Miami’s Draft Struggles Didn’t End with Quinn, by Adam Zwecker

The Dolphins’ draft choices this year were enough to make fans miss the Wannsteadt-Spielman Era. Granted, Ted Ginn could turn out to be valuable as someone who can return kicks while learning how to play football, a-la-Devin Hester. But what doesn’t make sense is, if the Dolphins were set on taking Ginn over Brady Quinn or some can't-miss prospect like Patrick Willis (a better, faster Zach Thomas) or Darrelle Revis/Leon Hall or even Joe Staley, why didn’t they trade down to select Ginn a few spots later, and accumulate some draft picks? Of course, with the way they draft and Miami’s tendency to give away draft picks for injured quarterbacks nearing retirement, I suppose it wouldn't have done much good to trade down anyway.

All in all, the Dolphins could have had (1) Brady Quin (possibly the best QB in the draft), (2A) Ryan Kalil (best center in the draft), (2B) Charles Johnson (one of the top three or four DEs in the draft), and (3) Tank Tyler (the third-best DT in the draft) or Ray McDonald (a DE/DT tweener perfect for a 3-4 front) – all on the first day.

Watching the draft unfold, I thought there was a strong possibility Miami would take a QB like John Beck or Trent Edwards (who went in Round 3) with their second round pick in Round 2 and then select center Samson Satele in the third where he was better value. I guess after the heartbreak of seeing Ryan Kalil go one pick before to Carolina, Miami freaked out and reached a little for Samson. Kalil, for his part, will be an All-Pro anchor of Carolina’s line and an above-average player as a rookie a-la-Nick Mangold. That is pretty hard to find these days in a center. Satele is more of a project. He is tough as nails and will at the very least be a good guard/center backup, but he has a strange frame with short arms and played in June Jones’s Tecmo Bowl-style fun-and-gun offense in Hawaii where he never had to run-block or make calls at the line. Hence, he will take some time adjusting to the NFL and might not be a starter this year were it not for the Dolphins’ pitiful O-line situation, as the team has just 3 starters on the roster.

As for the late rounds, I also liked the center from Central Michigan, Drew Mormino, they plucked in the sixth, but I couldn't believe they grabbed him and that no-name 270-lb fullback from Hawaii in the 6th when they could have taken Brandon Siler (the star MLB from the Gators’ defense) and Ben Patrick (the third best TE in the draft – Randy McMichael minus the attitude). They both ended up going in the 7th and I thought all of Miami’s last 5 picks in the 6th and 7th rounds were likely going to be undrafted free agents, particularly FB Reagan Mauia and the punter Brandon Fields.

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Ode to Schaub, by Eric Perlmutter

From hero to hero, except now youre playing,
But watch out for that O-line, or you best be praying.
Now youre the Texans’ boy, no longer ‘League’s Best Backup’ --
Your old spot was lockdown, now you’ll get hella jacked up. (JACKed, UP!)
I give you till week four – then it’s from QB to IV;
Unstead of throwin' passes, you’ll be gettin fed Hi-C.
You were The Man at number two – no backup Q had more ’B’in cred!
People treated you like a Pro Bowler, except Sundays, you’d be in bed.

Atlanta, you might miss it –
Your new contract, kiss it –
But Dwight Freeney’s got you lit like [something illicit].

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Final Thoughts before the Super Bowl

With only hours to go before the last game of this season, some football musings:

-What does the NFL think it's accomplishing having a regular season game in London? Are British fans suddenly so hardcore that pre-season games aren't good enough for them? As a measure of how excited Brits are over this, the Feb. 2 announcement was unreported in the London Times. And of course the loss of one of only eight home games is significant for both the team and the fans.

-I don't even want to think about how many Ted Johnson-type stories there must be out there.

-Nice to see Thurman Thomas get his induction to Canton. The guy was definitely one of the NFL's elite RBs, along with Emmitt Smith and Barry Sanders, for a good number of years, and was a versatile weapon in the Bills' no-huddle offense. Recent all-purpose backs like Marshall Faulk and Reggie Bush must have especially high respect for him. Still, you wonder if the reason that he didn't make it in on his first try is that the most enduring image of him is, unfortunately, this one.

-While we're on the subject of the Hall of Fame, call me a homer, but Kuechenberg got robbed.

-Why is Terrell Owens hugging Donovan McNabb at a party in Miami a news story?

-Nice call getting Prince for the halftime show. Should be the complete opposite of last year's tepid, phoned-in performance by the Stones.

