What does
it take to be a quarterback in the NFL these days? Not much,
apparently.
In New
York, we got stuck in the late afternoon watching the
Jets-Ravens game. This is one of the many things that
sucks about living in New York: No matter how good or bad,
two of your five weekly NFL games feature the Giants
and the Jets. Even when they’ve got a good record (which
they don’t this year), the Jets are still one of the most
boring teams in football to watch.
Sunday was
no different. Brooks Bollinger, starting for the
injured Chad Pennington and Jay Fiedler, had a
whopping yards-per-attempt average of 5.3. He completed 50%
of his passes; I guess, for him, that was a real
achievement.
He made
Anthony Wright, the Ravens QB in place of Kyle Boller,
look like an All-Pro. After fumbling the first play from
scrimmage and giving up a defensive touchdown (it was called
back because of encroachment), Wright had a QB rating of
70.3 for the game, throwing no touchdowns and an
interception.
Not to be
outdone, the Bills’ J.P. Losman had the
crowning jewel of the weekend: 7-for-15 for 75 yards and one
interception; a QB rating under backup quarterback Shane
Matthews’age. It was the second straight week
Losman threw for 75 yards.
In the
weekend’s premiere Sunday Night game, San Francisco 49ers
quarterback Tim Rattay completed just over 50 percent
of his passes for a QB rating just over 50; backup QB
Alex Smith at one point was 2-for-2 for –7 yards. Yes,
NEGATIVE seven.
When asked
at halftime about Bollinger’s performance, Jets head coach
Herm Edwards said, “we’re just trying to protect
him.”
After
Losman's terrible game against the Saints, Bills
coach Mike Mularkey said that Losman is still their
starter.
Obviously,
the Jets had to put Bollinger out there against the Ravens;
he was the only quarterback they had on their roster as of
last Monday morning. But, the question is, WHY was he on
their roster? If the coach has to just try to protect the
quarterback, why did he not find a different quarterback
before the season?
Why is
Anthony Wright now the starting QB for the Ravens? Why is
Mularkey sticking with Losman? I can certainly give rookie
Alex Smith a pass for his performance and for his
performance the rest of this year. But, Tim Rattay looked
like a bad backup quarterback for Nebraska; surely he is not
the Niners’ best option. Surely there are guys out there who
can take control of a game and move the ball.
A friend of
mine on Sunday said that the Jets were "stupid" to not go
after another team's backup. They did. Tennessee's Billy
Volek and Washington's Patrick Ramsey were both
in their crosshairs. But, after seeing what has happened
when New York and Baltimore lost their starting
quarterbacks, they'd be crazy to give up their solid backups
for anything less than 1) a first-round pick next year, 2) a
second round pick next year, AND 3) a starting player to
fill one of their holes. Even then, it's 50/50.
There are
really two things going on here.
First, and
most obviously, is the quarterback. Some of these guys are
deer in headlights out there. None of these teams are
winning the Super Bowl with these quarterbacks (and, again,
I except Alex Smith from the list). Time to move on.
Second,
less obvious, but maybe even more important, is the
coaching. Even when the New York Giants knew the St.
Louis Rams would be throwing all day, quarterback
Marc Bulger put up 442 yards on 40-for-62 passing.
That’s more yards than Bollinger, Wright and Losman
combined. Is Marc Bulger that much better than these guys?
Probably not. He just has a better collective group of
offensive minds training him, coaching him and designing
plays for him.
Some may
look at the receivers, too, and say that Bulger has better
receivers. I disagree. Isaac Bruce was out of that game;
Anthony Wright has Derrick Mason and Todd Heap;
Bollinger has Lavernues Coles and Justin McCareins.
There is little difference between McCareins and guys like
the Rams’ Dane Looker and Shaun McDonald.
The
difference: the coaching.
Sometimes,
though, coaching can’t mask a lack of talent. When a team
loses cornerbacks and safeties and linebackers and
coordinators, it simply catches up to them at some point.
