Feb 042008
 

Well, I was way wrong about the game. I take solace in the fact that I’m not alone in that, and in the fact that I’m not really a Patriots fan. That said, I was definitely rooting for them to win, and I’m shocked and disappointed that they didn’t.

I’m pretty annoyed with Belichick for a) leaving the field before the final whistle and b) not making any good changes to the Patriots’ game plan at halftime (or earlier). You’ve got to hand it to Manning for the game-winning drive (never thought I’d write that sentence about Eli), and the Giants’ defensive line was truly awesome.

But all that being said, I don’t understand why the Pats didn’t transition to a quick-pass, screen-heavy, audible-filled offensive scheme as soon as it became clear that Brady wasn’t going to have the kind of time he’s had for most of the season.

Also, going for it on 4th and 13 was extremely stupid. I think there’s a good argument for punting in that situation, and an equally good argument for attempting a 49 yard field goal, but trying to convert the first down was arrogant and foolish. I said so at the time and now feel justified.

Essentially, it seems like the Patriots made a series of major strategic errors in advance of and during the game–errors that a relatively casual fan like myself identified as such at the time, not just in retrospect. It’s so uncharacteristic of the coaching staff that I find it difficult to believe that it happened.

At any rate, I think the Patriots deserved that outcome. They were extremely confident going into the game (as were most of the fans and pundits who opined on the likely outcome), and they failed to match the Giants in intensity or preparation. If you’re going to talk a big game (as both teams did, in their own ways), you’ve got to back it up. And the Pats definitely didn’t do that.

As a Redskins fan I hate the Giants, but you’ve got to hand it to them. The play that everyone’s talking about today (Manning fighting off a sure sack to throw a miracle completion to the team’s 4th or 5th receiver, to put the team in scoring range for the ultimate game-winner) is a microcosm of the season as a whole–improbable, clutch, and ugly. This was one of the most exciting Super Bowls ever, in terms of the play on the field and the teams’ respective stories. Congrats to everyone with the lack of character that being a Giants fan entails.

And get ready for even more Manning commercials. Ugh.

 

If you were more interested in the Spygate stuff than the TV-14 stuff, you may be interested to know that Gregg Easterbrook has another column up today, going into a little more detail on why new stories are popping up this week, and what the Patriots are alleged to have done. I dunno, I still find it all a bit ridiculous, but it is interesting to learn a little bit about what’s going on behind the scenes.

Money lines, complete with practically sarcastic note that none of this has been proved (or even hinted at by any direct evidence):

If the Patriots secretly taped the Rams’ walk-through, then stopped the red-zone plays the Rams showed in that walk-through, then won that Super Bowl by three points, then logic says New England materially benefited from cheating in the Super Bowl. If true, this would be the worst sports scandal since the Black Sox.

Let’s put that in capital letters: IF TRUE. We don’t yet know if the Super Bowl allegations are true. Then again, we are into only the second day of information going on the record and the league finally answering some questions about the subject.

PS: Do you think there’s any chance that the Pats will use this as anything but competitive fuel tomorrow? My prediction: New England 37, New York 20.

 

From Gregg Easterbrook’s over-the-top absurd column that essentially asserts that the Patriots’ season is indelibly tainted by “Spygate”–which is, in terms of its actual effect on competition in the leage, a complete non-event1:

Will the Victoria’s commercial be TV-14? Earlier this season, TMQ noted that NBC’s Sunday night football wrap show is rated TV-14 — I wondered whether I should let my 12-year-old watch it. Reader Rebecca Seidel of Monroe, Conn., writes, “Tell Spenser he shouldn’t watch the commercials. While the NFL itself keeps programming clean, not all of its sponsors feel the same way. Based on the assumption that mostly adult males will be the ones watching football past nine on a school night, the ads tend to get a little racy.” On the East Coast, half the Super Bowl will occur past 9 p.m., the hour when networks start allowing racy ads. Risqué is fine for adults, but should it occur in the context of the one show per year that every little kid in America is allowed to stay up late to watch? We’ll see how the commercials stack up this year.

Okay, so here’s my question. WHO CARES? I know, I know. Lots of people care. But I think it’s ridiculous. So what if a bunch of pre-teens see cleavage? What’s the worst case scenario? Youngsters all over America start humping their couches? Do you think there’s any way to prevent, or even slow, adolescents’ discovery of the human body, in all its sinfulness?

Continue reading »

 

Joe Gibbs retired. Not shocking, but interesting.

I was extremely hopeful about Joe Gibbs’s tenure when he returned to the team, and although it hasn’t been all rainbows and puppy dogs I have to say he did a pretty good job. They made the playoffs twice, and more importantly they have a stability and patience from the front office down that they hadn’t had since the last time Gibbs coached the team.

I think this is good for him and for the franchise. He gets to leave on a good note, and the team gets to move forward. I thought this post over at the Sports Bog said it pretty well–this was a reasonable decision made for the right reasons.

If they don’t promote defensive coordinator Gregg Williams, the Redskins are a bunch of dumb jerks–he’s done a great job, and it seems clear that he’s at least been implicitly promised the right to be Gibbs’s successor. That’s not to say that he’s guaranteed to be a great head coach (he was middle-of-the-road as the Bills head coach a few years back), but he definitely deserves the chance to prove himself in DC.

While we’re talking Redskins, let me just say that the Seahawks game was pretty disappointing. I thought they had a good chance of beating them and giving the Cowboys a good game this week, but I guess they had expended all the energy and planning and luck they had in the 4 weeks before the playoffs began. I can’t complain–they made the playoffs and had a chance to win, and that’s all I could hope for this year. They went through a lot of misfortune, on and off the field, and I think their season ended well.

