'fuh-"baw: 1. a game of highly organized chaos. 2. the wild card of football analysis.

Join the Norman Einsteins!

2009-05-26T23:55:00.004-04:00

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

2009-05-26T12:35:00.000-04:00

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!

2009-05-22T10:06:00.002-04:00

"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

2009-05-21T11:55:00.000-04:00

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

2009-05-18T10:26:00.003-04:00

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)

2009-05-14T16:41:00.003-04:00

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)

2009-05-12T13:06:00.001-04:00

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

2009-05-11T12:22:00.002-04:00

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)

2009-05-06T17:45:00.001-04:00

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

2009-05-05T09:17:00.001-04:00

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

2009-05-04T15:36:00.000-04:00

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

2009-05-01T14:48:00.002-04:00

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.

The Business Of Heros And Villains

2009-04-28T11:29:00.000-04:00

More draft analysis to come, but a little item that caught my attention this morning: Colts owner Jim Irsay is refusing to reopen negotiations on the Lucas Oil Stadium deal.

Okay. Not surprising, right? There's really no good precedent for reworking the terms of a stadium deal, publicly financed or not.

Except, Indianapolis city officials feel that the current economic crisis represents extenuating circumstances. The main problem centers around the city's Capital Improvement Board (CIB) which operates Lucas Oil Stadium, leasing it to the Colts. According to Indiana governor Mitch Daniels and other state and local officials, the CIB is facing a $47 million dollar deficit for 2010.

Government officials are asking for an additional $5 million, in good conscious, from the Colts and the Pacers (the CIB also operates the Conseco Fieldhouse) to alleviate some of that deficit among other measures set to save the CIB.

My question is this, given the Irsays' history, why would Indiana ever believe they would get anything from the Colts?

Jim's father Robert was the one who loaded up the team in the middle of the night and moved them from Baltimore to Indianapolis in the first place. Of course, the Colts situation in Baltimore deteriorated around the lack of a new stadium. Back-room negotiations became front-page bickering. Distrust deepened on both sides. The elder Irsay tried to use a sale or move of the club to finalize a public financed stadium deal. But the tactics blew up in his face, eroding support in government and in the public for the franchise's stadium needs.

The saga was a public relations nightmare from every side. The city of Baltimore, with the backing of the Maryland legislature, tried to seize the club. The specter of seizure sped up the negotiations between Indianapolis and Irsay. Once finalized, Indianapolis mayor John B. Smith sent a fleet of Mayflower trucks to the Colts facility in Owings Mills and whisked the franchise away in the middle of the night.

Of course, the Irsays blame the city of Baltimore and the state legislature. And many government officials blame Robert Irsay's lack of tact in the final years of the stadium imbroglio.

There's probably enough blame to go around for both sides. But, to bring it up to the current day, does the state of Indiana really expect the the younger Irsay to go back on the terms of his very favorable deal? I'm assuming not.

Are they simply trying to create a convenient villain, a temporary one that citizens won't hate forever, but will distract the public attention's long enough while the city government raises some local taxes? That seems more likely. Irsay's already come out and said, "I'm not going to renegotiate. That's the bottom line."

I don't know if the situation between the state of Indiana and Irsay will get uglier. The public financed stadium has been taken as a given in this day and age. However, the current financial crisis has the public reexamining its values along the line of where its money goes. When city and state agencies are running up overlarge deficits simply to keep multi-millionaires and their sports teams in town, there something wrong with the system.

Unfortunately, politics tends toward convenient villains rather than real solutions. I'm not saying Irsay is right and the governor is wrong or vice versa. But they're both operating with flawed contentions, inherited from the twisted business of pro sports over the past few decades.

Love the Draft/Hate the Draft

2009-04-27T10:42:00.008-04:00

I'm finding it difficult to parse out the meaning of this year's Draft from the general excitement of Draft weekend.

Is the 2009 class an essential restocking of the league's middle class? Or simply mediocre from start to finish? Do we get hot and bothered over reaches like Darrius Heyward-Bey or Larry English? Or acknowledge with a shrug that nearly every player could've been selected a round later?

However it plays out, the Draft is a weekend to gleefully indulge our fanaticism, to dream big about the upcoming season, to over-think the manifold possibilities.

I don't have any draft grades, no winners and losers. But I do have several things I liked (+) and disliked (-) throughout the course of the weekend. Read along.

+ As wary as I am of the Stafford pick for Detroit, the remaining selections were all part of a solid - dare I say it - plan. Tight end Brandon Pettigrew gives them a top talent even if not a dire need. Safety Louis Delmas adds desperately needed physicality to the backcourt. Receiver Derrick Williams is a playmaker, plain and simple. And a ton of big, raw prospects late in the Draft gives coach Schwartz talent to develop in the trenches. I don't know if this class will work out for the Lions, but the logic is there.

