Join the Norman Einsteins!

In case you haven't heard, the Norman Einsteins are coming.

I know you're asking, "But what's a 'Norman Einstein,' Cian?"

Good question.

The Norman Einsteins is an online magazine. Published the first weekday of every month, the Norman Einsteins brings together talented contributors from all over the web for a Molotov cocktail of sports, culture, and ingenuity that you can't get anywhere else all in one place.

The Norman Einsteins spotlights in-depth and creative pieces, highly expressive and original work found solely in our magazine. Our first issue drops next Monday, June 1st.

Sure, you can update your Fuhbaw bookmark to http://normaneinsteins.com... but allow me a recommendation: join our list.

The list is a monthly email update alerting you when the latest issue of the Norman Einsteins is online. That's it - one email a month.

By now you're asking yourself, "But how do I get on this list?"

Well, that's simple. Just email:

join@normaneinsteins.com

It's that easy. You'll now receive an automatic update when the latest issue of the Norman Einsteins is published. All you have to do is sit back and enjoy.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to check out Fuhbaw, my labor of love for last two years. I urge you to check out the Norman Einsteins and join our list. It's should be a lot of fun.

Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

This photo doesn't necessarily have anything to do with football besides the incidental fact that I'm wearing a Packers shirt and am very happy about it... which is usually how I feel when I wear that Packers shirt: unduly pleased. I wanted to post a photo of myself with more directly related football content but when I'm out on the scene I spend so much time behind the camera I rarely cross over to the other side of the lens. So this one will have to do.

Anyway, this photo was taken by my friend Stephanie, an excellent photographer, and I like it very much. I guess I just wanted to give you a shot of myself in that unlikely case you pass me on the street, maybe now you'll stop and say "hi" or perhaps more likely just do a double take and wonder if you recognize me from somewhere.

Later today, I'll post here one last time, a final imploration to join the Norman Einsteins mailing list, which will go something like this:

*Just email thelist-join@normaneinsteins.com then reply to the confirmation email.*

The Norman Einsteins is a new project bringing together talent from around the web to dish on sports and culture. I'm really excited to be getting this new project off the ground. Our first issue will be published online June 1st at normaneinsteins.com.

But right now I wanted to thank everyone who took the time to check out this blog in its lifespan.

June 27, 2007 to May 26, 2009. Exactly 700 days. Nearly two years. Thousands of hours of writing and research. Countless words crossed out, ideas scratched, lessons learned, and every so often the occasional completed piece advanced just how I hoped it would be.

This page will remain up but not updated after today. I have no intentions of pulling Fuhbaw down. Hasselbeck will remain forever in agony atop the banner. I still hope that people will stumble upon the Practice Theory or my best columns in the sidebar.

There were many stories that never happened, countless hours of leg work that never amounted to a single published word. An Ivy League game between the Columbia Lions and the Princeton Tigers comes to mind. An aborted interview attempt with Dick LeBeau after I ran into tons of interference from the Steelers.

Let me share with you one of these stories that never happened.

This year, I went to cover the NFL Draft on the scene. I attended the year before and thought I had the whole thing down pat. I expected to roll up to Radio City near daybreak and find a serpentine line of cracked-out football fans stretching blocks through the leviathans of midtown Manhattan.

And so I did, roll up to Radio City in the early morning hours. I emerged from the subway shortly after daybreak, light beginning to cling desperately to the city's forms still slowly shaking off the night's silence.

However, the street was desolate. No lines, no people. Just empty barricades stretching down the street. The entirety of my story had vanished. I planned to walk up and down and simply talk to people who waited all night. Why do you come? Why do you wait? What do you expect? What are you hoping for?

But the NFL had outmanuevered the tradition. And for good reason. The last several years, the long wait for the limited free seating at the draft had occasioned stampedes on the doors when it became clear there were more wrists than wristbands.

At the time, that knowledge didn’t comfort me. I was standing on the corner with no story and no clue what to do. I gathered what info I could from a bemused looking Browns fan then started to walk up and down the street, searching for any inspiration, any story whatsoever.

I met him on the corner of 51st Street and 6th Avenue. An overlarge Joe Horn Saints jersey was draped around his considerable frame. A phone jutting straight out from his ear so prominently that it wasn't immediately that I realized that he was talking to me.

But he was... in a stream-of-consciousness rant about just how the NFL screwed him over.

I just tried to keep up as he talked about the years he’s been coming to the draft. How he’s been heartbroken time and time again by the Saints. Which fans were worse, the Eagles or the Jets (his money, the Jets by a mile). What stadiums he still had yet to visit. Which free agent contracts were ridiculous. What draft prospects were overrated.

In the span of some three hours we wandered around trying to find a way into the draft and we talked football the entire time. I tried to turn this guy’s plight and a few other shutout fans milling about into my story. But in the end it just wasn’t compelling enough. Sure, the NFL changed the rules and didn’t tell anyone by giving out the wristbands for admittance the night before. But the decision froze out only a handful, a fair price to ensure the safety of the majority.

Instead of a story, however, I found a fast if brief friend. We eventually went our separate ways. But for those few hours the two of us shot back and forth about every topic imaginable concering this sport we love. It’s an experience I doubt I would’ve had if not for writing this blog for the past couple years.

