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John elway week 1 picks – nip/tuck style |
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Wondering who will make the NFL playoffs in January? Wonder no more. Here you go, seventeen weeks in advance: The most ridiculous show in television history is back, and it didn’t forget what got it here. In one episode, Tuck got double teamed by a mother/daughter combo, JR Ewing got ball implants, Kathleen Turner cameod as a washed up phone sex maven who needed a voice lift because she smoked too much, Tuck banged his shrink played by Brooke Shields, Nip and Tuck agreed to sell the business to JR, and Nip found out that his unborn son has lobster hand syndrome. In honor of the season four premiere, I’m doing the whole “Sports Guy assign a quote to each game thing.” I know..I know.. it’s not original, but there were so many worthwhile quotes and I have to do these picks so one thing led to another…. Editor’s note: I expected to get the picks up before the game, but I was derailed by a five hour detour at Clarendon Ballroom. As you can see from the first pick, I’m not cheating…but I am drunk. Miami pick ‘em Pittsburgh " “Women who want to play kissy-face and gaze into someone’s eyes should find themselves a lesbian.” While Tuck was able to deliver this line with sufficient aplomb, I’d like to see Nick Saban or Bill Cowher get a shot at it. I like the Dolphins this year, even though I just watched them lose tonight. (I wrote most of this post over the past two days, but I need to finish it off tonight, and I’m feeling a little loose). I think Nick Saban is an excellent coach, and the team is going in the right direction. DOLPHINS NY Jets +2.5 Tennessee " “Sweetie, the way the baby is sitting is making me really gassy. Can I give you a rain check.” The ugliest conceivable conclusion to a sexual encounter goes to the ugliest game of the weekend. Nip was working it from behind and I guess he was sucking down exhaust fumes. I’m trying to write something about this game and I feel like Elaine eulogizing Susie…and also much like me…the Jets liked…going to the market. OK " The Jets suck. Really really suck. On offense, they have zero plus players and many minus players, including their QB who might have the worst NFL arm of the past 10 years. On defense, they have Jon Vilma. He’s a plus player. Other than that…I can’t think of much. On the plus side, I like the program that they’re building. The verdict is still out on Mangini, but using two first round picks on two very solid OL prospects is a great way to build a team. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Kellen Clemens era starts in October. They might as well see what they’ve got.
As for Tennessee, they also suck. I don’t think they suck quite as bad as the Jets, but that could be because I encounter more Jet coverage. And amazingly enough, the Jets used to be called the Titans, so this rivalry runs pretty deep. Also, my first traveling soccer team was named the Titans. As for the team they’re putting on the field, they really do have more talent than the Jets. All their skill position players are better. That hothead Sheriff Bullock should be dragging Ole Ced Houston and “Kevan” Barlow around by their ears all day. I’ll take the TITANS.
Atlanta +6.5 Carolina " “You are so afraid of connecting, you’re destined to die alone. “
To Michael Vick’s love life…or his role in the West Coast offense. Why, why why waste a uniquely talented player in an offense that plays to his weaknesses. Every NFL fan should be furious about this. Let Vick run. Let Vick throw ball far. That’s what he does. Don’t make Vick go through complex progressions and deliver short, accurate balls. Absolute insanity. Carolina is as good as people say they are " favorites in the NFC. Still, I’ll take Atlanta, for reasons I can’t explain.
“Ever since I was 16. She caught me with my step dad.”
This is one of the sections that I’m writing while drunk, and to be honest, I can’t remember why I assigned this quote to this game. I’m sure there’s a good reason, though. The Chiefs are terrible. If you didn’t see my lock of the week in the previous post, note it now " Chiefs under 9.5 wins. Heck, I’d love to take Chiefs under 8 games and get the odds. There’s one thing that made this team go for the past five years and it’s the exceptional OL. That OL isn’t so good any more. It made every RB into the best RB in the league and it allowed Trent Green to lead the league in passing despite having Eddie Kennison as his #1 WR. Their defense has sucked the whole time and it will continue to suck. And let’s not forget that the Chiefs have been the most overrated team in professional sports for the past five years. They made the playoffs one time in Vermeil’s five years. ONE. And they got smoked at home in the first round by Indy.
BENGALS
The blessed life of Tuck goes to the blessed situation that the Seattle Seahawks find themselves in year after year. Take nothing away from them, they’re a good team. They also have a cakewalk to the division crown and most likely a first round bye. Was Seattle the best team in the NFC last year? Probably. But it sure didn’t hurt to lock up that home field with the benefit of playing the 49ers, Cards, and Rams for 6 games. Linehan, Mangini, Edwards, Marinelli, Kubiak, Payton, Jauron, McCarthy, Childress, and Shell. Out of that list, the only guys I’d even CONSIDER hiring are Mangini, Kubiak, and Childress.
