The FFG on Sports
Week 4 Of The NFL Season Has People Singing A Lot Of Conflicting Tunes
Anyone who has ever seen or listened to even a minute of ESPN’s First Take has no doubt heard Steven A. Smith or Skip Bayless use some indefinable statement as the basis for their argument. “Tim Teabow is a winner.” “LeBron James can’t make a big shot.” “Eli Manning is clutch.” I am not suggesting any of these arguments are or are not true but what I do find amusing is that, when forced to use facts or examples to illustrate the veracity of the statements they attribute a level of significance to the specific examples they are using while dismissing comparable accomplishments by others. What do I mean? Last Sunday night was the perfect example.
Eli Manning Is A Clutch Quarterback
Before last season this phrase would have been viewed as almost laughable, now it is regarded as fact. That “fact” was not merely born of Super Bowl heroics but it stems from Eli’s 4th quarter performance last year where he won game after game with scoring drives late … kind of like what Mike Vick is doing in Philadelphia this season. What?! Blasphemy you say. Well, so far, in four games this year Mike Vick has led come from behind 4th quarter scoring drives that won the game for the Eagles. In fact, all three score came with less than 2 minutes to play in each game. Clutch right? Just like Eli last year. Only local and national media simply keeps asking “what is wrong with Vick?” Or “can the Eagles win with Mike Vick as their QB?” Vick has already beaten the defending Super Bowl champions and one of the favorites to represent the AFC in this year’s Super Bowl. Apparently Vick isn’t clutch, he’s lucky. I’m just not sure what the difference is.
Well, They Should Have Lost That Game In Miami
The Jets sit tied atop the AFC East with a 2-2 record. Even better each of the Jets wins came against division opponents. Their two losses came on the road at a perenial power (Pittsburgh) and at home to what might be the best team in football (the 49ers). The Jets remaining schedule looks favorable and a playoff birth doesn’t seem out of the question. The problem is to many the team feels like it is getting worse, not better (a number of injuries to their best players might account for some of that). For those who are worried they point to the week 3 win against Miami, where Sanchez and the Jets offense did not look good for most of the game, got some lucky bounces at the end and pulled off a winning drive in OT. An ugly game like that shouldn’t count and the QB is clearly the problem … unless the QB is Tim Teabow who played one of the ugliest football games of all time last year in Miami, only to pull of one drive and win the game despite posting one of the lowest Passer Ratings in modern NFL history. No sane person would argue that Mark Sanchez has been good this season but in NFL terms is he not a much more proven winner than Tebow? Mark Sanchez has four road playoff wins en route to two AFC Championship game appearances in 3 seasons. Tebow has one playoff win after getting his team to .500 in a season that was chalk full of games just like the one Mark Sanchez had in Miami, only sometimes worse. When Tebow does it he’s clutch, when Sanchez does it he sucks. Go figure.
Perception, of course, is reality. So it doesn’t matter if guys like Sanchez or Cutler or Vick pull out victories, they have “burned” us before, we know they aren’t clutch, performance be damned. I think I’m going to root hard for the Jets, the Eagles and the Bears to keep on winning in spite of it all, of course only one can win the only game that will change everyone’s opinion.
But hey, what do I know? I’m fat.
September 25, 2012
NFL Week 3: Could That Have Gone ANY Better?
If That Question Is Directed To The Referee’s Union The Answer Is No
After Monday night’s debacle it would be impossible to write about week 3 of the NFL season without first talking about the replacement officials. To that end here are my random thoughts:
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| Ref-ageddon Is Upon Us |
- I know we want to blame Roger but truthfully he is simply doing his job. In this instance his job is to take the heat for the decisions that his cheapskate short-sighted owners have made regarding the payment of officials.
- Labor disputes are like divorces, most of the time there is plenty of blame to go around. We shouldn’t forget the refs who are striking are paid between $75,000 and $200,000 for a part time job. That’s too little? Really?
- The replacement officials are getting worse with each passing week not better, particularly when it comes to game management and control.