And that’s special to me. I’m thankful that starting this blog has, contrary to the general depiction of bloggers as stuck in their parents’ basements, pushed me out into the world, whether the world of ideas or the bustling one of real people.

Most of all, though, I want to thank you who took the time to check in on this blog from time to time and allowed me the space to share knowledge, make mistakes, and organize my thoughts. Some of you have come and gone and come back again. Some of you have just come then gone. Some of you have diligently clicked that bookmark every day.

It's been fun. But now it's time to grow and change. Please join me in that growth and change... and allow me one last plug (no, not for the Norman Einsteins, that comes later today... and yes, you should join the list) but for Throwing Into Traffic where Zac will be dropping his always thoughtful, always entertaining NFL football knowledge.

Zac's been an indispensable brother-in-arms in the day-late, big-idea football analysis game. And no one’s even come close to what Zac does for the NFL beat. That's the nice thing about the internet, there's always something else out there to be discovered.

The Norman Einsteins Are Calling!

"Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein." -Joe Theismann

It's something I've hinted at in this space over the last month, but let me make it official: I'm launching a new project.

It's called - if you can't tell from the big image above - the Norman Einsteins. It's a monthly online magazine of sports and culture. Our first issue is dropping June 1st.

Let me make a recommendation, join our email list. It's a monthly email notifying you when the latest issue is published. To subscribe, send an email to:

thelist-join@normaneinsteins.com

Then reply to the confirmation email - simple as pie! Your email address will only be visible to the list admin (that's me) and the list is announcement-only (members cannot reply to it) so you can be assured your privacy won't be compromised.

The reasons for this new venture are manifold, but let me run down the main ones.

First, I believe there is phenomenal talent lurking in the sports blogosphere, but for the most part it's disconnected from each other. The Norman Einsteins magazine is about bringing that talent together every month for creative long form and freeform projects, giving it space to stretch out free from the daily publishing grind of blogging.

With the Norman Einsteins, I'm very lucky to have some truly great writers/bloggers signed on for the first issue.

Second, with the push to microblogging (Twitter and the like) there's a condensing and ultimately dearth of highly expressive content. Not just in sportswriting, by any means, but sportswriting has been duly effected. Mainstream Media blames the internet without realizing that the internet is merely a tool, something not unlike the paper dying print is inked upon. It seems to me that there is still great untapped potential in using the web as a canvas.

I've created what I hope to be a simple yet engaging and flexible site which will allow myself and my contributors to explore ways to ring the most out of the online medium in concert with great content.

And third, perhaps most importantly, the Norman Einsteins is a challenge not just to myself, but to the quality of work that can be created for you, the avid sports fan. I began Fuhbaw two years ago because I wanted to push myself, to grow and change.

The Norman Einsteins magazine is a continuation of that growth and change, but broadened in scope and goal.

I've learned a lot beyond just football in this space. Putting thoughts down, making sense of them, then hitting that "publish" button really teaches a person much about himself, how his mind works, then what rattling about in that mind is valuable for the reader out there. I wouldn't trade the two years of constant work on Fuhbaw for anything.

But, it's time to move on, it's time to grow and change. And I hope you join me. It should be a lot of fun.

So, yes, soon I won't be publishing here at Fuhbaw. Join the list - again, email thelist-join@normaneinsteins.com then simply reply to the confirmation email - and in exchange for receiving one email a month with one link to click, read some truly unique sports analysis, stories, and projects.

The Shadow's Shade

Word comes down from Les Bowen at the Philadelphia Daily News (via Michael Lombardi at the National Football Post) that Eagles defensive coordinator Jim Johnson is taking leave for a second round of chemotherapy.

As we ourselves age, inevitably cancer finds people we know and love… or ourselves. Part of that truth – combined with advancements in treatment and early detection – has made cancer less threatening than it was a generation ago. Both my mom and an aunt survived breast cancer. And, given the toughness of these ladies, outside of a few moments of anxiety, that felt a foregone conclusion to me.

But no one seems to be sugar coating Jim Johnson’s second battle with melanoma, a particularly nasty strain of cancer at that.

I’m a big Jim Johnson fan. That might not be obvious, but it’s fact. I tend to focus my analysis on players because so much of what happens on the field veers sharply off script. And sportswriting, I feel, already places too much blame or adulation on the coach’s head. I’ll hardly deny the long hours the job demands and the work put it in. But at the pro level, the sport is more about the translation of this work through the players playing and the rare physicality we as fans witness in action.

Certain coaches get it. And Jim Johnson is one of those.

Much like his contemporary Dick LeBeau at the Steelers, Johnson runs a creative attacking defensive system, one that’s just as exciting to watch as any high powered offense because it refuses the contention that defenses are inherently reactive and therefore passive. Never mind that Johnson runs a base 4-3 and LeBeau a 3-4, their systems are blood brothers at their core.

And, as Lombardi points out, Johnson is a masterful in-game playcaller, not a trait normally bandied about with defensive coaches. His feel for rhythm – of the opponent’s offense, of his players’ performances – affords Johnson the freedom to dictate the pace of the game rather than have it dictated to him.

But what I appreciate most about Johnson is his way with his players. And that truth is most central to Johnson’s success in running a creative scheme and employing it masterfully on game days.

