In
This Issue:
Week
Five Standings
Lameness Abounds
Overall, week 5 was a pretty lame outing for the group, I’m
afraid. The short schedule might have been to blame, but only two
of us reached 10 wins, Tom “LeDonald” LeDuc
and Rob “At the Copa” Tringali. The worst
weeks were 4-10 searings that caught five us. And somehow Michelle
"Charlie" Brown posted a dismal 3-11.
Kenny
“Wampus” Davis is now co-leader with Ron
“Giant Boy” Hade – the only two who have
been able to keep pace with the “Visiting Team” default
this year.
Apparently
Mrs. Yogi didn’t do much better for the Yeagerites
and Tom “Jones” Schwade was still preening
in front of a mirror because they’re still our “anchormen.”
Notably, DJ Jazzy Jeff Vanek ascended out of the
lowest tier (at least for the time being) with 9-5 moves last week.
If anyone
talks to Mark and Hope, tell them
the Home teams are killing them and they need to start picking more.
The divisional
races are way too early to get interested in. At this point, it’s
only taking a .500 record to be near the top.
Can’t
Anybody Here Play This Game?
More Lameness
After five weeks, it’s not so much that I’m wondering
how I got 40 picks right so far as I am how I got 34 wrong. As usual,
it’s not me; it’s the players. Ah, those early-season
surprises:
• The
Green Bay Packers are 1-4 and just gave up 48 points in front of
God, John Madden and everyone on Monday Night Football – the
most any GB team has surrendered on the frozen tundra of Lambeau
Field.
• Defending
NFC Champion Carolina is 1-3. Want to know the definition of snake-bitten?
The Panthers’ Julius Peppers had a 101-yard interception return
last week and did not score a touchdown – he only made it
to the 3-yard line. Incredible.
• The
Tennessee Oilers are 2-3, which is good enough for them to be tied
with… the Houston Texans?
• The
Kansas City Chiefs are 1-4 and trail the San Diego Chargers by two
games in the standings. (Worse still, Ken and I have KC QB Trent
Green as our fantasy starter).
"Nobody
knows this [yet], but one of us has just been traded to Kansas City."
-- Casey Stengel to Outfielder Bob Cerv
Of course,
those teams didn’t do it alone. They needed help from the teams
that should have been more gracious in losing when they were expected
to:
• Sure,
the Jets are 4-0, but the teams they have played have a combined
record of 4-14. It’s the 4-1 G-men who have the strongest
case for best team in the New York Area. I didn’t see anyone
predict the Giants would even fog a mirror this year, much less
Tiki would get cured of his fumble-itis and Kurt Warner would finally
recall proper forward pass technique (and he throws such a lovely
spiral when he does it correctly.) It’s not too late to write-in
Tom Coughlin for President.
• Btw,
in years the Jets have started off 2-0 or better, they have made
the playoffs exactly once, and that was in 1968 on their way to
winning Super Bowl III.
• Detroit
is 3-1 and tied with Minnesota for first place in the NFC North.
And that’s without their top RB and WR in the lineup.
But one
team that continues to impress and cannot be called a surprise are
the New England Patriots. They have now won 19 in a row and with their
2 Super Bowl victories (and counting), they are looking to sew up
“Team of the 2000’s” before the decade is even half
over. But when you compare them the 60’s Packers, 70’s
Steelers, 80’s 49ers or ‘90’s Cowboys, you don’t
come away thinking they are in the same league. Why is that?
It’s
sort of the “Tiger Woods” question? Is he so dominant
or is the competition somehow weaker than it was back in the day?
In the Patriots’
case, I think it’s some of both. The Pats win with exactly one
star (and not exactly the NFL’s top name), QB Tom Brady. Brady
is good, but he was not even considered a top-10 QB in most fantasy
sports leagues. True, this is more about stat production than leadership;
Aikman had the same issues.
Perhaps,
though, that’s New England’s secret. They don’t
worry about high-paid stars; they just have incredible roster depth,
execution, and coaching. They just play smart football, have consistency
throughout the lineup, and have solid game plans. Makes you wonder
what the Jets would be doing these days with Bill Belichick at the
helm…
A
Moment of Reflection
Let us pause for...
It's a troubling world we live in these days. War in Iraq.
Gas costs $2 per gallon. Unemployment is at an all-time high. Next
month we have to chose between two guys, neither of which is all that
worthy, to be our country's leader for the next 4 years. Times are
hard. But there's something very special going on right now, something
that has not happened in all the years I've been on this Earth. What
is it?
The
Miami Dolphins and Buffalo Bills are a combined 0-9
It won't last much longer, since these two perennial AFC East powerhouses
face each other this weekend, and it's assumed one of them will find
their way to their first win of the season. But the fact that neither
of them will be participating in the NFL Post-season, is the silver
lining in this dark cloud we are living under. And I, for one, am
ever so grateful. A-men.