- Would we all be so freaked out if the two biggest end of game disasters this week weren’t during the two primetime games and didn’t each feature one of the NFL’s marquee teams?
- Regular officials could have blown those calls every bit as egregiously as the replacements, the difference is they would have been confident, the entire game preceding the dramatic finishes would have been called competently and we wouldn’t have been wondering if the umpire was fired from the Lingerie Football League or was a Seahawks fan.
Now that we have gotten the apocalypse that are the replacement refs out of the way we can ask the real question, who’s great?
Not Green Bay or New England. Lost in the aftermath of the officiating snafu’s is the fact that the two teams that were on the cusp of shattering multiple offensive records last year can’t seem to get anything going on offense this year. Green Bay could easily be 0-3 if Jay Cutler and his offensive line hadn’t imploded last Thursday. As for New England, not since Mike Martz has there been a coach that has ridden the “offensive genius” mantle while failing to produce offensive numbers like Josh McDaniels has the last 3 seasons. Ask any Patriots fan in the world if they get what the Patriots offense is trying to do, they will to a person talk your ear off about not getting the ball to Gronk and how they should just pay Welker already and question why they feel the need to force the ball to Brandon Lloyd and Edleman. These were to be THE offenses of the year led by QB’s who would flirt with 50 TD seasons. What has happened?
Was what happened in Minneapolis simply a function of a great team that read too many of their press clippings or a better than we thought team playing with something to prove or both, or neither? It’s hard to tell. The one thing that did seem to be evident was that the 49ers are simply not built to play from behind. Maybe the bigger news for Niner nation is that the NFC West might prove to be the toughest division in all of football. Green Bay is already 0-2 against the west. Arizona may not be great, but they might be better than good and Seattle may only be a half step behind the Cardinals. Any way you slice it a tough 49ers schedule in the preseason might have turned into the toughest schedule in the NFL this year.
If anyone can figure out any of the NFC East teams you are smarter people than me. The Cowboys and Eagles in particular are simply head-scratching. As for the Giants, I don’t know that they have ever been great, I do know they are always the team nobody wants to see get hot in January.
As for the AFC, other than the Texans and the Ravens I don’t know who is good. The Steelers? The Jets? Anyone in the AFC West? Most of the AFC teams don’t merely seem flawed, they seem to have fatal flaws and an innate ability to put up a stink bomb of a game at any moment.
note: this is the kind of year where 8-8 or 9-7 is going to sneak you into the playoffs in the AFC, that means cheap wins like the Jets got in Miami are huge. You have to look at these 2-1 teams that have looked bad (Cincinnati, Buffalo, NYJ, San Diego in the AFC, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, Seattle in the NFC) and realize more than half are going to be playoff teams. I purposely didn’t include the Giants in that list because I wouldn’t say they have looked bad.
As for the three teams that have looked consistently good, the question with each is whether or not you are prepared to fully buy into their QB’s. Matt Ryan, Matt Schaub and Joe Flacco have all looked great so far but I doubt even their fans are completely convinced they will look as good in January as they do in September.
Maybe there just aren’t any great teams anymore.
September 18, 2012
NFL Week 2: What Kind Of Quarterback Do You Have?
I HATE it when people say “you know, there are two kinds of …” or “everyone fits into one of these categories”. Humanity, people, whatever else is too complex and varied to fit into categorization that are that limiting. With that in mind in the NFL you team’s QB fits into one of six categories. You either have a young wait and see kid, a will be great, a seat filler, a schizophrenic, a Hall of Fame-er or we’re not sure. The Not Sure guys are the interesting one’s. Even after a week 2 that might have made some things clearer, there are seven QB’s who still make you wonder and all seven play for potential playoff teams. More on them in a minute, first here are where the rest of the guys fit in:
Wait and See Kids
Brandon Weedon, Ryan Tanehill, Russell Wilson, Blaine Gabbert, Christian Ponder, Sam Bradford and Jake Locker
A Wait and See Kid is a young guy you drafted high in hopes that he will turn out to be your franchise but hasn’t convinced anyone that they for sure will be that franchise QB. Bradford is at the tail end of being in that Wait and See window (after three years you should know, right?). I don’t love the odds of any of these guys becoming truly elite, but the odds are two or three of them will have solid NFL careers.