You can see Johnson's skill with his players in his development of midrounders into Pro Bowlers, like Trent Cole and Jeremiah Trotter. You can see it in the players that have left Philly and never matched their previous success, like Corey Simon and Bobby Taylor. You can see it in the respect former Eagles defenders have for the franchise despite owner Jeff Lurie's penny pinching (or "thrift" if you prefer).

Johnson has made an art of communication and adaptability. His scheme sticks to his basic tenets of aggression and relentless pursuit, but he builds its specifics around the skills of his players. It’s those kind of rare harmonius convergences that thrive in the NFL, evident in the Eagles Super Bowl run in 2004 and the championship game run last year.

So here’s hoping for Jim Johnson’s health for himself, for his family, for his friends. But here’s hoping for his health, not least of all, for the sport itself.

Logic In the Mist

Never underestimate the kind of crazy it takes to excel as a pro linebacker.

A brief local news item picked up by MSNBC.com is garnering some notice in this dead offseason. Pittsburgh backer James Harrison is refusing President Obama's White House invitation.

It is of course a photo op tradition, the Super Bowl winning team descends upon the White House to shake hands with the Prez and present him with a team jersey numbered according to the latest Super Bowl.

Okay. So Harrison is a staunch conservative who is still distraught at McCain's horrid loss? Nope.

"This is how I feel -- if you want to see the Pittsburgh Steelers, invite us when we don't win the Super Bowl. As far as I'm concerned, he [Obama] would've invited Arizona if they had won," said Harrison.

Yup, James, that's pretty much true. If the Cardinals would've won, then, yes, they would have the privilege of meeting the President of the United States of America. You know, a privilege not everyone gets.

I had forgotten that Harrison pulled the same thing after Super Bowl 40 when Harrison was a special teams demon, not a starter. At that time, Harrison's decision was odd. I think many of us wrote it off as a confused political statement.

And really Harrison's first White House boycott was a weird but fitting conclusion to a Steelers championship which was flush with similar craziness. Remember Joey Porter's bizarre pregame claims? The Steelers were six seeds in the AFC facing a one-seed Seahwaks team yet many writers pegged Pittsburgh the favorite. Porter took those predictions as a sign of *disrespect* to the team's underdog status and yelled about it much of the week leading up to the game.

When Harrison, a little known player, chose to skip the White House handshake with President Bush, it really just seemed like another small piece of the collective madness.

Instead, as evidenced by Harrison's second skip, fresh off his Defensive Player of the Year season, his decision is a significant glimpse of what makes insane competitors tick. Against all logic, Harrison seems to believe that the President should feel privileged to meet the Steelers coaches and players. The implication persists that the President is jumping the bandwagon.

But I think most importantly, Harrison is displaying a complete disregard for hallowed forms or venerated traditions. To succeed in a world as bizarre as pro sports, the athlete must believe anything possible, that limitations apply to other people, and there is nothing that he or she doesn't deserve if the requisite hard work is put in.

I often go back and forth with a coworker about sports stars. This coworker chafes at any player who even remotely comes off as cocky or swaggering (members of the Boston Celtics excepted). I'm constantly laying the case for the importance of ego in sports, and not just for the oft-repeated narrative involving hubris.

The psyche of the athlete is a bizarre and sometimes fascinating place. Sure, Kobe Bryant is an awful human being but you can't fault him for his notion that he is somehow better than everyone else, because, well, there's some truth to it.

Athletes in the course of their work don't necessarily better the world in any measurable way. Sure, plenty of wealthy sports stars donate money and time to charity work, start their own foundations, and give back to communities. But that's more a function of wealth than sports. If players made no more than their forebearers in pro sports, I'm sure the amount of charity work undertaken among pro athletes would fall in lines with its variation among the middle class.

Yet sports do benefit the world at large, if not in an obvious way. It's this notion of pushing the human form to its limits in order to extract the absolute best from it. While the human brain is our greatest asset, pro sports functions as a laboratory of sorts, how that greatest asset is put to use to maximize the excellence of our greatest limitation, our bodies.

Take a gander around the animal kingdom. Compared to other species near the top of the food chain, humans are slow and weak and small. Our bodies are that which fail us. But for whatever reason we must confront with the limitations of our forms.

Sports, in a broad sense, is a repudiation that we aren't fast or strong or big enough. The most physically gifted among us, pushing themselves as far as they can go on a physical plane, is almost required to have a hearty disdain for limitations. It's an unique mindset, but it is primarily just that, a state of mind. Like the approach of any kind of greatness in human endeavor, that state of mind is going to seem more than a little off to those of us who muddle around the middle of human existence.

So James Harrison's decision to rebuff Obama's invitation is culturally idiotic. The most powerful man on this Earth and his requests should not be taken lightly. But in a philosophical sense, in an evolutionary sense, Harrison's reasoning is something to be expected even if - no - especially because it smacks of hubris.

Faces And Sketches (This Changes Everything)

Two trades significantly reordered the first round of this year’s NFL draft, one at the top, one near the bottom. Two teams both shot up a dozen or more selections, surrendering a considerable cost in draft picks and/or players, to take their man. The two targets both hailed from USC.

And, in the seasons to come, these two trades could go a long way to defining the 2009 draft, for better or worse. They most certainly will define the fortunes of two teams.

I am, of course, talking about the New York Jets trading up for quarterback Mark Sanchez and the Green Bay Packers for linebacker Clay Matthews III.

