Blog Posts For Tag: Football

Most years my football obsession begins to lose a bit of its maniacal edge in the last few weeks of the season, especially as a Chicago Bears fan. However, the 2009 edition of the NFL still has kept me on edge and checking ESPN just about every day to look for more than just fantasy football advice for the weekend. What is so different about this year that I have remained tethered to the television for 10 hours every Sunday through Week 12?

Just two divisions left and all the starting quarterbacks in the NFL have been unfairly judged by me. The AFC South and AFC West are perhaps the two divisions in football with the most upheaval ahead. They have consistent champions, yes, but they also have franchises that have consistently fallen behind in the standings and need a gale force wind worth of change throughout their organization.

Last week I scrolled through the current starting quarterbacks in the NFC, did a little mental carbon dating, and gave each quarterback a shelf life, giving some praise and future accolades and damning others to the fledgling United Football League. This week I look at the AFC East and make some bold and some quite obvious evaluations.

Great running backs and playmaking receivers have been a rare find in the NFL, championships teams have always been able to get by with simply very good backs and wide outs. At the turn of the century this could be said about quarterbacks as well. Just look at a list of Super Bowl champions. The Tampa Bay Bucs won the big game in 2003 with Brad Johnson behind center and Trent Dilfer managed the Baltimore Ravens offense in 2001 as they won the Super Bowl. Now the league is more pass happy than ever and a simple game manager will not be enough, making a quarterback the most precious commodity on a football team once again.

After six weeks of the 2009 NFL season it is just about to start seriously listening to those early MVP murmurs. The field is going to be dominated by quarterbacks with eight starters posting a quarterback rating in the triple digits, lacking running backs with just one back averaging more than 100 yards a game, and unfairly biased against defensive players because an assisted tackle is simply so much less sexy than anything a running back can do.

The NFL is entering a new era when quarterbacks have more fantasy value than running backs, home field is not that big of a deal (the home team only wins 54 percent of the time this season), and parity has dissipated as nine of the 32 teams in the league have either no losses or no wins. Yes this is a new age in the league and there are seven football seals that have been broken this season to put an end to everything we knew about football.

No Bears, no Packers, no Saints, no Chargers oh my! What will Week 5 behold without two of the classic football franchises and what may be the NFL’s best football team. We can do without the Chargers until the last five or six weeks since that is when they start playing for real and making there annual improbable playoff run. This week definitely has some interesting match ups, but there are plenty of blowouts on the horizon to boost the fantasy numbers.

After three weeks of NFL football all the preconceptions from the 2008 season have been washed away and replaced by new beliefs. Some of these new revelations are not that ludicrous, for instance the Jets look like they will actually be a good team this season and may challenge the New England Patriots for AFC East supremacy. Most of these developments are just trends that will fade in the next couple of weeks though. Five of those most bizarre trends are listed below.

The first week of football is great for two reasons. The first is that you get to watch 10-plus hours of football. I know I woke up at 7:00 in the morning because I was so freaking giddy to sit on the couch for 10 hours. It somehow seems ridiculous that I could get so excited to play an invalid for the day. The second reason is that suddenly you have real stats to compare and make educated guesses and bets for Week 2. Below are my guesses, with scores compiled by some miraculous mental operation that takes into account stats, injuries, the latest Vegas lines, and useless emotional allegiances.

Is it too early to use Halloween sayings in September? Well, five pound bags of candy imaginable have been out on the shelves since August so I guess not, especially when that simple turn of phrase so perfectly embodies the NFL preseason. Should fans expect what transpires on the field in the four-game preseason to become any sort of a reality during the long 16-game regular season? Is this a trick or a treat? What are we supposed to expect from these preseason trends?

My heart jumped when I realized that my latest move landed me in the cave of married friends’ duplex in Chicago without any means to watch March Madness. They did not want to get cable, which is cool, and meant to get rabbit ears at some time but never quite got around to it. I could have gone out and splurged on rabbit ears and that digital signal box but I really did not want to start feeding me television habit. So there I was stuck between my desire to watch endless hours of basketball and not wanting to spend needless money on something I was going to use for a couple weeks. Then I found that NCAA.com was streaming the games live and the heart murmur went subsided.

This weekend not only signals the beginning of the March Madness, but it also marks the final playoff games of the World Baseball Classic and the beginning of the MLS season. The sad reality is that I do not care about either one. I do not care about the WBC because I have 162 games of MLB baseball in front of me and that is a lot of baseball to care about. I simply do not know why I cannot get myself to care about the MLS though.

Terrell Owens left America’s Team for a team he dubbed North America’s Team. While some might be amused by this clever turn of phrase, many more are surprised by the decision to play in Buffalo for Dick Jauron, the place offense goes to die. In retrospect, the last couple of years have actually been a pretty dynamic and shocking time for us in the sports world. Owens decision joins the ranks of these other sundry moments that have kept me on my feet in the last couple years.

It seems odd to me that I am spending so much time clicking on the NFL tab on ESPN in March, but this year I cannot help but turn my attention to a wild array of signings, trades, and controversial roster moves. The latest escapade to pique my interest is the cutting of Terrell Owens by the Dallas Cowboys.

The stock market may be a bear right now, but the first day of the free agent market was bullish. The opening day acquisitions have been somewhat surprising considering the fact that most MLB teams spent the winter in hibernation despite a very soft luxury tax and most NBA teams scrambling to gather as many expiring contracts as they could in preparation for the salary cap decrease, the loaded free agent market in the summer of 2010, and the impending lockout in 2011.

Professional sports in the United States are a funny thing. A sport that goes in circles can entertain millions. A sport as quick and violent as Lacrosse cannot make headway in a culture that loves to see pain being doled out and inflated scoring. A sport loved by the world fails miserably time after time (I must admit I cannot stand soccer either).

Sports leagues are an even more amazing phenomenon. Look at the history of the NBA, MLB, and the NFL. They each seemed to catch a lucky break or get a particularly stellar group of showmen that moved each league into the major three. Is there any room left for competition though? Four football leagues are about to find out.

54-31! 54-31! How often does a team (the Kansas City Chiefs) score 31 points and still get blown out by 23 points?!?