Clockologist?
The Jets have one, do you?
Stumbled
upon this article by Dr. Z of Sports Illustrated, wanted to share
it with the masses.
The game is entering
its crucial phase. On the sideline, all is madness.
"When do
we burn our timeout?" is coming through the coach's headset from
his offensive coordinator. "If we have to punt, do I send six
on their first play," his defensive coach is asking him. "Coach!
Coach! I think Jimmy can go!" the trainer is yelling.
"You what?
I can't hear you."
"Challenge
it! Challenge it!" his players are screaming from the field.
Thrashing, screaming
madness, and is it any wonder that they'll occasionally screw up the
clock, or the timeout situation, or even the game strategy itself?
Either Titans
coach Jeff Fisher or his offensive coordinator, Mike Heimerdinger,
messed up the clock at the end of the first half of the Jacksonville
game and left themselves a lot less time to mount a drive than they
could have had. Joe Gibbs left himself with no fourth-quarter time
outs in two straight losing contests. Mike Holmgren could have run
the Rams' clock down to under 30 seconds at the end of the Seahawks-St.
Louis game, but he didn't, and the 1:14 was just enough time for the
Rams to send the game into overtime.
It happens to
all of them, the near great and the very great, such as Tom Landry,
one of history's finest game strategists. Nov. 9, 1980, Giants vs.
Cowboys in the Meadowlands. Dallas was on its way to the NFC Championship
game. The Giants had just lost eight straight. Somehow the score was
tied at 35 -- all late in the fourth quarter. The Cowboys had a fourth
and one on their own 47. They went for it and Brad Van Pelt stopped
Robert Newhouse for no gain. The Giants took over, kicked a field
goal and won. I talked to Landry very late, after the Cowboy locker
room had practically cleared out.
"I violated
one of my own most important principles," he said. "At the
end of a close game, you always have to ask the question: 'What's
the easiest way for us to lose?' And then you have to make sure to
avoid it.
"The easiest
way for us to have lost was to have gone for it, gotten stopped and
given them a short field. And that's exactly what happened. Why did
I do it? Late game excitement. The players are all screaming, 'Go
for it!' You lose track."
For years I have
always felt that it is too much for one human being, to run the sidelines
and the clock, and manage the game at the same time. Teams have capologists
to handle the salary cap. Why not have clockologists, to relieve the
head coach of the instant sideline decision, to combine clock management
with game strategy as well, everything based on percentages carefully
mapped out ahead of time? He would simply say, "Time out, coach,"
and that would be it.
You would have
to have the right kind of person, of course. Calm, probably of older
vintage, well respected. Not the sort of chap to get flustered, "If
you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs ..."
as Kipling wrote. And then he would have to be the sort of person
in whom the coach had the utmost confidence and trust. Sideline harangues
are not good for team morale.
The Jets, it seems,
have found their man. Dick Curl, 64 years old, a veteran of 36 years
as an assistant and head coach at practically every level, 11 times
a grandfather, low key, non-confrontational. Perfect.
The idea of Curl
as a sideline guru started when head coach Herman Edwards, reviewed
the 2003 season and found that the Jets had squandered time outs,
too many of them. They had burned five in the first and third quarters
and five in the first half of the last quarter. Something had to be
done. The situation had to be reviewed and resolved, and he knew just
the guy to study it.
Curl, the oldest
and calmest member of his staff. He coached the tight ends but had
a real feel for research and development. He studied everything, and
this season the unbeaten Jets have yet to burn an unnecessary time
out. And during the course of Edwards' many sessions with Curl, another
idea arose. Why not let him handle time outs, as well, and even game
strategy?
Presto, a sideline
clockologist, even a stratego ... uh...a strategologist was born.
Football pioneering, to be sure. Sideline division of labor.
Well, that's the
way I would envision it, but of course, it doesn't work in exactly
that manner. Curl does not have slam dunk, my way or the highway,
authority. He'll stand next to Edwards and make his recommendation,
which can be accepted or rejected.
"No rejects
so far," he says. "I'll say, ' Coach, we might have to use
a time out after the next play.' He'll just say, 'Fine.'"
Wait a minute,
wait a minute, this seems just a little too smooth. How about when
you want to do one thing, and the coach wants another?
"I haven't
been put in that position yet," Curl says.
How about sideline
arguments?
"No arguments.
Herman's very good about listening to advice. Of course there might
be a situation where he's real busy, and I'd tell him, 'Just remember
to do so and so,' and he'd say, 'Oh yeah, right.'"
Well, you can't
argue with success. The Jets put together two picture perfect drives
to close out each half against the Bills last weekend, the final one
resulting in the field goal that won the game with 58 seconds left.