There are plenty of differences between the two trades. Sanchez keys the offensive identity of a defensive-minded team. Matthews, along fellow first-round selection BJ Raji, the defensive identity of an offensive team. Sanchez is the new face of a franchise. Matthews is one step in recovery from once surrendering too much of the franchise to a single face. Sanchez is bound for the media epicenter that is New York. Matthews the cultural backwater that is Green Bay.

But the trades and selections for Sanchez and Matthews represent a break from the past for the Jets and the Packers, two teams, once bound, in differing degrees, to the fortunes of Brett Favre.

In the case of the Jets, it’s a final clean break from the Eric Mangini era. And it’s not just ridding the roster of a few Mangini favorites – Kenyon Coleman, Abram Elam, and Bret Ratliff – rather it’s about putting faith in talent and hoping to construct a system around that.

Fitting then that Jets traded up with Mangini’s new team to accomplish this sea change. As the Cleveland Browns continued to backpedal through the round, the Jets sprinted forward. Just as they targeted key free agent Bart Scott and disgruntled Lito Sheppard in trade, GM Mike Tannenbaum and new coach Rex Ryan set their sights on Sanchez as a cornerstone to build the new Jets around.

Mangini brought system and desperation. Ryan brings flexibility and aggression. I’m not saying one is objectively better than the other. Each have their applications. But for a team that folded so miserably down the stretch last year the change is likely welcome.

Matthews, on the other hand, now a Packer isn’t the reflection of a new regime. However, his presence does indicate a minor revolution of sorts. And it’s not just the team’s shift from the base 4-3 defense to a 3-4 taught by new coach, former Blitzburgh coordinator Dom Capers.

Yes, the scheme shift and this ensuing draft are incredibly important for Green Bay. Matthews and Raji keep the Packers from fitting too many square pegs into round holes (though we’re all stuck with the potentially awkward, potentially amazing drama of Aaron Kampman’s transition to rush linebacker).

But the Packers eschewed their patient approach to roster building in the confident trade-up to snag Matthews. GM Ted Thompson has employed a strategy of trading down again and again to amass picks and improve his chances statistically to hit on his selections. A draft by volume approach.

By trading away their one second- and both third-round selections to the Patriots, the Packers claimed an assurity not just in the skills of Matthews and Raji to toughen a defensive front seven pushed around too much to compete in the NFC North but also in the strength of their roster built by trading down through the course of four prior drafts.

And that’s another thing both trades share, a certain boldness, a certain swagger. Perhaps not new to the likes of big talking Rex Ryan, perhaps more so to the buttoned-up Ted Thompson.

Most importantly, though, regardless of how Sanchez and Matthews pan out, they signal new territory for their respective teams.

Freedom Of Routine (This Changes Nothing)

The Ravens continue to be the Ravens, perhaps more consistent in their identity than any other team in the NFL.

While the veterans seem to define the team, the scary part is that Baltimore is getting younger and potentially better at their most important positions, the positions they use as cornerstones.

If the draft is all about value, then the important part is how value is perceived. The Ravens have a slightly different value system than everyone else. Gigantic tackles, high-motor edge rushers, ball-hawking defensive backs, versatile running backs.

The Ravens assurity even spreads to the type of player they draft at each position. Last year, drafting Joe Flacco in almost every way displayed the same logic as drafting bust Kyle Boller a few years before. Raw prospect. Big arm. Difficult to gauge intangibles (Boller coming out of Tedford’s Cal system, Flacco of DI-AA Delaware).

But general manager Ozzie Newsome stuck to his guns, stuck with the profile they were looking for in a quarterback. And Flacco so far looks like the real deal.

Plenty have written off Baltimore’s draft a couple weeks ago as unspectacular, with a couple reaches, while leaving a few needs on the table.

But I’ll refer to Zac at Throwing Into Traffic whose notion that identity advancing talent is always a need, will almost always pay dividends. Looking at Baltimore’s six selections this way, the Ravens draft is potentially good to great.

Though Andre Smith was the best tackle on film and Jason Smith was the best in interviews, Michael Oher from Ole Miss could be the best player of them all. And the Ravens, possessing all the depth and tools to develop him, nab Oher toward the end of the first round.

Knowing they can’t franchise Terrell Suggs forever, the Ravens take Paul Kruger, a big edge rusher. Knowing Samari Rolle won’t run forever, they take ball-hawking Lardarius Webb. And, of course, knowing that they will always be a grind-it-out team, the Ravens take perhaps one of the steals of the draft late in the sixth, back Cedric Peerman, a solid between the tackles runner with the speed to bounce it outside and threaten in the short zones through out of the backfield.

So while pundits can sing the praises of the Bengals drafting well according to some abstract board, the Ravens are perfectly happy being looked over in April, staying true to themselves and likely playing again in January.

The Bitter Pill

The recently retired John Madden authored a refrain for Brett Favre, one that shorthanded his legacy of occasionally amazing, occasionally frustrating play on the field.

“He looks like a kid out there.”

Like the annual retirement drama – first the will-he-or-won’t-he shell game, then the coyly denied encore – Madden’s fawning refrain for Favre became tiring and the object of ridicule.

But perhaps there’s more truth to the statement underneath the surface.

The new cycle is abuzz with Favre’s possible retiring of retirement again. This time around, though, it’s about righting wrongs, a delayed union with the Minnesota Vikings while sticking it to the Packers management which deftly manuevered around Favre’s demands during last summer’s standoff, shipping Favre to the New York Jets, an ironic Siberia of sorts.

I was prepared to make no more comments on the swirling controversy. Did you miss what I already wrote? It was buried in musings on Percy Harvin to the Vikings:

Favre is a much better quarterback even at 40 than Tarvaris Jackson or Sage Rosenfels. But at this late stage he can only fulfill the same arch as those two. A surprising and competitive regular season with diminishing returns, a nonfactor once they reach the playoffs.

(And it’s not just Jett Favre that brings me to this conclusion. I was in the stands at Lambeau, we were chanting MVP during what was an incredible statistical season for a 38 year old signal caller. But we knew it was all a nostalgia trip. The Stones with Ron Wood, not Brian Jones. All of the form, most of the substance, but not all the substance… we supplied the rest, the missing part.)

As is his wont, my friend the Counselor was even less charitable than I. “The Giants threw the kitchen sink at Tom Brady and Romo two years ago but they dared Favre to beat them,” he said, “[Favre] couldn't do it.”

But, at some point, this new old mess became about something else. And like Madden’s refrain for Favre, the on-field truths started spilling over to the off-field reality.

Unnamed sources close to Favre report that his bitterness toward the Green Bay Packers management is so deep that he’s seriously considering subjecting his nearly 40 year old body to another grueling season, just a season after injuries limited his effectiveness down the stretch.

The entire bitterness angle might become moot if Favre requires serious surgery on his throwing arm. But it’s there nonetheless, acknowledged during his latest retirement, potentially eating away at the substance of his legacy.

And it strikes me that this overwhelming bitterness is entirely immature, even childish, especially for a man whose beard is flecked with gray and face creased with wrinkles, each gray hair and craggy wrinkle earned through physical campaigns of football seasons stretching back decades.

Perhaps Madden was more right than he knew, that Favre is essentially a child.

There’s a puzzling logic at work here, namely, that something is owed to him yet he owes nothing in return.

At the center of this is a struggle with Green Bay’s management for the identity of the franchise. In last year’s standoff, Favre and wife Deanna revealed a series of demands on the team, players to trade for and sign to give Favre a contender in his final years.

The lines blurred between Favre and the Packers. The face of the franchise thing went too far. Many had a hand in it – fans, coaches, writers, etc – but most of all, Favre himself.

At some point, current general manager Ted Thompson and coach Mike McCarthy sought to draw those distinctions again. What started off as tense became untenable after the Packers close loss in the NFC Championship game two years ago. The new management provided the contender on their own terms in concert with Favre’s diminished role. Did someone not hold up their end of the bargain? If so, which side?

From that tit-for-tat Favre’s bitterness sprung, that childish sense of being denied something owed.

Yet lost in the controversy is what the team’s fans are owed. The front office is not interchangable with the team. Yes, it’s a part, an integral and essential part. But a team is more than this, especially one owned by its fans (though I would argue all fans own their teams to an extent, with the Packers it’s merely a formality).

Fans are owed a contender as often as possible. It’s about what’s on the field. The energies of the players, coaches, and personnel guys should be focused primarily on the goal of a championship. That’s all we ask, a simple and considerable request.

We can debate the various degrees at which this player or that coach is effective at their job. But without that focus, little progress is likely to be made towards a championship.

Favre’s bitterness is about something else. It’s a derailing of this focus. Money and fame already do their part in distracting the group psychology of a team. It's too much to add a quarterback, a de facto leader, not campaigning for an elusive ring, rather because the petty squabbles of power plays bruise the ego.

Favre may play like a kid, but he's acting like one, too.

Light Whitening (This Changes Everything, Maybe)

There's hope. At least, there seems to be hope.

Immediately after the draft I worried that Pat White, while a seeming perfect fit for Miami’s go-go-gadget Wildcat formation, might be relegated to gimmick duty for the balance of his career.

See, Bill Parcells is a guy that's great at winning the battle, but not necessarily the war, unlike his former pupil Bill Belichick who excels at the inverse. It's amazing how quickly Parcells reverses the fortunes of moribund franchises... but his record of diminishing returns since his days with the Giants is a testament to his powers of being able to work a formula incredibly well yet still being constrained by it.

I don't mean that as a slam at all. He's a great coach. A great football mind. A great personnel guy. But not an innovator.

Anyway, back to Pat White.

But this piece comes down from Omar Kelly at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel (via the Fanhouse):

"[White's] no gimmick. He's dynamic. He's a little bit raw as a [quarterback] but has a good foundation. He's going to get better," one player personnel director said, admitting White was rated among the top-50 players on his team's draft board. "He wasn't going to be there in the third round."

One front-office official believes the Miami Dolphins are trying to revolutionize pro football by bringing the spread to the NFL, and he said the right player to do it in White.

There's been a hell of a lot of spread looking formations and plays creeping into NFL offenses of late. But coaches and players have resisted the "s" word... "spread," that is.

The defenses are too fast in the NFL, spread quarterbacks would be ground into dust... so the refrain runs why the spread won't work in the NFL.

To me, it's all excuses for NFL coaches to play in on the safe side. I don't have any particular love of the spread offense. What I do love is a system that highlights great football talents. And there is a place on the field for a Pat White and a Tim Tebow. At quarterback. It's not about running a pure system. It's about meeting considerable talents halfway.

I was planning a big ol' post about it... but you know what? I really don't have anything to say besides, "Please, oh please, oh please, let it be true."

A Few Of My (Least) Favorite Picks

In Fuhbaw's ongoing draft analysis (this is the offseason, people, we need to run with this for all it's worth) let's continue to avoid the draft grades and the who's-hot-who's-not talk.

Yesterday, I ran down my favorite picks of the 2009 draft and the reasons why. Today, the flipside, selections that raise more questions than they answer, the head scratchers, the reaches.

These are a few of my (least) favorite picks.

1. Matt Stafford, Lions

The most debated pick in the draft, of course. The arguments for and against are out there and well known. The prevailing sentiment post-draft is that if a team is without a franchise quarterback and they have even the chance to select one, than the team must make the pick.

Really? How's that working out for Oakland? Wouldn't the Browns have been better served to not give away their 2008 draft for Brady Quinn? Vince Young in Tennessee? David Carr in Houston? Hell, even consider Detroit and Joey Harrington. Harrington was a can't-miss prospect who was brutalized behind an offensive line sponsored by Swiss cheese.

Stafford was nowhere near the college player Harrington was. He walks into a complete rebuild job with one clearcut weapon and nothing else to lean on. Contrast that scenario with Stafford at Georgia. The Bulldogs were a championship caliber team on talent, through and through, and they finished as the third best team in their conference (and I'm not sure that Ole Miss wasn't better by season's end). The quarterback isn't the author of everything on the field, but Stafford was awfully inconsistent in the Bulldogs play-action passing system.

I loved everything else about Detroit's draft, such a logical arch to their selections, but the top pick could mar what would otherwise be a franchise changing class.

8. Eugene Monroe, Jaguars

Yes, the bloodless, passionless play bothers me. But Monroe might turn out to be a solid starter. He's polished and has solid footwork. During the Virginia games I've caught in the past couple years, Monroe always plays with solid leverage.

I'm skeptical of the selection of Monroe in the top ten. Andre Smith was considered the top tackle on film. Had Smith not bungled the postseason, combine, and individual workouts, he might have been a legitimate number one overall selection. Jason Smith plays with the requisite nastiness and has elite physical gifts, making him a credible top-five selection (two seems high, but other factors were in play).

What I don't like is the Jaguars eschewing the upside of Michael Oher's abilities for the safety of Monroe's polish. It's one of those soulless chalk picks emblematic of teams whose own ceiling is only so high, say, the divisional round of the playoffs.

26. Clay Matthews III, Packers

I hope I'm wrong about this, but Matthews the Third, royal football lineage aside, fits the profile of a workout wonder. Only one season as a starter (and not until the fourth game of the season). Ridiculously top measurables. The measurables beg the question, though, why did it take four years to crack the starting lineup? Even at USC? More thoughts later this week.

35. James Laurinaitis, Rams

I don't want to bury the guy before he has a chance to prove himself, but I always thought that Laurinaitis was a tad overrated in his Ohio State career. He would dominate the cream puffs, produce at the Big Ten level, then disappear against big-time competition.

Consider, too, that Ohio State hasn't produced many elite front seven players the past several years. I won't call Vernon Gholston a bust yet, but he was horrendous last season. AJ Hawk has never lived up to his fifth overall selection. And Bobby Carpenter's underwhelmed to the point of Dallas chasing busted down free agents like Zach Thomas and Keith Brooking.

Combine that with a Buckeyes scheme designed to increase production from the linebacking corps and Laurnaitis's NFL career might end more like Tom Cousineau's than Chris Spielman's.

37. Alphonso Smith, Broncos

Denver got played by Seattle: next year's first! Not Smith's fault at all... but Josh McDaniels just might have been planted by Bill Belichick to ruin the Broncos.

42. Jairus Byrd, Bills

This has nothing to do with Byrd himself, who if history repeats itself will develop into a solid pro. Rather, I take issue with Buffalo's strategy concerning their defensive backfield. They do a great job developing quality starters then let them leave through free agency. This in turn forces them to spend more high picks on corners and safeties, limiting their ability to address other areas not nearly as set as the defensive backfield could be.

Granted, there's no sense in matching the ridiculous money San Francisco dropped on Nate Clements. But letting a good starter like Jabari Greer go before locking him up to a modest long-term deal spreads draft resources thinner than they already are.

Again, I've got no qualm with Byrd the player, rather the familiar arch Byrd's Buffalo career portends.

73. Derek Cox, Jaguars

I honestly have nothing to say about Cox, considering he played his college ball at the Division II level, William & Mary, to be exact, which at the draft occasioned a "William & Mary has a football team?" response from every group I was sitting amidst. Rather, it's what Jacksonville surrendered to draft such a coveted prospect (a second in 2010) and to whom (the Evil Empire's Foxboro office).

A Few Of My Favorite Picks

Annually, the NFL draft’s wake is littered with report cards and declarations of winners and losers. This year, of course, is no different.

While the draft’s popularity speaks to a collective anxiety about the unknown, once the event is finished and representatives of the 32 teams head home, unknowns still run rampant.