Will Be Great
Cam Newton, Andy Dalton, Robert Griffin III and Andrew Luck
Some may quibble with the statement that anyone knows Dalton will be great but frankly it is hard to argue with his rookie season. As for the other three, well, don’t you kind of wish you were a Redskins or a Panthers or a Colts fan right now? How fun would it be to watch those guys with a rooting interest as they become whatever it is they are going to become.
Seat Filler
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Matt Cassell, Carson Palmer, Matt Shaub, Kevin Kolb and John Skelton
As good as the Texans are is there anyone who thinks of Matt Shaub as THE answer? All of these guys are just a draft day trade or a tumble to the first pick of the draft away from being replaced. In other words, would any of these teams not draft Matt Barkley if they could? They all would and be thrilled about it.
Schizophrenic
Eli Manning, Mike Vick, Ben Rothlesberger, Jay Cutler, Matthew Stafford and Tony Romo
What do I mean by schizophrenic? Any of these guys could have an absolute stink bomb of a half or a game, and likely will have a couple per year. Watch Eli in the first half last week. Look at Vick’s insane 6 INT’s through the first two weeks of the season. Watch Stafford throw the ball in the dirt on screen passes against the Niners Sunday night. Bill Barwell on Grantland.com has had a couple of great pieces this last week about two of these guys (Jay Cutler and Tony Romo) and how frustrating it would be to root for any of these guys. The other thing about each of these guys, they will make plays that make your head spin, they win games they have no business winning, they will occasionally convince you they are the best players in football. The thing is, they have all been around long enough now that we should stop thinking any of these guys will really change, or should really change (Vick, you always get yourself into more trouble when you start obsessing about the running thing, just play and do what comes naturally).
Future HOFers
Brady, Rogers, Brees
Not only is each of these guys a lock for the HOF, they continue to play at that level. Ironically, not so far this season as each has looked off somehow as have their teams, but is anyone worried about it? Of course not. They have already defined themselves and their worst is still better than most people’s best.
Not Sure or The Interesting One’s
Alex Smith
Maybe I still question Alex Smith because I just can’t believe what I am seeing is true. In the first two weeks of the season he has absolutely out played Aaron Rogers and Matthew Stafford. Does the 49ers defense have something to do with that? Obviously, but he has looked like more and more like the QB who went toe-to-toe with Drew Brees in a shootout in last years playoffs and less and less like the QB who couldn’t move the ball against the Giants in the fourth quarter a week later.
Josh Freeman
Two seasons ago Freeman would have been the poster child for the Will Be Great category, now? He made some plays as the Giants rallied back last week, but nowhere near enough. Last season was a disaster. I picked the Bucs to be one of my sleeper teams this season and I did it because I believed Freeman was closer to 2010 Josh than 2011. Two weeks in and I am not sure if I was right or wrong.
Joe Flacco
“Just when I’m out they pull me back in.” I was out on the Flacco hate, I believed he had turned a corner as had the rest of the Ravens offense. Then week 2 happened and they were an awful lot like the Ravens that we have grown to be frustrated by. Odd play calling, Flacco killing drive after drive with incompletions in the second half, it was all there. And even after watching on Sunday I still could see Flacco and that offense coming alive and the Ravens riding his arm to the promised land…or not.
Matt Ryan
See everything I just wrote about Flacco. They won last night, but not because Ryan was great. It is fitting that those two were drafted the same year because I am not sure that Flacco and Rayn are not the same person, they sure play like it.
Mark Sanchez
Marky, Mark, Mark, Mark. Is Sanchez a Seat Filler? Is Sanchez a Schizo QB? People forget this guy already has four road playoff wins (and he won those games, it was not just the defense). FOUR! Did you hear that Skip Bayless? Your boy Tebow has one home playoff win, that’s it. Sanchez can still look great at times. Sanchez still has early career numbers and trajectory that mirror those of Eli Manning. Sanchez can still get any woman he wants in NYC. When do you give up? Not after one bad game against a Steelers team that needed to win and on the heels of maybe his best overall performance as a pro. Maybe the question really is, how much longer do you wait?