A nice transition to talk about the Lions and their new head coach…..Mike Martz? Wait, he’s only running the offense? Then who the hell is the head coach? Has a new coordinator ever overshadowed a new head coach to this extent?
The Lions are really the Portugal of the NFL. Classic underachievers, not just as a team, but as a franchise. They have a lot to work with " a long history, a good name, a solid blue-collar city filled with depressed people who could really get behind a football team. What more could you ask for? Maybe some more wins and less gay uniforms. And what did they end up with? A horrible tradition of losing, an uninspiring home field advantage " basically a laughingstock. They play in the oldest division in the league and they’re such a pathetic franchise that they don’t even have any real rivalries. Nobody hates the Lions. They’re just too lame.
All that said, I like Detroit to give Seattle a run at home. New offensive coordinator. New head coach. A little bit of positive momentum. Jon Kitna. Hell yeah. LIONS
Baltimore (+3) Tampa Bay " Bucs " I’ve got nothing to say about this game. It sounds pretty boring.
This game might have the highest viewership among all the 1 PM games for one reason only…Bush. Oh, and the sorrow that we feel for the Katrina victims. And let’s not forget about the sorrow we feel for the citizens of Cleveland. Does anybody know what Sean Payton did to earn a head coaching job, aside from looking kind of creepy? For that matter, does anybody know what any of these new coaches did to earn a head job? I’ll take the Browns. Home team. Why not.
To the Buffalo Bills for making some the most uninspired staffing moves imaginable. Look, everyone loves Marv Levy. He was a solid coach, probably underrated in the grand scheme of things. He seems like a super guy. He coached at William and Mary. Geoff saw him at Food Lion. Just don’t hire him to be your GM when he’s pushing 80. This isn’t the mafia. It’s OK to go outside the organization to find a new leader. I know I’ve railed on the new coaches already, but seriously, Dick Jauron. He might not be the worst coach among the new hires, but he’s gotta be the least inspiring. I think Herm Edwards is just about as bad an NFL coach as you’ll find, but at least he’s entertaining. With Jauron, you’re getting nothing. No wins. No laughs. Nothing.
As for the Patriots, they keep losing useful players and the don’t seem to be replacing them. As far as I can tell, that’s not going to get you where you want to go. You could see it last year " they just don’t have the talent that they did when they were winning Super Bowls. Belichek and Brady can take a team a long way on their own, but they need some support. Brady carried the entire team last year, and he’s going to have to do it again this year. Maroney will help the running game, but he lost Givens and (for now) Branch, leaving a bunch of ex-Florida Gators and Troy Brown to catch balls.
The Pats D isn’t what it used to be, but I don’t see the Bills breaking double digits with the woeful squad they’re putting on the field. PATS.
This quote could go out to Brett Favre or to anybody who has to watch the Bears play. The Packers rival the Jets in their terribleness. This spread is insane to me. The Bears have an excellent defense and a mediocre offense. The Packers have an excellent tradition, a horrible offense, and a horrible defense. They’re going to struggle to win four games this year. BEARS
…..Feels like I got an SUV riding around on training wheels down there.”
Fitzgerald, Boldin, and James make a helluva wang. Unfortunately, they’re being supported by a tiny pair of pink balls in the form of the five fat men trying to block for them. I’ll be very interested to see how Edge performs in Arizona. I suspect that it won’t go so well for him. Regardless, the Cards do have enough offensive talent to put up some points. The 49ers have Vernon Davis’ ridiculous guns. Click Clack. CARDINALS.
Dallas +1.5 Jacksonville " “Why is there a statue of a cock in the corner?”
One of the least interesting quotes of the episode goes to one of the least interesting stories of the off-season " Terrell Owens. Look! He’s standing on the sidelines. Look! He’s riding a bike. Look! He caught a pass in a pre-season game. ESPN is taking ESPN-ization to a new level. It’s beyond Bonds at this point. I think both these teams are going to be pretty good this year. I’ll be watching this game. And like I always say, if you don’t know who’s going to win, you might as well pick the team that you’re rooting for. JAGS.
I’m not sure where I want to go with this game. It’s just hard to find a storyline. I’m sure all the pregame shows and the game broadcasters will face a similar challenge.
I think the Giants are going to be really good this year. They won the division last year and they should be better this year. The entire offense returns, which is not a trivial or common occurrence in the NFL. The OL is underrated and continuity helps that unit more than anywhere else on the team. Plax, Shockey, and Toomer are a strong unit of receivers. The biggest improvement should be at the QB position. Eli Manning has received a fair amount of criticism and some praise. Most of all, he’s received a ton of scrutiny. His mistakes and poor games seem to receive more attention than those of similar players in similar situations. Obviously he was awful in the playoffs and he had his fair share of poor games during the second half of the season. But for the entire season he posted a line of 3762 yards, 24 TDs, 17 INTs, which is pretty good for a second year guy (although Geoff insists that he threw for 10 TDs and 14 INTs). In his 3rd year, he’ll be better. Will he be great? I don’t know, but it’s almost a certainty that he’ll be an improved and more consistent QB than he was in 2005.