I don’t mean to disparage instant analysis. There’s something to be said for taking the few knowns and trying to complete the picture yourself. But a simple thumbs up or down doesn’t really help much.

Looking back at the previous weekend, there’s some things that I liked and somethings that I didn’t. Sometimes it’s about the logic of the selection. Sometimes the fit of player and team.

Beginnings are very important, so here are my favorite picks from this year’s draft. Some will be covered in greater depth over the coming week.

4. Aaron Curry, Seahawks

My man DJ Noid groaned when his Seahawks selected Curry. Understandable. Seattle just traded away Julian Peterson and slapped the franchise tag on Leroy Hill. Now they would be floating another bloated contract to a linebacker. But money aside the more puzzling aspect of the selection might be value of the position, considering Hill and Lofa Tatupu are young talents already in the starting lineup.

Seattle tried once already to field an elite corps three across with Peterson, Tatupu, and Hill. More often than working in concert, the three took turns stepping up, but all in all as a group they never quite dominated the way they were supposed to. The tepid result doesn’t necessarily indicate the logic is flawed. Rather the balance was off between the elder Peterson and the younger Tatupu and Hill.

So the Seahawks try again, this time with the player universally considered the top talent irrespective of position in this draft. This is the player that so impressed Dick Butkus, that Butkus delivered his namesake collegiate award to Curry in person.

9. BJ Raji, Packers

22. Percy Harvin, Vikings

In case you missed it... already covered.

23. Michael Oher, Ravens

24. Peria Jerry, Falcons

With several teams abandoning the 4-3 defense in favor of the 3-4 this year, the three-technique defensive tackle is a less coveted commodity. The disrupter, the gap shooter, the creater of chaos: that’s the prototype of a three-technique. Jerry did that better than just about everyone in the nation last year, helping to lead an Ole Miss program out of a several dark seasons.

Atlanta’s most dire need was inside presence on defense. Though, Jerry isn’t a massive space eater, he should free up John Abraham on the edge with his relentless play. While the defense still has a long way to go, Jerry is a perfect building block for the new Falcons.

45. Clint Stintim, Giants

Everyone was so focused on the Giants’ need at receiver, the quiet but important selections of linebacker Clint Stintim and offensive tackle William Beatty in the second round didn’t receive much notice. But it’s those kind of value over need selections that keep top teams competitive.

Both Stintim and Beatty were considered borderline first round talents. Though the defensive front seven and offensive line have been strengths for New York, the Giants wisely chose to select top prospects that they can bring up through their system. Linebacker Antonio Pierce can’t pursue forever and roadgrading tackles David Diehl and Kareem McKenzie are solid but unspectacular. Stintim and Beatty should continue to affirm the Giants commitment to physical play upfront.

46. Connor Barwin, Texans

53. LeSean McCoy, Eagles

I do like the Jeremy Maclin selection in the first round even if Maclin and Desean Jackson are essentially the sam receiver. But I like the running back McCoy selection even more. He’s not a burner though he’s quick. And he’s not huge though he’s tough. If there’s ever anyone who understands carrying the burden of an offense, it’s McCoy from his time in Pittsburgh. And anyone who is slated to take over for Brian Westbrook will have to carry the burden of an offense.

60. William Beatty, Giants

95. Rashad Johnson, Cardinals

Alabama’s regular season last year was a surprise, well, before the poor postseason showing. But what wasn’t a surprise was the hard hitting and rangy play from safety Rashad Johnson. Most of the defense’s regular season domination was focused on massive defensive tackle Terrence Cody, but Rashad was the centerfield enforcer, directing the backcourt and making plays. Arizona continues to do a fantastic job identifying big time performers for their physical defense. Pairing Rashad with hard hitting Adrian Wilson should instill no small amount of fear in the coming years.

119. DJ Moore, Bears

With almost no offense to speak of the Vanderbilt Commodores returned to the postseason for their first bowl win in 53 years. A lot of that had to do with DJ Moore, hands down the team’s top playmaker, a consistent force at corner in the brutal SEC. Moore’s short, he’s not exceptionally fast, though he possesses that impressive field speed that 40 yard times rarely capture. But he’s a born Cover Two corner, able to play off the ball and contain in run support. Desperately needing talent in the secondary, Chicago jumped at the chance to take Moore so late.

152. James Casey, Texans

171. Nate Davis, 49ers

Davis was an enigma throughout the draft process. A great leader at Ball State with an NFL arm yet an admitted learning disability threw the ability to make good on that talent into question. A three year starter who posted grat numbers, Davis was inconsistent against top competition. In a weak quarterback class, what value did the fourth or fifth quarterback really have?

But in San Francisco, Davis might have found a good situation. Yes, Coach Mike Singletary appears to be batshit. But Singletary is also a teacher and a motivator. And if a player demonstrates a willingness to put the hard work, he’ll find a way to teach that player. Davis has been nothing but humble and composed throughout his wildly fluctuating draft season. Something tells me that he has temerity to put in the necessary work to give himself a real shot. And don’t underestimate how fluid San Francisco’s quarterback situation is. Shaun Hill. Alex Smith. Davis needn’t rush to the starting line, but he also shouldn’t be held back if he refines his raw skills.