Philip Rivers
Are any of us really sure if Phillip Rivers was ever actually good? he has numbers and wins. He has the fiery personality thing that plays well on TV. He’s had LT and Antonio Gates and Vincent Jackson. Now? Now he doesn’t have all of those weapons, he doesn’t have one of the three or four most talented teams in football (something he unquestionably had for the bulk of his career), he doesn’t have a division that is devoid of any other competent QB’s. He doesn’t have those things and when you watch him it makes you wonder, just a little bit, what you ever thought you saw.
Peyton Manning
OK, so he isn’t the Manning of 2006. Is he the Manning of 2009 or 2010? Can his smarts get him through most team defenses when his arm clearly no longer can? He looked great against the Steelers, not good against the Falcons, where is he and how far can he come at his age? Everyone talks about Montana in KC and how good he was but the truth is he was not Joe Montana any more. Guile and competitiveness can take you some distance but at a point talent has to be there too. Does anyone know if Manning has the talent any more?
September 12, 2012
What Did We Really Learn From Week 1
Week 1 of the NFL season is without exaggeration my favorite weekend of the year. No weekend of football provides more surprises, more proof that we really don’t know what we are talking about (and when I say “we” I mean everyone, from “fans” like you and me to experts and everything in between). But what I truly love is that we make the same mistake looking at week 1 that we made when we messed up our preseason analysis, we weigh too heavily what we just saw. The Niners, RG3 and Peyton were all great but I’m not so sure we can book a San Francisco vs. Washington NFC Championship game to determine who will play Denver in the Super Bowl just yet. To that end here are the questions I have heading into Week 2 that will help answer the question “what did we really learn from week 1?”.
Where Detroit and Philly Just Flat?
Two big preseason picks that eeked out really lucky wins now have to play the two best looking teams of Week 1 (or two out of the three along with the Patriots) when the Lions go to San Francisco and the Eagles host the Ravens. Vick will be forgiven his 4 Int’s and Stafford his 3 Int’s if they can look good this week. I think Philly needs to win this game to re-establish their legitimacy as a contender while no one thinks Detroit stands much of a chance, so if they just keep it close they’ll be OK.
Are Rookie QB’s Really That Bad?
Sure RG3 looked amazing, but the other four rookies who started Week 1 looked anywhere from “may be great some day” (luck) to “I’m not so sure” (Wilson) to “awful” (Whedon and Tannehill). Whedon is the one I find most interesting because a) he looked horrid in the preseason so Sunday couldn’t have been a surprise; and b) because Shurmur and Holmgren are on the proverbial “hot seat” and just gave a win away (McCoy plays that game and the Browns win, no doubt about it). If you need 8 wins to save your job can you really afford to give wins away? Of course, this is the stupid thing about starting rookie QB’s, it is nearly impossible to pull them without ruining them. If Moore had started in Miami or McCoy in Cleveland or Flynn in Seattle the rookies could have come in mid-season (when they were better prepared) and played the role of savior, now two out of the three look like goats. The good news is savvy fantasy owners will do OK just grabbing whatever defense is going against the Dolphins and the Browns all year.
How Long Can The Redskins Get Away With Running The Baylor Offense?
Bill Barwell at Grantland.com wrote a great piece about what was really behind RG3’s explosion on Sunday (read here), the Shanahan’s did what Carolina did for Cam Newton last year, they brought in the rookie QB’s college offense. Leaving aside the question of why all coaches don’t do this if they decide to start a rookie, the real question for RG3 is how long will it take the league to figure it out. The not-so-secret secret about Cam Newton’s rookie season is that he really wasn’t that effective passing the ball in the second half of the year. Defensive coordinators figured out what Newton did and how to play against the Auburn offense and his numbers dropped. Does RG3 have the same fate in store?
How Bad Are The Bills and The Titans?