They called one time out to stop the clock during the Bills' last
possession of the half, and used their last two during their own field
goal drive, which ended as the clock expired. On the game winner,
they didn't use any time outs, in an effort to take as much time away
from the Bills as possible.
"At the end
of the half," Curl says, "we might have been able to run
another play. Some people would have said let's go for it, but we
might have gotten a sack, too, which would have knocked us out of
field goal range. So I recommended running down the clock and kicking
it, and that's what we did.
"I've worked
up a chart on how long just about every phase of the game takes. If
you're killing the clock and protecting a lead, and the other team
is calling time outs, well, a kneel takes two seconds, a running play
eats up five. If there are two minutes left and they have one time
out, if you run three times, they'll get the ball back with 29 seconds
left.
"If you're
driving at the end, you can figure that a quarterback like Chad Pennington
can average seven seconds a play. If you've got 40 seconds left, he
can run off five or six of them in that period. If you've got one
time out left, that means you can use the middle of the field one
time.
"But when
you're talking about Pennington you're talking about a quarterback
who's very intelligent, very alert in the two-minute drill. He really
gets his team out of the huddle and up to the line in a hurry. Not
all of them are as good at it as he is"
Sounds like an
ideal situation for a sideline clock and strategy guy, a bright, talented
QB, an appreciative head coach. So tell me, please, Mr. Curl, have
you screwed it up yet?
"Everyone's
going to pull some dummy play at some time," he says. "It's
got to happen. I had one that really haunted me. Second game of the
year. We score in the fourth quarter against San Diego and go up by
12. I should have told them to go for two. I didn't.
"I got so
aggravated ... when we got to the airport I said, 'Herm, I blew it.'
I agonized about it for days. Finally my wife said, 'Would you please
forget it. We won the game.' I said I couldn't. We wound up winning
by six. We could have been ahead by seven. It still bothers me."
No harm, no foul.
The Jets have yet to suffer their first loss. Someone's doing something
right.
Sports Illustrated
senior writer Paul Zimmerman covers the NFL for the magazine and SI.com.
His Power Rankings, "Inside Football" column and Mailbag
appear weekly on SI.com.
NFL
Happenings
The Week in Pictures
The
Jets are 4 and 0. Just thought I'd mention that. It's not often I
get to say that the Jets are anything and 0. It feels rather strange
when I stop and think: Hmm, it's mid-October, and the Jets haven't
lost a game yet. Is the NFL on Strike maybe? No, that's the NHL. Did
I fall asleep and wake up in an Opposite Universe? No, the Mets still
suck, so that can't be it.
Here's another
strange thought: The Miami/Buffalo game this weekend is more important
to Dallas fans than the Cowboys game. What? That makes no sense! Ah,
but it does. For you see, the Cowboys hold Buffalo's #1 Draft Pick
in 2005. Makes sense now doesn't it?
P
on the PP
World Series Bound?
Wow, I actually came
up with a real question for last week's PPP. Ok, so it wasn't football
related, but it was sports related and it was topical. Give me some
credit for that. This week's question is also topical, but silly none-the-less.
(You expect anything different?). Before we get to last week's results,
here's last week's Comments:
When
it comes to making all the point spreads with half points to avoid
ties, Ken Davis said: "I'm all for adjusting
the spreads to prevent any ties, but it doesn't take a mathematician
to figure out that half a point isn't ever going to cover!! Go Astros..."
[Hey Ken, I'm not a mathematician, but the NFL does allow games to
end in a Tie. This means that half a point WILL one day cover.]
When
it comes to Roy's use of the English language, Ron Hade
said: "Got to go back to the dictionary to figure out what
Roy is talking about." [It often takes more
than just a dictionary to figure out what Roy is talking about.]
Possibly
looking for a long lost love, Paul Kessler screams:
"Where is Jeff Vanek?!?!?! I WANT TO KNOW.... email me, dude.
Jeff was "just another brick in the wall" in my maturing
process. Shall we have a reunion?" [Jeff, if you can find
it in your heart, please contact Paul. He misses you.]
In
response to our one-week hiatus, Dave Schwade made
this comment: "Welcome back to LBFBHHQ. Try not to let that
other work get in the way of your real work here. Millions depend
on you." [As if we didn't feel bad enough about missing
a week, Dave, you pull on our heartstrings. We promise to never leave
you again, until next time.]
Obviously
bragging, Jeff Vanek said: "I'm making these
winning picks from a forgein(sic) land, beautiful Los Angeles."
[Good news Paul, we found Jeff!]
Bob
Shupp stumped us with this gem: "1987 Rematch, same
result!" [If you meant the 1987 World Series, that was Twins-Cardinals,
not Red Sox-Cardinals like you predicted for 2004.]