-Bill Parcells: all the guy did was turn around one franchise after another. Retires as one of the all-time coaching legends, in the same class as Lombardi, Shula, Walsh, and indeed Belichick.

-Colts 30, Bears 17.

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Rookie Impacts

In a year in which the Texans have the frontrunner for Defensive Rookie of the Year (DeMeco Ryans) and it’s not their first overall pick, its not surprising that this weekend’s final four all have one thing in common: rookies have played an integral part in their success. In the NFL it’s certainly been the year of the rookie, five of which will still be playing and likely making significant contributions on Sunday.

Of the four finalists, the NFC Championship game features the two teams that have perhaps benefited most from their rookies.

The 13-3 Bears won games because of their stellar defense, a unit that often had to compensate for the much-publicized struggles of Rex Grossman, and because of Devin Hester. He won two games on his own (Arizona, St. Louis) and sparked the comeback against the Giants with his record setting 108-yard field goal return. His effect on games has evolved to the point that last week the Seahawks squib-kicked almost all of their kickoffs, forfeiting the 30 yard line instead of tempting Hester with the end zone.

As for the Saints, Sean Payton has been able to construct the most eclectic offensive schemes in the NFL in large part because of the diverse talents of Reggie Bush and Marques Colston. Colston, at first just a complement to Joe Horn and Devery Henderson (how much could be expected from a 7th-rounder?), has emerged as the Saints best receiver. Bush’s gifts (speed, patience, vision, unbelievable cutting ability) are well documented and after a slow start he’s now consistently showing flashes of the brilliance we all saw at USC and on the YouTube high school highlight tape. But what has made him particularly valuable is that his skill set is such a perfect accompaniment to what Deuce McAllister can do. Payton has exploited these complementary parts to create innovative and oft-changing offensive sets, often playing the two backs simultaneously, sometimes both in the backfield, other times with Bush split wide.

While the Pats and Colts have relied less on their respective rookies, the AFC game has a second layer of rookie-focus within it beyond a personal measured impact.

The widely held belief is that back in April the Colts had targeted Laurence Maroney with their first round pick, only to watch the Pats trade up and snag him, and then had to settle for Joseph Addai. Addai has been no slouch (1,081 yards, a 4.8 avg., and 8 TDs), but the glut of first-year awesomeness and the year long disrespect of the Indy running game has left Addai and his rookie-leading rushing yards in the shadows of Vince Young, Maurice Jones-Drew, and even Maroney.

So what about Maroney? Has he just been coasting on reputation and plays that make Sportcenter more often than Addai’s? He’s played fewer games than any of these guys, missing two due to a back injury, but his impact can’t be understated. In a year in which the Pats offense had a sudden dearth of offensive weapons and lacked a home-run threat, Maroney was just that. It isn’t that he just took the pressure and additional pounding off of Dillon, but he also added that extra kick of power and speed too.

None of these guys will win Offensive Rookie of the Year, because that will probably go to Vince Young, as the QB position will likely be the trump card. Even without Young, the above five candidates would have plenty of competition from the deepest rookie class in recent memory: D’Brickashaw Ferguson, Nick Mangold, Marcus McNeill, Jones-Drew, Leinart.

But one of these standouts will get themselves a Super Bowl ring. So let’s think of things within that context, how these rookies will impact Sunday’s games.

At the pace Bush and Hester have been going I’m expecting one “wow!” play from each. Bush now understands when he can afford to dance around and when to run straight ahead. Hester hasn’t had a TD in more than a month and had one called back last week. It feels like he’s due. Of course both of these things can be mitigated respectively by the Chicago defense (since Bush turned the corner only Washington’s D has stopped him) and Hester’s penchant for nervous muffs (how come no one mentions this?).

The best thing about this match-up is that it’s strength vs. strength, the Saints’ O vs. Bears’ D, and while Bush and Colston are part of their team’s strength, Hester can be the tie-breaker. Do I have a little hometown bias? Yes. In the end, it’s too tough to pick against the Bears at home in the winter time, global warming or not.

The rooks in the AFC game are a smaller part of the big picture, only because of the recent playoff history between these two teams. But it could still be a showcase to confirm or disconfirm popular perception about the two backs. Both the game and the RB battle will come down to this question: Have the Colts actually been stopping the run or have they been playing against inept offenses? For all of the attention focused on Manning and Brady, their performances will be a function of the successes or failures of their respective team’s rushing attack.