The Bills were THE trendy pick to finish second in the AFC East and make a possible playoff run heading into this season. That all seemed to disappear on Sunday. This week they get San Diego and a chance to prove they aren’t that bad (I think they may be that bad, but we’ll just have to wait and see). The Titans weren’t necessarily a trendy pick, but they were a team that was better than you remember last season. They also looked awful on Sunday. They get to play the Chiefs on Sunday (another team that did not look good). Maybe it was just the Patriots and the Jets are that good, but I kind of doubt it. My guess is either Tennessee or Buffalo will be in the running for next years #1 pick.
Are The Jets For Real?
I don’t think there was a bigger surprise Week 1 than the Jets destruction of Buffalo. This week they get the Steelers. I am not so sure the Steelers aren’t that once great team that is poised for a big drop off this year (they looked old Week 1, but we all said they same thing last year), but the Jets can still solidify their position with a big road win in Week 2.
There are plenty of other questions to be answered in Week 2, and the truth is most of the “answers” wont really be answers at all. The NFL is a long season and a lot can happen. That doesn’t take away how fun it is to pretend we can predict the future.
September 8, 2012
The NFL Preview or Trying To Predict The Improbable
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| Boom or Bust – There Is No In-between |
Having already written up previews for the fall movie season and the new fall TV season it is now time to do the most important and impossible preview of them all, the NFL season. How hard is it to accurately predict what might happen over the course of the next 5 months? Last year ESPN.com had 12 “experts” make predictions for all the playoff teams in each conference, what teams would represent each conference in the Super Bowl, the league MVP, Coach of the Year, Offensive Rookie of the Year and Defensive Rookie of the Year (19 predictions in all). They’re success rate was only 43.8% (and that is giving them credit if a team they picked to win their division still made it in as a wild card). Only one expert was right on more than half of their prediction (Kevin Seifert of ESPN.com). Only one of the twelve picked the Giants to make the playoffs and not one person predicted the 49ers would win the west (9 out of the twelve picked the Rams as the eventual NFC West champs). I don’t mean this to sound like I am saying the ESPN guys are morons, all I am saying is this prediction business is nearly impossible and being right has almost as much to do with luck as with expertise, which is why I feel perfectly comfortable making my prediction.
AFC
| AFC East | ||
| New England Patriots | 12-4 | |
| New York Jets | 9-7 | |
| Buffalo Bills | 8-8 | |
| Miami Dolphins | 2-14 | |
I am not one of those conspiracy people who think it is fishy that the Super Bowl representative from the AFC ended up with the easiest schedule in football. That does not change the fact that they did. My guess is they lose one to the Bills, one to the Jets and go 3-2 against the Ravens, 49ers, Texans, Seahawks and Broncos. As for the rest of the division this feels to me a lot like Rex Ryan’s first Jets team. Everybody is writing them off, saying how bad their offense is, talking about how the whole “Tebow thing” is going to blow up in their faces, and there is no doubt they will look dreadful at times, but I think they pull it together just enough to eek out 9 wins, get into the playoffs and win a game nobody thinks they should. The Bills are a trendy pick, but they have been a trendy pick before and this team doesn’t feel demonstrably different to me. Anyone that watch Hard Knocks this year has to be way down on the Dolphins. Not since the hey day of Dave Campo has a coach looked as incompetent on that program as Philbin did.
| AFC North | ||
| Baltimore Ravens | 11-5 | |
| Pittsburgh Steelers | 9-7 | |
| Cincinnati Bengals | 7-9 | |
| Cleveland Browns | 7-9 | |
My pick of Baltimore has nothing to do with my having Joe Flacco on my fantasy team. I don’t know why, but I see the Steelers falling off slightly this year. Cinci feels like one of those teams that is just good enough to have a nice season if the schedule is favorable and if the schedule isn’t favorable they don’t look too good. If the Browns had gone with McCoy I may have been tempted to put them in the spot I have the Steelers in now, but, as with Miami, they have gone with the young guy because they think they are supposed to.