 

I’m still not sold on Gibbs as Head Honcho (can’t we get him out of the coaching box and into an office?), but there’s no arguing with the results of the last three games. He makes his mistakes, but the man is a great motivator and a diligent game-planner. The Redskins have dominated three teams known for their toughness on both sides of the ball, played smart football, and won the turnover battle, and now all they’ve got to do is beat a Cowboys team that will surely be resting most of its starters.

Of course, it would be just like the Skins to lose against the Cowboys’ second stringers, but this feels different from the franchise’s annual collapse. And, truth be told, no matter how next week goes, you’ve got to be impressed with what they’ve done since Sean Taylor’s death. Just watching them actually step up in big games, play their best, and give themselves a shot at the postseason is enough to satisfy me this year.

Most promising is the fact that they’re doing this without a ton of contributors–Sean Taylor, of course, but also half of their offensive line, Carlos Rogers, Rocky McIntosh, Jason Campbell, and quite a few others. If they can maintain this year’s focus and intensity while plugging those big talents in next year, these guys have a shot at really making some noise. In the meantime, they’ve got as good a chance as they could ask for at getting into a playoff game against a beatable Seattle team.

 

Looks like the Diamondbacks are thinking about having a pitcher who can hit spend some time playing first base, too.

All I have to say about this is, Arizona, stop stealing my ideas! Or at least give me credit when you implement them!

 

Yeesh.

The Redskins started out the game with 10 players on the field–the missing safety was a powerful tribute to Sean Taylor’s untimely death last week. That was a great start to a game with a miserable finish.

First, let’s be fair: it looked like that kick would have been good from the original line of scrimmage. The Redskins would have probably lost the game anyway.

But to make that kind of mental error–calling two timeouts in a row (which is against the rules)–is completely ridiculous. And, in this particular situation, more or less unforgivable. This is the kind of mistake the Redskins have been making all season, sometimes in critical situations, and sometimes when it didn’t make much of a difference. Suffice it to say you won’t see Bill Belichick doing this stuff. There’s no question that the mistake was Joe Gibbs’s fault. But there’s plenty of blame for this loss to go around.

As far as I can tell from what I’ve been reading on the internet, the offensive line didn’t do a great job today. That doesn’t surprise me in the least, and I don’t blame the players for it. The coaching staff has been throwing inexperienced backups out there all season long. The frustrating thing about that, though, is it makes things impossible for everyone else on the field. Can’t pass-block, can’t run-block. QB doesn’t have time to find open receivers, running backs don’t have holes to run through.

So we can’t play offense and end up depending on our defense to bail us out. And, to be honest, they have been doing that all year long. They haven’t been invincible (they’re suffering from their own injury problem, encompassing just about their entire secondary), but they have been good in just about every game (except the New England contest, about which we need not speak). It sounds like they weren’t at their best today, but they certainly didn’t lose this game.

So far I’ve said it’s not the offense’s fault, and it’s not the defense’s fault. Just to be clear, it’s not the special teams’ fault, either.

Two people are responsible for this game and this season: Joe Gibbs and Dan Snyder.

First, the coach. Joe Gibbs has to retire. He has yet to demonstrate an iota of creativity or flexibility in his return to coaching. His reign has been typified by mental errors (by his players and by him) and come-from-ahead losses. He hasn’t adapted to the new league, trying instead to shoehorn his old strategies onto his new roster. He gives good press conference, but at this point all he ever gets to say is how proud he is of the effort his team has given in a tough loss. He’s still the coach for one reason: pride. I’m sympathetic–he’s got an incredible history with the franchise, and he won three championships before I hit high school, and no matter how this ends up he’ll still be one of the greatest coaches ever, in my opinion–but past glory has not prepared him for the current reality of the NFL. He and his ancient coaching staff are tarnishing their own legacy with every crushing disappointment.

As for Dan Snyder… For some reason, probably the fact that he actually seems to care about how the team does (rather than just how much money it makes), I like Snyder, but he needs to understand the difference between “hands-on owner” and “meddlesome despot”. He needs to hire someone who knows how to evaluate players and let that person handle the GM duties–identifying draft picks and preventing idiotic trades/free agent signings. And Snyder needs to have a quiet chat with Gibbs, advising him that it might be a good idea to step down to “spend more time with his family.”

Ugh. I hate myself for even writing this stuff, but things have gotten absurd. There’s no reason for the Redskins to be in this situation. They have a huge fanbase and an owner willing to spend whatever it takes to put a good team on the field. But Snyder’s enthusiasm and resources have blinded him (and us, to be honest) to the fact that the organization is pursuing success in a completely backwards way.

Almost every decision they’ve made in each offseason of the last decade has been gilding the lily–polishing the turd. They have been spending money for short term gains, trading picks for aging veterans, and ignoring the low-profile positions that make the biggest difference (the line). They need to start over by focusing on drafting smart, dumping old players before they get decrepit, emphasizing line play and intelligence over glamor positions and “potential”. And, oh yeah, hiring a coach who was born after the Great Depression.

 

Certainly it would be terribly easy to rush toward some sort of instant judgment based on what we think we all knew about Taylor and the sort of life he once, and for all we know, still led. But really, we know nothing at the moment, and until we do, “may he rest in peace” ought to be the operative phrase for this day.

Still, could anyone honestly say they never saw this coming? You’d have to be blind not to consider Taylor’s checkered past. It was only a few months after he was drafted, when we got something of an inkling of what sort of young man the Redskins were selecting out of the University of Miami with the fifth overall selection in 2004.

Thank you, Mr. Shapiro. Thank you very much.

© 2011 Hello World Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha