Blog Posts For Tag: Nfl

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.

The World Series is finishing up with the Yanks up 3 games to 1. The NFL season is about halfway through and just about every team still has a shot at the playoffs. The college football season has just a few weeks over, meaning it is time for the BCS standings to screw a deserving team over and start the annual clamor for a playoff system. In the midst of all this the NHL and NBA seasons have started.

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?

 The fall TV schedules are starting to surface and there are some old favorites that will be missing plus several many shows with some of your old favorite celebrities resurfacing. Over at ABC, Christina Applegate and her show “Samantha Who” will not be returning, along with “According to Jim”, “The Unusuals” and big surprise “Cupid”. Coming back to TV are Kelsey Grammar, new mom Rebecca Romijn, Patricia Heaton, and one of my favorites, Courtney Cox. ABC tops the new show charts with 11 new shows, 4 of which are comedies and 6 will be dramas and only 1 will be a reality show from by Mark Burnett. The show is called “Shark Tank” and will have people trying to get millionaires to choose their ideas to fund. Cox will be playing a cougar in her new comedy “Cougar Town”, where she will be back in the dating world as a single mother. Patricia Heaton will also be in a comedy called “The Middle” where she will be living in Indiana as an average middle class family…I can feel the laughs already. “Eastwick” is one of the new dramas starring Rebecca Romijn, Lindsay Price and Jamie Ray Newman who are women with unique powers that are brought together by a man who helps them realize those powers. And remember, “V” the miniseries back from the 80’s (I do), this is being remade and updated. “V” stands for visitors so it will be sci-fi and stars Elizabeth Mitchell from “Lost” who should feel right at home in that series.

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.

It seems fitting that Super Bowl XLIII came down to the final minutes of the fourth quarter. The best games build tension until the final minutes when a few memorable drives define whole careers. This season’s 27-23 victory by the Pittsburgh Steelers over the Arizona Cardinals will go down in history as one of the best in history. It had two momentum changing drives in the final three minutes and a safety to boot.

Super Bowl!!! After this incredible season in which the chi of the year was changed with the injury of Tom Brady, the NFL season has come down to a game between the 14-4 Pittsburgh Steelers dominating defense and the 12-7 Arizona Cardinals tremendous passing attack. To end it all, I have a few predictions to make.

Does great offense trump great defense? Anybody in Chicago who watched Michael Jordan terrorize the league’s best perimeter defenders every night would say so. Anyone who has watched Alex Rodriguez win intense battles at the plate for the New York Yankees against Cy Young winners would say so. Anybody who remembers the smooth skating of Wayne Gretzky would say so. So, in this upcoming Super Bowl will the explosive Cardinals offense be able to overcome the dominating Steelers defense?

Now that the only high seeded team left is the Pittsburgh Steelers I think it is official that all bets are off. Say what you will about the Steelers defense, the offense has been inconsistent and the playoffs, especially the conference championship, is no time to test your defenses ability to carry a game.

The experts are dumbfounded and I am looking back at most post Friday and wondering how I could have been so blind. Surely, everybody in the Carolinas and Tennessee assumed they were going to have another week to find NFL Playoff tickets. Three of the four favored teams lost this weekend. The Ravens started out by surprising the Titans 13-10, then Cardinals embarrassed the Panthers 33-13, and the upsets were capped off by the Eagles delivering the emotional defeat of the New York Giants 23-11. Only the Pittsburgh Steelers were able to take advantage of home field advantage in a 35-24 win over the San Diego Chargers that was much more one-sided than the score reveals.

Yes, the Florida Gators won their second BCS championship with a 24-14 victory over the Oklahoma Sooners. The season’s end was of course embroiled in the controversy, for the sixth time in 10 years (I thought the new system was supposed to clear up the confusion not further institutionalize it). There are loud voices of outrage…again.

This time the argument is that the Utah Utes have been robbed of the college championship for the second time (the first time was in 2004). Luckily my preference for the professional game really pays off this time of the year. It is not a bowl committee deciding which single game decides the “best” team, but NFL Playoff tickets that will give a definitive answer.

After four weeks of meaningless preseason games and 17 weeks of football that twisted and turned, beginning with an injury that cost the Patriots NFL Playoff tickets and gave every team a chance to fill the void in the Super Bowl, the wild card round of the postseason finally began.

The one and done feature after 17 weeks of jarring hits, needless holding calls, and general professional football drama is set to start this weekend. It is almost fitting that the second chapter of the NFL should begin the first week of the New Year. The only thing that matters from the 16 previous regular season games and the pointless four preseason contests only matter in the respect that they got these 12 teams here.

The NFL postseason is set after an improbable Week 17. The Dallas Cowboys came into the week as the last wild card team for the NFC. Dallas’s hope for the playoffs was thwarted by the Philadelphia Eagles. It was clear before the game began that the Cowboys that their fate would be determined in a game that was without question the primetime game of the second afternoon game.

This is the final week of the NFL regular season and there are still several games that are actually worth watching if you are not from that city or have become an indentured fan thanks to your family lineage.

There are only two games that need to be talked about after this last week. They are not the useless contests between the Bengals and the Browns or the 49ers and the Rams. No, they are the match ups between the league leaders.

Without the question, the biggest game this week has to be the New York Giants-Carolina Panthers game on Sunday night. It has the two top tiered teams, it has something worth playing for (the number one spot in the NFC side of the postseason), and it has a big market team playing (the Giants).

This week in the NFL is almost over all that remains is a game between the Cleveland Browns and the Philadelphia Eagles, who really have no shot at making the playoffs at this point. After 15 games I am more confused than ever and completely perplexed by the last remaining division races and the teams clawing at each other for the final wild card spots.

The NFL Season is 14 weeks old and the experts are talking about who is the most value player. I hear names like Kurt Warner, Eli Manning, and Drew Brees. I hear about a couple of running backs named Adrian Peterson and Michael Turner and a safety called Troy Polamalu. I do not hear talk of who is the least valuable player, though.

Early on in the season the winners and losers of the weekly slate of NFL games are pretty clear. As the season wears on that simple definition becomes more and more complicated. Each game holds meaning and value with regards to the immediate postseason, the upcoming off season, and the team’s future seasons.

This week feels like its time to keep the dream going or give the fans a little End of the Season Affective Disorder. While this week has a couple of great marquee games, the Pittsburgh Steelers versus the Dallas Cowboys and the Tampa Bay Bucs versus the Carolina Panthers, there is that wonderful sense of urgency for a number of teams.

This week played out like the typical Thanksgiving weekend. It started Thursday with a trio of blowouts. The Tennessee Titans, Dallas Cowboys, and Philadelphia Eagles put their opponents to shame like the Grandma’s mashed potatoes did to the new wife’s attempt to cook and contribute to the family.

The Holiday Season is about to begin, my dad has already reported that the enclosure has been set up in my uncle’s backyard and three-plus cases of beer have been purchased to celebrate the best day of all, Turkey Day.

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

Two months ago, the AFC was written off to the New England Patriots. Then Tom Brady went down with a season-ending injury and it was like a completely different universe was born.

The NFC playoff picture is starting to come into focus after the 11 weeks of the season. The New York Giants look like a lock in the NFC East. The Giants had the advantage of an easy schedule. The Washington Redskins, Dallas Cowboys, and the Philadelphia Eagles have had problems coming down the stretch after many experts felt they would at least challenge the 2008 Super Bowl champs.

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