| AFC South | ||
| Houston Texans | 11-5 | |
| Tennesee Titans | 8-8 | |
| Indianapolis Colts | 6-10 | |
| Jacksonville Jaguars | 5-11 | |
I am neither the first nor the last person to say it, but the Texans may have been the best team in football last year. Injuries ultimately derailed their playoff run, but you can’t help but wonder if a Matt was their QB in Baltimore instead of a TJ if 2011 might have been their year. The Titans were sneaky good last year, so sneaky that they almost got into the playoffs and it would not shock me if they snuck into a spot this year (a classic non-pick pick). The Colts will be better, because they have to be better, but don’t go crazy because Luck looked like a more athletic version of Manning in preseason, it was just the preseason, I mean Blaine Gabbert looked good in the preseason.
| AFC West | ||
| Denver Broncos | 9-7 | |
| San Diego Chargers | 8-8 | |
| Oakland Raiders | 8-8 | |
| Kansas City Chiefs | 6-10 | |
The only thing that seems certain about the AFC west is that all of the teams will finish with in a game or two of .500. Having said that it is hard to pick against the conundrum that is Peyton Manning. And I am finding it funny that the new narrative seems to be that he sucked in 2010, he led a team that went 2-14 last year to 10 wins. Maybe he wasn’t 2006 Manning, but he was still a top 5 QB in the league and if Denver has a top 5 QB they’ll win this division. The Chargers and Raiders have become the same team to me, they will both win some games that will get their respective fan bases super excited, then they will lose games that will have the sam people scratching their heads and they will each blow one game on something unpredictable and stupid that will cost them the playoffs. And if you want to know who really wasn’t that good in 2010 it was the Chiefs (not Manning). They had one of those classic “everything went right” years and won the division, how many “everything went right” season does any franchise have in them? Two, three maybe four, over the history of the franchise.
AFC Wild Cards
New York Jets, Pittsburgh Steelers
AFC Champion
Houston Texans
I am worried that Houston let some lineman go and that Arian Foster became a vegan, but they are the most complete team in the AFC. They can sling it around and be explosive, they can ground it out and shorten the game and they can shut people down. If you are curious, the other team I really thought about picking here was the Jets. If LaRon Landry is close to what he once was that secondary is ridiculous, and some of those young d-lineman will start to look better when QB’s have to hold onto the ball a second longer. As for the Tebo/Sanchez thing, my mind keeps going back to Tebow’s freshman year in college where Chris Leek was the starting QB, took something like 80% of the snaps that year and they had Tebow come in at the goalie or sporadically to change things up. Tebow gets the credit (unfairly) for leading that team to a National Championship, and eventually Sanchez may grow sick of it, but if this experiment is going to work, that is how it will work.
NFC
| NFC East | ||
| Philadelphia Eagles | 10-6 | |
| New York Giants | 9-7 | |
| Dallas Cowboys | 9-7 | |
| Washington Redskins | 7-9 | |
A couple of years ago every team in the NFC East finished .500 or better, they will be close to that again this year. I like the Eagles because I always like that team that everyone picked a year too early, I also really like the team that nobody want to sneak into the playoffs last year, I like the team with a ton of playmakers on offense and a defense that really started to find itself. I like the Eagles. The Cowboys big win on opening night was fun to watch and Romo looked great, but did that really look like a team that had solved all of their problems? I didn’t think so. The Giants are doing their Giants thing, bumbling around trying to figure things out and survive injuries and have ELI barely get them into the playoffs all by himself well they will try to turn it on and make another run. Somehow, with all the talk of 5 rookie QB’s starting week 1 and Russell Wilson in Seattle and Luck throwing so much in Indianapolis that is is like we have forgotten about RGIII. I still think he will be the Offensive Rookie of the Year.
| NFC North | ||
| Green Bay Packers | 12-4 | |
| Detroit Lions | 9-7 | |
| Chicago Bears | 8-8 | |
| Minnesota Vikings | 4-12 | |
The Packers and Aaron Rogers are just really, really good. They have flaws and are beatable come playoff time, but in the regular season 12 games is a conservative estimate. There has been a lot of talk about the Lions regressing this year as if everything went right last year. I say, look for Suh and the rest of that defense to take a good step forward this season. Chicago, on the other hand, may be better on offense with the addition of Brandon Marshall, but that defense is getting old and the offense wont be good enough to carry the d when it has to. The Vikings just aren’t good.