The return of Bob Sanders from a knee injury has widely been touted as the key to Indianapolis’ defensive surge. However, he was in Foxboro on November 5th making 11 tackles. In that regular season meeting Addai stumbled to a 2.4 avg. compared to Maroney’s 4.8. The Colts ran for 53 yards to the Patriots’ 148. Once you discount the Sanders factor, there’s little reason to expect a difference this time around.

The Pats lost that game because of Brady’s four interceptions. Brady has never had more than two 3+ interception games in one season (playoffs included). That second game came last week against the Chargers. I’m taking Maroney over Addai, Brady over Manning, and a rematch of Super Bowl XX.

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In Honor of Lamar Hunt (1932-2006)

Remember the AFL

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Powered Out, by Sara Hatch

A professor of mine once said “there’s something inherent in America, in our national psyche that loves rankings.” He was talking about ranking presidents, but the statement works equally well for the NFL and the current obsession with Power Rankings.

Power Rankings are a way for a fan to know that his team is best. With the shortest schedule of the four major sports, it’s almost a given that at least two teams each week will have the same record. How can these teams be qualified? How is one to know for sure that an 8-5 is better than a 7-6 team? They can’t. Thus, Power Rankings. But as this past Sunday’s slate of game shows, even Power Rankings can’t predict the future, much less how whether or not a team is good or just great.

Fans want to know that their 7-6 team is better than your 7-6 team, and they are great ways for commentators to wax poetical about why one team is better than the other despite the fact they’ve lost two more games. At the beginning of the season, everyone considered the Giants as definite contenders. They lived up to the expectations for the first half of the season, going 6-2. They then lost 4 games in a row; falling from spot 6 in ESPN.com's rankings down to 15, and then back up to 11 with one win over a lackluster Carolina team. There is no formula to the madness, no logic to the numbers. It was a crucial game that the Giants needed to win and they stood up and did it. But they’re still not guaranteed a playoff spot, much less a win next week. Their rise to spot 11 means nothing all that much.

It matters even less when you get to the top of the rankings. Indianapolis has a worse ranking than the Saints but a better record, as does Chicago. But all have looked capable of an almost total implosion. Ranking reveals little, as evidenced by the ESPN-ranked #9 Seahawks falling to the #29 Cardinals. It’s all a big guessing game, and hardly a perfect science.

ESPN is not the perpetrator of Power Rankings. Many sites have them and everyone has a different opinion about who’s the best and who is the most likely to fall on the spikes of defeat. The best example of is Profootballtalk.com’s short and pithy Power Rankings that dispense with trying to make some sense of a crazy NFL season where good NFC teams look like peewee football and bad AFC teams beat up on perennial favorites.

Great examples from last week their characterizations of the Falcons (“Finger-flickin’ bad”), the Patriots (“Junior, say-ow”), and the Buccaneers (“Yo ho yuck”). This week’s offerings are no less entertaining: Panthers (“Show your Weinke”), Bears (“Gross, man”), and Lions (“Try softball?”).

This is what sports coverage really needs, a good dose of not taking itself a little too seriously. Great minds of football can predict all they like, try to explain why the Colts implode with regularity, and sing the praises of LaDanian Tomlinson and Philip Rivers. But good old comedy always gets the job done. And editors are always yelling, “tighten, tighten, tighten!” Finally, someone is listening.

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Best RB ever?

The Chargers' LaDanian Tomlinson's record-setting season has naturally got many fans and commentators asking whether he's the best running back in NFL history. But let's not forget an RB from just a few years ago who also deserves to be part of the conversation.

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Put On Your Sunday Best, by Sara Hatch

Years ago, ESPN conceived its brainchild Sunday Night Football to give some competition to the Monday Night network stalwart. Sunday Night Football has long been MNF’s inferior cousin, but with the regular season winding down, I’ve come to a realization: Sunday Night Football has superseded Monday Night Football as the premium prime-time game.

Sunday night is a better night for football. During the week, there are major shows to compete with, which isn’t really a factor on Sunday night. The biggest hit on Sunday night is Desperate Housewives, which I have a hard time believing pulls all that many viewers away from football. Also, the game starts earlier on Sunday. It’s not a complete and total deal-breaker to stay up often until one for the end of the game, especially if your team is playing, but it’s very hard once the week has started. Staying up on Sunday night is no picnic, but it’s still technically the weekend.

Monday Night Football has become the NFL’s spectacle. The ornate and long pregame revelry and the commercials that last forever and interrupt at every possible turn have made the game a stalled, badly paced event. (One week they actually brought the guy who sings the Monday Night Football theme up into the booth to talk during the game.) Even the announcers are of the sort that makes it harder to focus on the game over whatever they’re blasting off about that week. No offense to Tony Kornheiser, but if I want to hear your objections to every part of football, I’ll turn on Pardon the Interruption.

Sunday Night also has one feature that completely tips the scales: in weeks 10-15 and week 17, the flexible schedule will be in place, ensuring an exciting and playoff-worthy game every week. This can be seen most recently with the decision to pull the Giants/Bears game on 11/12 to the prime-time slot. This game pits two of the best teams in the NFL against each other and puts in on a national stage. Monday Night Football unfortunately is not blessed in this capacity. They are locked into their schedule. With the flexible schedule, good teams will get showcased and good games will follow. Unpredictable things will happen but the quality of football will be higher.

This season, some of the most exciting games this season have been on Sunday Night Football. The Giants-Colts game at the beginning of the season and the Pats-Colts are some examples. The Monday Night match up the same week as the Pats-Colts game was between Seattle, which is a good team, and Oakland, which is not. Further degrading the play of Seattle was the loss earlier in the season of their quarterback. Profootballtalk.com’s writers stopped writing their blog at halftime in protest. Tonight’s game between the disappointing Panthers and McNabb-less Eagles looks to be not much better.

Even in the non-flexible weeks, Sunday Night Football had interesting and competitive match-ups, while Monday Night Football will feature Oakland twice and there have already been three blowouts this season. And while the Giants and Bears fought it out to the finish, two teams with only mediocre records will played on Monday night. It’s seems that the prominent franchises always get two appearances a year while other decidedly good franchises do not. Favoritism is the name of the game in Monday Night Football.

Finally, Sunday Night Football is the only prime-time game left on one of the three major networks. Thursday Night Football is exclusively on NFL Network and Monday Night will almost certainly be on ESPN for at least a decade. In an age when cable is affordable by large swaths of the population, this does not seem as bad. But it still places one of the most popular American sports on networks that are not accessible by every viewer.

With their flexible schedule and premium placement and time, it’s clear that Sunday Night Football is the best that TV has to offer for true football fans. Are you watching?

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This Article Is Not About Michael Strahan

Last night (November 29) SportsCenter devoted what must have been a three minute-long segment to Michael Strahan and Plaxico Burress. First, let’s agree that a three minute report is a long one. SportsCenter usually reserves time slots of this length for meaningful playoff games or drug/violence-related activity off the field. Thus it would seem logical that the Strahan-Burress story was compelling enough to merit such attention. The way SC presented it, it sure must have seemed to an otherwise uninformed viewer like something worth discussing extensively.

I, however, had already watched parts of Mike and Mad Dog, a New York sports talk radio show that’s broadcasted daily on YES. I’d heard of Mike and Mad Dog before moving to New York. Now that I’ve given them a few listens/watches I can confirm that their interstate popularity is well-deserved. These guys are two of the most logical and level-headed sports commentators around. I’m consistently impressed with them.

It was from these guys that I first heard about the Strahan-Burress story. What actually happened? Strahan, when asked to comment on Burress’s lack of effort on the first Pacman Jones interception in last Sunday’s game, replied that no one should ever give up on a play. It was a very general comment, hard to characterize as instigative. Yet, SC reporter Kelly Naqi chose to present it in a different light, approaching Plax and asking if he had heard about Strahan’s supposedly invective comments. Then, Naqi went back to a surprised Strahan with Plax’s response. To this Strahan predictably reacted angrily, giving Naqi and SC the tantrum-toned sound bites they wanted.

This last part only became clear when I watched the SC segment, because Mike and Mad Dog judged both parties to be in the wrong, conceding that although Strahan should have been more restrained, Naqi unprofessionally and manipulatively incited acrimony where none had previously existed.

The worst part of the SC piece wasn’t that they devoted so much time to it, but that they spun it. They conveniently excluded Strahan’s original quote and failed to provide its exact context. They went straight to the video of Naqi questioning Plax and Strahan. Their presentation implied a purpose to Strahan’s original comments that simply wasn’t there. But once that purpose was accepted as truth by the viewer, then the clip of Plax’s self-proclamation of character, how that’s not his style, how he wouldn’t do that, that he doesn’t call teammates out, etc. seemed logical and served to elevate the level of contentiousness further.

Some may say that this was a big deal regardless, that it was a legitimate story no matter the exact context of Strahan’s quitter comments. Others, like Michael Wilbon in his PTI intro, only 30 minutes before SC aired, might say, “Today was a slow day. What are we going to do?” It was a slow day. And that is the only reason this story was even concocted and given such extensive coverage. The fact is that Plax quits on plays regularly. He’s more concerned with cocking his visor to a precise angle than he is with playing hard. That’s the real story, not the high-school-cafeteria-he-said-she-said periphery that SC covered.

This kind of story is emblematic of what has become of SC. It has become clear that at some point in the past few years there was an executive-level decision to focus SC more on the E (entertainment) than the S (sports) in ESPN. It seems that it has become the policy of the show to neglect genuinely compelling sports stories in favor of anything that could have a cross-over appeal to non-sports fans. Thus the rationale for the aforementioned story: when the audience to which they’re catering is considered, a story about bickering teammates is much more appealing than one about on-field effort.

It was a slow sports day, and instead of a more in-depth analysis of the few basketball games that were played the night before, or a handful of other directions which they might have chosen a few years ago, SC chose to make something out of nothing and effectively create their own news.

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A Letter to Eli Manning Following His Third Abysmal Performance This Season, by Sara Hatch

Dear Eli,

I’ve been a Giants fan all my life and I’ve been a fan of you since you came on the team. I lived through the Kerry Collins offense for many years so it’s nice to finally have a quarterback who can run an offense on the field. This season has been especially enlightening (I lived in England for most of last season and was not able to view your progress then). You’ve shown no less than some of the purest talent I’ve seen in my time watching the NFL. Let’s face it, you’ve got amazing potential. But frankly, after suffering through a third straight loss that I can’t hang on anyone but you, I’ve become a little concerned.

There are a lot of reasons that you guys have lost the last three games. The roster of injuries on this team is overwhelming, and I don’t think anyone really appreciated Luke Petitgout before he broke his leg. Brandon Short and Michael Strahan are instrumental pieces in the defense. No less than that, but Strahan has really become the cheerleader for the defense—firing them up on every play, pulling together on a bad run. Even through all the injuries though, you guys have still held strong. Antonio Pierce seems better now than at the beginning of the season. Fred Robbins gets mentioned several times every game. Even the secondary is starting to tighten up a little, although they have a long way to come. But Eli, you are the scale on which all these things balance. And you’ve been tilting off to the side for weeks.

There is absolutely no reason that you aren’t up in the top 5 quarterbacks in the league. You’re extremely talented. When you take your time and step up in the pocket, your throws are like heat-seeking missiles. You can thread the ball past two defenders and into the hands of Jeremy or Plaxico like it’s nothing at all. But then two minutes later you can throw the same ball and have it picked. When you’re on a roll, like a few of the drives in the Jags game last night, you’re near unbeatable. But something seems to come loose when things aren’t going the right way and you seem to lose all confidence in your playing ability.

It must be hard being a Manning in this league, living in the shadow of not only your father but Peyton too. You’ve probably grown sick the number of times you’ve had your stats compared to Peyton or been mistaken for him. I understand the frustration. But here’s the thing. There’s a thin line separating you from mediocrity and greatness, and that line is all in your mind. You have been incredibly lucky to end up at a franchise that wants to make you one of its marquee players. You have a rock solid defense and an offense that can knock your socks off when they’re firing on all cylinders.

Whatever you need to do, you need to calm yourself down in your head. You need to throw to Jeremy early and often. He might be a little bit crazy off the field, but he’ll fight to the death for any pass that you throw him. You two seem to have this unmistakable connection. When you need a clutch play, he’s the guy you can go to. Same with Plaxico on long plays. He’s tall enough to reach over most cornerbacks and safeties. He’s the guy who will make those downfield catches for 20+ yards. Even Tim Carter has presence and can be a great asset. And never forget that you have two great running backs with explosive power off the line. The Jags had you stuffed, but once Bob Whitfield settles in you’ll start getting more running options—leaving you to make the big plays and better control the offense.

There is no end to my faith in you. But right now, this is succeeding or failing on your back. There’s no doubt in my mind that some day you will be compared to Peyton not as a younger brother but as a rival or equal. You are that good. It’s time to step up.

Sincerely,
Sara Hatch

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