gamblers," especially since he wrote the column that made them look that way.
And don't forget there is a sequence in the column where Les Snead is on the phone with a person he refused to name and he seemed to obtain the Broncos' draft board from the person on the other end of the call. This causes me to believe (or not believe) two things:
1. I can't believe other journalists would let him/herself be cut off from information such as this in a team's draft room. These are the types of conversations that go on in a draft room which a team doesn't want heard or written about. These are also the types of conversations that a journalist is going to want to hear and write about.
2. The Rams didn't want Peter to hear who Snead was talking to, so they weren't quite as open and forthcoming as Peter seems to want to paint them.
Then Peter starts quoting his "SI" column about the Rams in a desperate attempt to kill space. I hope Marvin Demoff calls Peter and tells him it has been three weeks, he can stop writing about the Rams war room now.
I maintain even if Ogletree had been picked before 30, the Rams would have found a partner to move down once or twice, then taken Kentucky guard Larry Warford, their fallback guy.
Great plan, except in the article Peter mentions that Warford was a fallback guy and not someone the Rams were too keen to draft at #30. That's probably not information the Rams would want Warford to know if they had drafted him at that spot.
And they would have looked fine, because they had a plan, and because they still got the guy they wanted the most, Austin.
But they would have drafted a player the article makes fairly clear isn't their first choice at that spot in the first round. Peter has to be able to see the issue with the Rams choosing a player that is a clear 3rd/4th choice for them and this being noted in a column about the Rams' draft.
One thing I didn't write that night. Well after the round ended: Snead's mentor, Atlanta GM Thomas Dimitroff, called Snead and said, "You've got big balls."
"I got 'em from you,'' Snead said.
Son of a bitch, Peter! We get it! The Rams had a great draft and Les Snead is Jesus/Bill Walsh/Bill Belichick/Mother Teresa/Ghandi/Iron Man/Wonder Woman/Bill Gates/Albert Einstein/Garry Kasparov/Thomas Edison/Phil Jackson/Buddha/Abraham Lincoln/Caesar Augustus/Tywin Lannister/Walter White/Tom Hanks/Spongebob Square Pants/Ernest Hemingway all wrapped up into one person. We understand. Snead has balls, his gambles worked and the Rams had a great draft. This doesn't mean every NFL team should want a journalist in their draft war room.
The Lions, because of injuries and ineffectiveness, have had receiver and running back needs for the last three years. In the 2011 draft, they chose Titus Young in the second round, 44th overall.
Now comes the part where Peter criticizes the Lions for drafting Titus Young. Young had some issues at Boise State, but Young is the type of player who had red flags coming out of college that an NFL team just has to take a chance on. You know, a guy like Sir Alec Ogletree the Greatest Linebacker Ever that the Rams just won the 2013 NFL Draft by drafting at the #30 spot in the first round. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. That's the bottom line.
The Lions cut bait with Young after the season was over and in that time span he was signed by (ahem) the Rams, cut 8 days later, then the following happened:
Was stopped in California for making an illegal left turn, charged on suspicion of DUI, and arrested hours later for attempting to steal his own car from a police impounding lot.
Was arrested for suspected burglary, and charged with resisting arrest and assault on a peace officer.
The Lions screwed up in drafting Titus Young, but they have gotten rid of him now. I don't see the point of thrashing them any further, especially when it is well-known that teams take risks on players who have a history of personnel and legal issues. Teams take a chance on these types of players and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Jeff Fisher took a risk on Pacman Jones that didn't pay off and now he is taking a risk on Janoris Jenkins and Alec Ogletree and the risk seems to be paying off (at least on Jenkins) at this point.
Then Peter provides a chart of the players the Lions could have had drafted which includes Torrey Smith, Randall Cobb, Denarius Moore, and Stevan Ridley. I get Peter's criticism of the Lions for drafting Young, but there are plenty of other teams that could have had Cobb/Smith/Moore/Ridley as well. The Rams wouldn't have had to draft Tavon Austin if they had taken Torrey Smith or Randall Cobb. Instead the Rams drafted Lance Kendricks. The Colts, Chiefs, and Chargers all could have chosen to take any of these four players as well instead of the players they took. Instead, Peter chooses to focus on Titus Young because he got in trouble so often with the Lions. The Lions swung and missed big. I don't think it will happen, but this could happen with the Rams and Ogletree, so then Peter's "The Rams are the big winners of the draft" column will look pretty funny in retrospect. I would, of course, expect Peter at that point to rake the Rams over the coals for drafting Ogletree as he has done to the Lions.
Midway through the current roster of the Dallas Cowboys is this free-agent candidate:
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Darrell Green's son. That Darrell Green. From Washington. Hated rival of the Cowboys.
He was in Carolina's Training Camp last year, but that wasn't as interesting of a story of course because it didn't involve the Cowboys and Redskins. I get it. Still, it's noteworthy in that it shouldn't be noteworthy. It's the dawn of free agency when players (especially undrafted free agents) will go to the team that pays them the most money or gives them the best chance to play.
"Scout to me before Titus Young was drafted, 'I don't know if he'll ever be in trouble, but he's just not a good person.' ''
-- @Schottey, Bleacher Report NFL writer Michael Schottey, on Sunday.
I don't know how telling this quote actually is. There are probably quite a few NFL players who aren't good people and they turn out to be very good football players. The NFL isn't a league where the kindest people in the world play, but it is a sports league full of men with big egos who are used to being treated well and in some ways worshiped. So I don't know if just being a bad person is reason enough to look back and say, "We should have expected this type of behavior."
Ten Things I Think I Think
1. I think the logical question for the Ford family to ask its Lions personnel department this morning (if it hasn't already been asked six or eight times) is: How on God's green earth did you let Titus Young pass through our checking system and grade out high enough to be the 44th overall pick in 2011?
It was a risk the personnel department of the Lions felt like taking. It was clearly a bad risk. Let's not forget the Rams picked up Young after he was released by the Lions (I don't set out to bash the Rams, but they have been all over this MMQB). Granted, the Rams didn't draft Young, but they were willing to give him a chance after he had four separate incidents with the Lions that led to him being cut by them. Maybe while Peter was in the Rams draft room he could have asked them how on God's green earth they signed Young, even for 8 days, after knowing the trouble he had caused the Lions?
But Young missed much of his second season at Boise State for fighting a teammate. I liked the pick at the time, because he filled a major need to take pressure off Calvin Johnson. Young, if well-adjusted, would have been a great asset to Detroit.
Notice how Peter liked the pick at the time. So for many of the same reasons Peter liked the pick the Lions felt like they could take a chance on Young behaving and not causing any problems.
Character problems, maturity issues. Those are flaws we in the media can't know nearly as well as the teams. The Lions, I'm betting, knew what a risk Young might be.
Oh, of course. The media is able to give their opinion of the pick and have no cause for having to stand by their opinion, because they don't have all of the information. Giving an opinion with less information means not having to stand by your opinion. Nice way to live.
Now, if you want to question the Rams for taking Janoris Jenkins in the second round last year and the Cards for taking Tyrann Mathieu in the third a few weeks ago, those are valid questions. Jenkins already missed a game for violating team rules last year, and Mathieu is no lock to stay on the straight and narrow. But the Rams had multiple high picks last year and have said openly that they are willing to take chances on players because they think Jeff Fisher can handle risky guys.
Oh, so it's fine to take a chance on a risky player as long your team has multiple high picks. Got it? The Lions in 2011 had picks at #13, #44, and #57, but this did not entitle them to take a risky player with those picks. The Rams in 2012 had picks at #14, #33, #39, and #50, which entitled them to take a risky player with one of those selections. I think Peter needs to write down these rules for me.
Time will tell if they're right on the Jenkinses and the Alec Ogletrees, and I could be throwing stones at them in coming years. The Cardinals don't have a track record for taking questionable character guys. They thought the talent of Mathieu was worth the risk. That's one I think the team will end up regretting.