| NFC South | ||
| Tampa Bay Buccaneers | 10-6 | |
| New Orleans Saints | 9-7 | |
| Atlanta Falcons | 9-7 | |
| Carolina Panthers | 7-9 | |
The NFC South is a lot like the NFC East, everyone is good, maybe not great but definitely good. Tampa Bay reminds me of last years 49ers. They were a hot pick last year and they disappointed (people forget that the 49ers were the hot pick for the NFC West in 2010). They changed their coach, brought in some veterans and are starting the season way under the radar. Look for Josh Freeman to prove last season was the anomaly. The Saints have had too much happen to think they can be great and too much talent to think they will be lousy. The Falcons are the John Lester of the NFL — every year we talk about talent, every year we talk about breaking through and every year they fall short when it matters most. Cam Newton will still have flashes of brilliance but that team has some real shortcomings, particularly on defense and they really need a second receiver. (maybe if they didn’t have 5 running backs they could find a quality #2 WR).
| NFC West | ||
| San Francisco 49ers | 11-5 | |
| Seattle Seahawks | 10-6 | |
| Arizona Cardinals | 6-10 | |
| St. Louis Rams | 4-12 | |
The 49ers defense has become what the 49ers offense was during their SuperBowl years, dominant. The question for the 49ers is can their offense become what their defense was during those year, much better than anyone realized. The Seahawks bandwagon is getting really full (Bill Simmons made him a SuperBowl pick on Grantland.com). There are good reasons for it. They were pretty good last year and got better as the year went on and they did that with a QB situation that made Arizona’s seem stable. Still, does anyone really think Marshawn Lynch will repeat what he did last year? Russell Wilson wasn’t a Tebow-like winner in college (Tebow wasn’t even a Tebow like winner), he was a good college quarterback, that’s it. I do love the fact that Pete Carroll was true to his word and let people win spots based on performance and not paycheck and I think this team could be pretty good, but SuperBowl? The Cardinals are wasting one of the best offensive weapons in the game (does Kevin Kolb have to go down as the most disappointing free agent pick-up in NFL history? I think he does). And the Rams, I don’t know what the Rams are doing.
NFC Wild Cards
Seahawks and Giants
NFC Champion
San Francisco 49ers
The Giants sneak in to the playoffs and scare everyone until Green Bay dismantle’s them in the second round. I could really see the Eagle, Packers or 49ers winning this thing, so I went with my heart and team I still root for.
Post Season Awards
MVP
Aaron Rogers
Coach of the Year
Greg Schiano
Offensive ROY
Robert Griffin III
Defensive ROY
Luke Kuechly
August 24, 2012
Don’t Over Think It – How NOT To Screw Up Your Fantasy Draft
Keep it simple stupid, don’t get cute, it’s not rocket surgery, choose whichever platitude you’d like the fact remains, when it comes to the first round of your fantasy football draft over thinking your pick is the biggest mistake you can make. We’ve all seen it (and most of us have done it), that guy who brings reams of printouts or has beautifully designed spreadsheets on his laptop breaking down players goal line targets or carries last season to your fantasy draft. That’s the genius that drafted TJ Duckett too early every year from 2004-2006 because their stats told them this was the year TJ was going to get back to double-digit touchdowns. That’s the guy that grabbed Mike Tolbert in the fifth round last year. That’s the guy that drafted Mike Vick in the top three. Is that the guy who wins your league? I didn’t think so. Winners avoid risk with their early picks and go for upside down the line and ALWAYS look out for the guy who drops because he was drafted too high last year.
Remember what Brady did last time McDaniels was his offensive coordinator? Yup, I’d say Brady is a pretty safe bet for a huge year. And like I said, sure things are what we are looking for at the top of the draft.
The Queen of Shadows 