The New
England Patriots are finished, folks. Yes, they may eek
out the AFC East; but, they very well may not, too. And
that's okay. So the Patriots won't go down as the first team
to win three straight Super Bowls. I've got news for you:
after that offseason, it wasn't going to happen anyway. As
soon as SI's Peter King started driving the bandwagon
in February, it was over.
Still, it's
a little sad. Upheaval is frightening. That the Patriots
would win the Super Bowl has been the surest bet in sports
(in my mind) the last two years. And now it's done.
Sniff.
Sniff.
Okay, onto
brighter things.
I think I'm
going to start watching NFL games with the volume on mute.
Aside from Phil Simms' homoerotic comments, which Jim
is all over, there just isn't any reason to listen to most
of these bobos. Sam Rosen and Bill Maas called
the Rams-Giants game on Sunday. While Rosen is one of the
better announcers to me, Bill Maas is just an idiot.
At one
point, when the Rams fumbled a reverse in the red zone, Maas
said it was because of the shadows on the field. There were
no shadows within 15 feet of where the fumble occurred. When
he realized how stupid he sounded, upon returning from the
commercial break, he circled the intended receiver's helmet
and said, See, see, there's glare on his helmet. The sun got
in his eyes. Given that the ball was tossed to him at chest
level, the sun would have had to be in the third row of the
stands to get in his eyes.
Later in
the game, he praised himself as a "football purist." Ugh.
I can't
even watch the pregame shows anymore. ESPN's Michael
Irvin spent more time talking about how great he is and
how much everyone loves the Cowboys than he did
analyzing the games. And the Fox crew is simply intolerable.
I really don't believe that even one piece of true insight
comes out of watching these actors for an hour before the
games. That's all they are: they're not journalists, they're
actors.
I was so
fed up listening to them all that I watched the Sunday Night
game muted; I just didn't want to experience the frustration
that The Three Chuckleheads infuse in me every week.
I told my
friend, Alon, with whom I watched the games on
Sunday, that I just wished Paul Zimmerman, Dr. Z, was
in the booth (thought, I'd love to know how
Z rated the Rosen-Maas team three stars last year). The
problem is, he doesn't play the stupid games the rest of
these bobos do. He'd probably scold Tony Siragusa on
air for being a blathering fool, if he got the chance. And
that's the problem. To Joe Football Fan in Cleveland,
Ohio, all of the nonsense is great entertainment. To the
thinking football fan, it's distraction.
Speaking of
thinking:
I'm not
going to rank my present top five anymore. Instead, I'm
going to start ranking the teams based on how I think they
will be ranked at the end of the season. Sometimes I'll rank
five, sometimes seven, sometimes 10. It just depends on my
mood.
My Top
Teams for January 3, 2006
1)
Cincinnati – They'd probably be my
number-one now, too.
2)
New York Giants – The Charger's
win at New England really makes me think the Giants' loss at
San Diego was a "solid loss." Oh, by the way, guess which
team has scored the most points in the NFL this season....
3)
Atlanta – Mike Vick tore
apart the division last year, and I think he will again this
year, too.
4)
Indianapolis – I could see them
being number one, too. The problem is, they just haven't
played a top-10 team yet (and won't, now, until Nov. 20).
Though they played maybe the worst team in the AFC, that was
a very solid win this week.
5)
Kansas City – This is dependent on
whether the Chiefs can figure out how to cut down on the
turnovers. I think they will.
6)
Denver – The schedule just breaks
very nicely for the Broncos, who seem to have figured out
how to play defense.
7)
Tampa Bay – Ditto for the Bucs.
8)
Philadelphia – I still think
they're going to take a hard hit at some point (i.e., a
major injury), and this year the NFC East isn't full of
cupcakes for them to snack on.
9)
AFC East Winner – Someone is going
to emerge out of the pack. Which of the three contenders
(the Jets are out of it), I do not know.
10) San Diego – They're clicking
now as well as they're going to click all season. Since it's
week 4, that's not a good sign for December.
And finally
. . .
A la
Peter King and his softball team, I'm going to start
including bits and pieces from
my gay flag football team's fortunes in this column.
Last week,
we "pitched" the first shutout in league history. It was
pretty astonishing. To hold a team to zero points in flag
football is no easy task.
Well, this
week, we did it again, racking up a 28-0 win against a
pretty darn good team. Former high school football player
Corey Johnson captains the team we played; but, he just
wasn't his amazing self on the field after battling
pneumonia for the last week.
One of the
things that I LOVE about my team is that we have one of the
few women in the league. On Sunday, she had a great
interception. I said to her after she picked of the other
team's QB, "Serves 'em right for throwing into a girl's
zone."
--Phil
Simms, the gift that keeps on giving. The former New
York Giants quarterback and now CBS’s top NFL analyst, Simms
has entertained us over the years with his often-wacky
homoerotic comments (see
complete list here).
I hadn’t
been able to listen to Simms much this season, but watched
almost the entire San Diego Chargers-New England Patriots
game on Sunday, which Simms was analyzing. He didn’t
disappoint, coming up with these two gems:
“Tom
Brady, he’s a handsome dude. He’s also fearless and likes
the action.” The “action” he was describing was Brady
running a quarterback sneak into a mass of man flesh.
“Look
at Drew Brees. I’m talking about his pants. Don’t get
nervous.” Simms said this as he was using a telestrator to
draw a yellow circle around the left butt cheek of Brees to
show how clean the Charger quarterback’s uniform was. As for
the “don’t get nervous part,” one can only wonder what he
meant.
--Last
week I heaped praise on the Patriots and made them
my top team after their gritty comeback win at Pittsburgh.
They won despite losing safety Rodney Harrison and tackle
Matt Light to injury. This week, I come to bury them. The
Patriots were overwhelmed, 41-17, against the Chargers, who
outscored the champs 24-0 in the second half.
The loss
ended the Patriots’ home winning streak at 21. The 41 points
were the most ever allowed by a Bill Belichick Patriots’
team. The Chargers rushed for 183 yards, a sign that the
Patriots’ defense really missed the hard-hitting Harrison
(not to mention linebacker Tedy Bruschi, already out for the
season).
Brees had a
quarterback rating almost 70 points higher than the average
allowed by the Pats during their 21-game home winning
streak. He was 19 for 24, with two touchdowns, no
interceptions and no sacks. It’s a credit to the Chargers’
offensive line, which totally controlled the line of
scrimmage.
--The
Patriots are lucky to be playing in the weak AFC East,
along with the Jets (no quarterback due to injury), the
Bills (no quarterback due to incompetence) and the Dolphins
(2-1 but in a rebuilding phase). The should still win the
division but they look nowhere near like a team ready to
defend its title.
--One
benefit of the Pats’ loss is that it will shut up their
increasingly annoying fans (who, like all fans, think they
had something to do with the three Super Bowl wins). Billy
Witz, NFL writer for the Los Angeles Daily News,
wrote a column last week saying the injuries will
doom the Patriots, a totally reasonable position. That
didn’t stop idiots in Patriots Nation from writing him,
telling him what a fool he is.
--The
Bills are a huge disappointment at 1-3. The biggest
problem is the awful job new quarterback J.P. Losman has
done. In their three losses, Losman has thrown for a total
of 263 yards (less than 90 a game). He was yanked late in
the Bills’ 19-7 loss Sunday to the New Orleans Saints, in
favor of Kelly Holcomb; for the Bills to have any shot this
season, the change must be permanent. Holcomb isn’t great,
but he gives the Bills more of a chance to win. Alas, Bills
coach Mike Mularkey said Losman will remain his starter.
--The
NFL's first game played outside the U.S. saw the Arizona
Cardinals win a 31-14 snoozerama over the San Francisco
49ers in Mexico City. The highlight was seeing buff ref Ed
"Guns" Hochuli (he'd be Ed "Pistolas" Hochuli south
of the border) call a penalty in pretty good Spanish.
--The NFL,
celebrating its first game in Mexico, made each player wear
a decal with “Fubol Americano” on his helmet. It seemed odd,
given how anal the league has been about other plans to
memorialize seemingly more important issues.
Pro FootballTalk.com put it best:
“A year ago, the powers-that-be threatened to
fine Jake Plummer 30 large if he dared to wear a decal in
honor of [Pat] Tillman, an American solider who died in a
hail of friendly fire after giving up his NFL career to do
his part to preserve freedom. In 2002, the NFL refused to
let Colts quarterback Peyton Manning to wear black high tops
after Unitas died of a heart attack.
“So let's hope that, the next time a
high-profile NFL player passes, the league will keep its
cabeza out of its culata and permit the guy to be
properly honored. If helmets can be used to curry favor
with our muchachos in Mexico, they can and should be
used to pay tribute to the guys who have made the game what
it is.”
--The
Saints played their first “home” game in San Antonio and
the crowd was extremely loud and supportive, even though the
game did not sell out. CBS announcer Don Criqui said it was
the loudest crowd he’s ever heard. ''It was a mix of New
Orleans people and San Antonio people,'' Saints coach Jim
Haslett said. ''I think you saw the result. It helped our
football team.''
--Weirdest game was Philadelphia’s
37-31 win at Kansas City. The Chiefs were in control at 24-6
when running back Larry Johnson fumbled late in the first
half, giving the Eagles a chance to score a touchdown to
close the gap to 24-12 at halftime. The loss once again
exposed the glaring weakness of the Chiefs--their lack of an
effective passing game. Take out tight end Tony Gonzales and
the Chiefs have no receivers who scare you. And quarterback
Trent Green always holds the ball too long.
--I'm
also down on the Chiefs dumb running back rotation plan,
where Priest Holmes gets two series and Johnson one. It
ignores the flow of the game and which back might be hot. On
Sunday, that back was Holmes and the Chiefs stalled when
Johnson went in.
--How bad is the NFC North? First
place is shared by the 1-2 Detroit Lions and 1-2 Chicago
Bears. The Minnesota Vikings, many “experts” NFC Super Bowl
pick are 1-3 after falling meekly to Atlanta, 30-10. The
Vikes really miss center Matt Birk (out for the season), the
glue that held together the line. Daunte Culpepper was
sacked nine times by Atlanta and seven the week before.
The Lions had their chances to upset the
Tampa Bay Buccaneers, but lost 17-13, when Joey Harrington
threw three incompletions in the end zone in the final
seconds. Harrington had a pass to Marcus Pollard first ruled
a touchdown with 12 seconds left, but then correctly
overruled when it was clear that Pollard did not fully
possess the ball while sliding out of bounds. Harrington’s
last pass was terrible, when he way overthrew Roy Williams
who appeared to have good position on his defender in the
end zone.
--Peyton Manning threw four touchdowns
for the Indianapolis Colts in their 31-10 win at Tennessee.
Brother Eli threw four touchdown passes for the New York
Giants in their 44-24 win over St. Louis.
--I pity anyone who sat through the
Baltimore Ravens-New York Jets game, featuring quarterbacks
Anthony Wright and Brooks Bollinger.
--Denver is starting to impress me
following their 20-7 win at Jacksonville. It was third
straight victory following their opening game 34-10 flameout
at Miami.
My Top 5
1.
Indianapolis (4-0): The Colts have allowed two
touchdowns all season, both in end-of-game garbage time when
they had a big lead.
2.
Cincinnati (4-0): The Bengals are 4-0 for the first time
since 1988, the last time they made the Super Bowl.
3. Tampa
Bay (4-0): They’ve gone 3-0 over their old foes in the
NFC Central.
4.
Denver (3-1): Only their third win in the state of
Florida.
5.
Atlanta (3-1); Philadelphia (3-1): Eagles winning at
Kansas City is impressive; Falcons keep on rolling even when
Michael Vick is hurt.
“Tom
Brady, he’s a handsome dude. He’s also fearless and likes
the action.” The “action” he was describing was Brady
running a quarterback sneak into a mass of man flesh. 
“Look
at Drew Brees. I’m talking about his pants. Don’t get
nervous.” Simms said this as he was using a telestrator to
draw a yellow circle around the left butt cheek of Brees to
show how clean the Charger quarterback’s uniform was. As for
the “don’t get nervous part,” one can only wonder what he
meant. 