199. Stryker Sulak, Raiders

Lost in all the bluster about Oakland fetishizing speed in the players they select is that speed is actually incredibly important for NFL success. No, it’s not everything, but it’s important variable. Sulak, an impressively named undersized defensive end from Missouri, will convert to linebacker along with speedy fourth round selection Slade Norris from Oregon State. Sulak was a sack machine in college in large part due to that speed. Along with Norris, he should make a fine special teamer with the opportunity to challenge for a starting spot in a year or two. It’s the kind of sixth round pick that can pay huge dividends for a team.

233. Sammie Stroughter, Buccaneers

Stroughter isn’t the guy who makes the big play. Of course, he’s not. Otherwise he would’ve been selected before the seventh round. But at Oregon State, when he was on the field, he simply produced. The chain mover, the third down guy, the slot machine. He always seemed to be in the right place.

Sammie lost a season to depression after both his male father figures passed. But he battled back with the support of his coach and teammates to regain much of his on-field form. I’m inclined to believe that a player who has faced his demons, battled them, and come back probably has the best chance to deal with the topsy turvy alternate reality that is the NFL. I like Sammie’s chances.

This Changes Everything: This Changes Nothing

Dreams of the Apocalypse are only affirmation that what humanity has created is utterly beautiful yet terrifying in its scope, that the individual is subsumed in this mess, twisted by it yet somehow bettered as well.

I've been thinking on what the draft this past weekend means, beyond grades, beyond knee-jerk analysis, beyond, well, jerks in general.

I've been thinking that there's some quality to this draft in particular that for teams could change everything immeasurably, or could change nothing at all.

Maybe it's the preponderance of essential but middling talent. It’s like the middle class in this country. Everyone talks about the middle class, no one actually does anything for them. Yet there they are swinging elections and voting on the dollar, that anonymous power that installs or topples regimes.

So the more I ruminate on the overarching theme of the 2009 draft, this class either changes everything or it changes nothing for the league’s 32 teams.

Odd perhaps, but no one exemplifies both these opposing states of inertia better than Percy Harvin, one of the few elites from the rabble of this middling class. Specifically, Percy Harvin to the Minnesota Vikings.

It is important to note, and certainly has been noted, that Harvin fell to the Vikings much like Randy Moss did just over a decade earlier. A transcendent talent weighted down by past transgressions, causing a plummet down the first round.

No, Moss and Harvin aren’t cut from the same cloth, talent-wise. But they both possess game changing ability even if it operates in different ways.

Critics of the Harvin selection point to a range of issues: maturity, intelligence, lack of polish, hubris. He’s either set to self destruct or incapable of rigging the wires for his explosion onto the NFL scene.

These new Vikings are supposed to honor character that maximizes its talent. Harvin proves the new direction simply a shadow show to dim the lights on the Love Boat scandal, if Bryant McKinnie didn’t already do so last season.

No, these are the same old Vikings even with boy scouts Adrian Peterson, Antoine Winfield, and Steve Hutchinson.

And Harvin changes nothing for the Vikings because he’s just another talented piece in that anti-quarterback movement in Minnesota. Even if the Vikes coax Brett Favre out of retirement, I think this holds. Favre is a much better quarterback even at 40 than Tarvaris Jackson or Sage Rosenfels. But at this late stage he can only fulfill the same arch as those two. A surprising and competitive regular season with diminishing returns, a nonfactor once they reach the playoffs.

(And it’s not just Jett Favre that brings me to this conclusion. I was in the stands at Lambeau, we were chanting MVP during what was an incredible statistical season for a 38 year old signal caller. But we knew it was all a nostalgia trip. The Stones with Ron Wood, not Brian Jones. All of the form, most of the substance, but not all the substance… we supplied the rest, the missing part.)

So Harvin doesn’t change the idea of the Vikings. It’s still talent first, consequences be damned. It’s still a glut everywhere on the field except the most important position. It’s still difficult to discern whether the Vikes brilliantly eschew sound football logic or idiotically defy it.

But Harvin does change the Vikings on field.

This is the pre-draft Vikings. Bernard Berrian is a shiny, high-tech toy without an instruction manual. Sidney Rice is on pause until free agency finds him producing sneaky good numbers on the Jets or Ravens. Adrian Peterson and Chester Taylor are trapped in the phantom zone from Superman II.

Harvin brings all these pieces together, his playmaking talent potentially slotted in every skill position on offense, even out of a Wildcat formation. It’s not what he does down field, it’s what he does in the short zones, out of the backfield, across a formation.

Harvin’s play may be raw but it will work between all the polished pieces of the Vikings offense, connecting them as the quarterback position should but currently doesn’t.

It’s not that I lack faith that Childress won’t fuck this up, he most certainly will. Watching the Viking-Eagles playoff game last year removed any doubt in my mind that Childress will never coach this team to the Promised Land. While Brian Dawkins is having the game of his late career, Childress kept sending his receivers over the middle and charging his inexperienced quarterback to attack through the air while perhaps the best player in the league stalks the sidelines or takes the playfake. Seriously, how do you not ride Adrian Peterson when your season is on the line?

Jared Allen, Pat Williams, and Kevin Williams – the best four man front in football even without a fourth body lining up beside them – will soften the blow of Childress’s ineptitude and make this a competitive team. Perhaps enough to keep Childress his job

But these Vikings will put the fear of God into opponents, not just on potential alone any more. Harvin could become the last important piece of this quarterback-less contender and the reason it should face an end of days.