Rounding out the offense " Finish this sentence: In 2005, Tiki Barber had the 2nd most yards from scrimmage ____ in the NFC? In the league? How about in the history of the NFL. That’s right, the 2nd most yards from scrimmage EVER. You don’t hear much about that. I’d have to say that it’s unlikely that he (or anybody else in the league) will rack up those numbers in 2006, but I’m not seeing the major drop-off that a lot of analysts are suggesting.
On defense, the biggest question mark is at DT, one of the most important positions on the field. If they can cobble some effectiveness out of the rotation of William Joseph, Barry Cofield, Fred Robbins, and Jonas Seawright then the Giants should have a pretty good defense. Having two all-pro defensive ends puts any defense pretty close to respectability. While people will continue to harp on Lavar Arrington, he’s the 3rd most important defensive acquisition. Will Demps is a major upgrade on the corpse of Brent Alexander at free safety and Sam Madison is an interesting tradeoff for Will Allen at CB. Allen was very good at running with WRs and very bad at finding, tracking, and catching the football. He was also an excellent tackler. Madison is older and isn’t the athlete that Allen is, but he’s much savvier and he can catch. I’m not sure how it’s going to play out, but it does provide the opportunity for more turnovers.
The biggest difference between this team and recent Giants teams is the depth. In past years, when the starters went down the Giants were trotting out players who could barely make an NFL Europe squad. This year they’re solid all over the place " 4 deep at DE (backups - Tuck, Kiwanuka), 6 LBs that can play (Blackburn, Wilkinson, Short), respectable depth in the secondary (Butler, McQuarters), serviceable OL (Seubert, Whitfield, Ruggamer). They’re a bit thin at WR right now, seeing as Sinorice (not remotely a name) Moss has been shackled with a quad strain for about two months. And QB would also be an issue. I don’t want to talk about that.
The point of all this is that I feel really good about this team. If things go well, they could be dominant. I feel like they’re going to win every week. I expect the offense to score every time they step on the field. I expect the defense to rack up sacks and turnovers. In some divisions, they’d have a cakewalk to the playoffs and most likely a first round bye. In this division, with this schedule, there are a lot of things that can go wrong. Every team in the division is good. All four teams can finish first or last. I don’t think I could say that about any other division.
GIANTS
To Koren Robinson. Or Geoff. Or Greg hauling beer up the stairs at FedEx Field in permanant servitude to the rugby cult.
Living here in the DC area, I have little choice but to immerse myself in coverage of the Dirt Worshippers. Although I hate their guts, they’ve always been a fascinating case study. There’s no team that operates quite like Snyder’s Redskins. I suppose you could say that Danny operates outside the box. Racking up free agents, hemorrhaging draft picks, blowing through head coaches. Something’s always happening and it’s usually interesting.
Now that Joe Gibbs and his girlish laughter are back in town, Danny’s 3 ring circus has been downgraded to a mere county fair. Sure he still brings in the FAs and tosses money around like a drunk Russian, but Gibbs provides a foundation of stability and integrity that the organization was lacking in years prior. Fortunately, we have a new experiment to observe " the unbelievable arrogance of “Al” Saunders and the performance of the Worshippers offense. According to “Al” he was arming Brunell and company with faulty bows and arrows in the preseason, despite having a 700 page automatic rifle collection back in the storage shed. I have the same opinion as most other smart people on this issue " generally a wait and see attitude, coupled with some doubt about how an allegedly good team can look THAT bad on offense.
To me, the more interesting question is “why?” Why put your team through that? Why not practice some of the plays that you’re going to run during the season. I recognize that teams correctly don’t spend a lot of time game planning for preseason games and that coaches want to see how players react to specific game situations. This is pretty standard across the league (now that Spurrier’s gone), but if we’re to believe the Skins coaching staff, they took it to historical levels of over-simplification. Apparently they ran plays so basic and predictable that they couldn’t possibly be executed against NFL defenses. It’s not just vanilla, it’s unflavored. Is it really worth failing miserably for four weeks just to maintain an extra degree of secrecy? I guess we’ll find out.
As for the Vikings, I’m not sure what to make of them. Horrendous skill position players. OK OL. Excellent DL. They seem like a team that might sneak up on some people. VIKINGS.
Daughter was using too much teeth, so mom had to get involved. And thus, Art Shell is back in the NFL. And Aaron Brooks is throwing to Randy Moss. And Warren Sapp is playing DT. What a terrible team. Chargers.
That’s all for tonight. |
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