After
allowing his wife to make picks the week before, Yogi
changed family members for week #5: "My grandpa made the picks
this week. Maybe someday I'll be out of the cellar!" [Got any
more family members down there with you?]
This
Saturday's Rutgers-Temple match-up brought this comment from Angelo:
"Go Owls! Hoot, Hoot!" [Red team, fight team, Go RU!]
On to the
results! -- When asked to choose from the 8 teams in the MLB Post-season
as to who would face each other in the World Series, the consensus
of the group went with Cardinals vs. Yankees. In the NL, Houston was
the second choice, and in the AL, Boston was also a close second.
As of Press time, the Yanks and Cards hold 2-0 leads on the Sox and
Astros, so it looks like our group might be better at picking baseball
results than football results. Only time will tell who of guessed
exactly right. (Hopefully I'll remember to post those who got it right
next week.)
Here's how
the numbers fell:
In the NL -- St.
Louis: 14 Houston: 11 Los Angeles: 4 Atlanta:
3
In the AL --
Yankees: 16 Boston: 13 Anaheim: 1 Minnesota:
1
Extra
Points
Swiftest 3 minutes in Football Happenings
First and foremost, congratulations to fans of the Houston Astros
in the wake of their first postseason series win in the team’s
42-year existence. Now, what about winning a World Series and ending
“The Curse of Naked Rusty.” (Baseball historians will
remember that New Orleans product Rusty Staub started his career as
a Houston Colt ’45 but was traded before his glory years in
Montreal, New York and about 12 other teams. Simpler times -- how
about that, a team named after a handgun? Or, perhaps, a delicious
malt beverage.)
[ As
a follow-up to last week’s column about the barrage of broadcasting,
this e-mail from Dad:
“I'm glad
you wrote what you wrote about too much information on TV while
watching a game, I thought I was just getting slow but I see you
are feeling inundated also. One aspect you didn't touch on, however,
is that announcers feel they have to fill all the non-commercial
time, with words. And also because of the amount of commercials
they have to squeeze in, they are speaking faster than they ever
did. They don't have to tell me three times that it's third and
seventeen, I saw my quarterback getting sacked. Where did the announcer
think I'd gone? I'm feeling sorry enough for myself without him
telling me it over and over again. I think they should try a little
Imodium for their mouth. Sometimes I just turn the sound off. Dad”
[
Speaking of which, hearing the king of understated play-by-play men,
Pat Summerall, in the ESPN booth with the two idiots Maguire and Theismann
had to be the purest metaphor for “pearls before swine.”
[
NFL Rules committee complaint number one: Protecting
the quarterbacks has gone too far. We’re getting way too over-officious
on what look to me like regular tackles and normal play continuation.
Things are moving very quickly out there guys and expecting a rushing
defender or would-be tackler to just stop short once the ball is released
or the whistle goes is not realistic.
[
NFL Rules committee complaint number two: Okay, we
get it, defensive backs cannot put their hands on a wide receivers
beyond five yards from the scrimmage line. But the WRs are apparently
still allowed to push off, because I’m seeing a lot of it (e.g.
Shockey last week versus Dallas). Got to be fair here. It’s
got to be nearly impossible to be a DB as it is. While we’re
at it, defensive pass interference is a spot foul and automatic first
down. Usually, it ends up costing the defense 25 yards and a new set
of downs. Offensive pass interference is a 10-yard penalty, not as
big of a deal in comparison (when you ever see it called, that is).
In fairness, shouldn’t it be loss of as many yards as it would
have been under defensive pass interference and loss of down? Or at
least 10 yards and loss of down?
[
NFL Hypocrisy complaint number one: Ravens coach
Brian Billick said this Sunday after Baltimore’s win: "Huge
win. This game's about one thing. It's about character." He then
gave a game ball to Jamal Lewis.
[
NFL Hypocrisy complaint number one-A: The NFL suspended
Vikings RB Onterrio Smith 4 games for smoking pot (he had also failed
a previous drug test) but only sidelined Jamal Lewis for 2 (?!?) games
after he pled guilty to a felony offense for arranging a cocaine purchase.
In case you missed it, Lewis also has a failed NFL drug test on his
resume (2001). How does the math on that work? I suppose you can get
a reduced sentence if you recently rushed for 2,000-yards in a season.
[
NFL Hypocrisy complaint number two: Ricky Williams
is talking about coming back to the Miami fold? He must be trippin’.
While some of Williams’s old teammates are adamantly against
his return, some, like all-pro and near-saint Zack Thomas, “don’t
care who’s on the team as long as they help us win.” Sort
of reminds you of the Jimmy Johnson comment, “I’d sign
Charles Manson if he could run a 4.3 forty.” (Then again, Manson
would have been a choirboy compared to some of the playas Johnson
had during his Cowboy Super Bowl campaigns.)