Jenkins has already missed a game for violating team rules, so we have evidence he hasn't stayed on the straight and narrow, but Peter thinks Mathieu was the bad risk. It's his opinion and he is entitled to it of course. I think Jeff Fisher could draft Jodi Arias and Peter wouldn't criticize the selection.
4. I think there was no more loyal -- even to the point of sometimes straining credulity -- club employee in the NFL than Amy Trask to the Raiders. To Al Davis, more specifically. With Davis deceased and change the order of the day in Oakland, Trask resigned after a quarter-century with the club Saturday, amid signs the team would get a chief executive handpicked by Mark Davis and Reggie McKenzie. I've sparred with Trask over the years, but she's been a bullish Raiders loyalist always, and I've appreciated where she was coming from. She also took her role as a female trailblazer in the league seriously and mentored many young women who wanted to rise in the business. I hope someone's smart enough to see how important a good, tough woman is to the bottom line of a sports franchise, and Trask is hired somewhere in the business soon.
Jason Collins comes out of the closet and Amy Trask "resigns" after spending 25 years with the Raiders. It's all a part of the conspiracy David Steele was talking about.
5.I think if Geno Smith wins the Jet starting job to start the season, I wouldn't be remotely surprised if the Jets traded Mark Sanchez for a low-round draft pick or cut him before Week 1.
This statement should be filed under the category for "No Shit, Sherlock." If Geno Smith proves he can be the Jets starter then the Jets may trade or cut their 2012 starter who struggled mightily last year? I'm shocked to the point I am having trouble typing.
7.I think, regarding Tavon Austin saying everyone from his life is asking for money, there's a reason more than one team was afraid of him entering draft weekend. Austin, from all accounts, avoided the pitfalls that have befallen lots of inner-city draftees over the years. But some around the league think acquaintances from Austin's past (he is from one of the toughest neighborhoods in the country, in Baltimore) could follow him into the NFL.
So the Rams drafted two guys in the first round with either a red flag or whispers of red flags. It's fine for them to do this of course because they had multiple high draft picks. So, no big deal.
10. I think these are my non-football thoughts of the week:
c. Bryce Harper and Dustin Pedroia have the hardest swings I see in baseball.
They are the Carl Yastremzki of modern day baseball.
d. Why it's impossible to predict baseball: Jason Grilli, Manny Machado.
Why Peter doesn't know much about baseball: Manny Machado was the #3 overall pick in the 2010 draft and he tore up the minor leagues until he made the majors. Machado's success wasn't even close to being impossible to predict. For someone who claims to love the sport of baseball I am continuously amazed at how little Peter knows about it.
f. Machado, an Oriole, has more hits than any third baseman but Cabrera, and more RBIs than David Wright and Adrian Beltre.
Machado was considered the second-best positional prospect in the 2010 draft and Keith Law stated he is a potential All-Star shortstop who is average at worst with his glove when he was drafted. But boy, his success came out of nowhere didn't it?
Does Bo Porter know the rules of baseball? I'm sure he does; that's a wiseacre question. But what kind of bran freeze does a manager have when he pulls an uninjured pitcher who hasn't faced a batter yet?
He probably has Raisin "Bran freeze."
n. Knowledgeless NBA Dept.:
Why even bother commenting on the NBA if you don't know anything about it?
If Tony Parker wasn't a guard, he could be great at ballet ...
See, this is what happens when Peter comments on the NBA without knowing anything about it. For God's sake, just stop writing and get to the Adieu Haiku if you can't contribute to a discussion on the NBA.
Gregg Popovich doesn't take any crap, does he? ...
(stabs self in the eye with a pencil)
Break up the Celtics. It's time.
They are no longer the Carl Yastrzemski of NBA teams.
The Adieu Haiku
Meet the vets, Manti.
Bolts' full squad reports today.
Local forecast: haze.
I read an interview with Peter on Awful Announcing last week and he said his new microsite will be football-only. Usually when Peter makes a statement like, "I don't comment on the NBA" or "I am not smart enough to judge whether the Oscars got the award winners correct," it is immediately followed by Peter commenting on the NBA or judging whether the Oscars got the award winners correct. So it is probably safe to assume his new microsite will have at least 50% non-football related content.