- The Browns tried the quantity over quality approach... only they didn't nab much quantity for all the quality they gave up. It's not that Alex Mack and Brian Robiskie won't develop into solid starters, they most likely will; rather, dropping from the fifth overall selection to the 21st and netting only a second rounder and a couple of sixths seems like blowing a golden opportunity. At least, Cleveland is putting themselves in a position to have another shot at a high draft pick next year.

+ Seattle fleeces Denver for the Broncos first round pick next year, giving up their high second round pick, yet the Seahawks still have the juice to nab top interior linemen Max Unger in a trade with Chicago.

- Ten minutes after Seattle selected Aaron Curry with the fourth overall selection, I forgot what he looked like. I was staring at one of those draft promos unable to recognize Curry for several seconds. Why do the Seahawks have this power of making players invisible?

+ Though they are essential the same receiver, the idea of DeSean Jackson and Jeremy Maclin lining up on opposite ends of a formation is enticing. Add in Brian Westbrook spelled by "Shady" LeSean McCoy and the skill positions in Philly might match McNabb's ability to mix short and long seamlessly when he's on his rhythm.

- While Pat White at Miami looks like a good fit, it also looks like the extension of a gimmick. Bill Parcells has a history of extending gimmick until it bursts at the seams (David Meggett, anyone?) rendering White's pro potential capped by his ability to run the Wildcat, not bringing a traditional offense to meet him halfway at his considerable skill set.

+ Bill Polian always drafts like Bill Polian. For instance, NFL.com's write up on the Colts fourth round selection, defensive tackle Terrence Taylor, "Taylor has been a dominating player in the Big Ten. His biggest problem is that he lacks size. He has excellent strength and is a competitive player who plays really hard." Perfect Indianapolis player.

- Mike Brown always drafts like Mike Brown. For instance, NFL.com's write up on the Bengals sixth round selection, running back Bernard Scott, "Many red flags, including his age (25), being kicked off two teams (one in high school, one in college) and several run-ins with police." Hate to say it, but perfect Cincinnati player.

+ In a draft with a ton of solid but not spectacular talent, the Patriots owned the second round, perhaps the best round to own in a such a draft. With four selections, they added a bunch of promising prospects to the bottom of their roster, paving the way for a youth movement next season. Even better, New England parlayed two of their four third round selections into second rounders for 2010.

- With depth issues in several areas, Jacksonville traded up in the third round, giving up 2010's second to New England in the process, and picked a corner from William & Mary one selection after taking a defensive tackle from Temple. That's a lot of pressure the Jaguars are putting on this year and this class.

+ A certain luck seems to follow the post-Vick, post-Petrino Falcons. Last year, Matt Ryan dropped into their laps at three overall, transforming a previously woeful offense into a promising force. This year, Peria Jerry, the most exciting three-technique tackle in college football last year, drops into their laps at twenty-four overall. With a defense heavy draft, the Falcons could continue their ascent up the NFC.

- However some players never find their right fit. TCU safety Stephen Hodge was selected by the Cowboys to be a special teams ace which he should excel at. But Hodge might've been better off being selected by a team that plays the Tampa 2 defense and being moved to weakside linebacker. Hodge was one of the most fearsome hitters in college football last year and plays excellently inside the box. His speed, however, limits his ability to start at safety in the pros. Physically, he's a clone of Derrick Brooks.

+ Gm Ozzie Newsome might get some flack in the media for not addressing some glaring needs like wide receiver, the Ravens patiently restocked cornerstone positions of their team with players that fit their system and can develop into excellent starters. Selecting tackle Michael Oher at twenty-three overall and OLB/DE hybrid Paul Kruger in the second affirmed their identity as well as their depth.

- Sometimes affirming an identity can go a little too far. It's as if Al Davis knows everyone cracks wise about the Raiders valuing speed over all else and is deliberately making a huge show of it to prove who's in charge. Darrius Heyward-Bey wasn't really a reach compared to Davis's latter selections of speedy safety Mike Mitchell and tough guy end Matt Shaughnessy. But just about everyone selected by Oakland timed extremely well in shorts regardless of how they produced in pads.

+ Short on picks from the Jay Cutler trade, yet long on needs in their depth, the Bears wisely traded down from their second round pick and accumulated selections. They were able to address their defensive line depth (prospect Jarron Gilbert and solid Henry Melton) wide receiver depth (well-rounded Joaquin Iglesias and burner Johnny Knox) and add a playmaking cover two corner in DJ Moore.

- NFC North rival Green Bay, however, doubled back on their traditional Draft day strategy for one bold move. GM Ted Thompson's normal MO is stockpiling picks for value, increasing the chances to hit on his selections, and building up competition throughout the team. This year, with the trade of three picks (a second and two third rounders) to New England for the chance to draft linebacker Clay Matthews, the Packers eschewed their patient ways. Along with earlier selection BJ Raji, the Packers might have refashioned their defense with a couple of elite talents. Or they might've tied their fate to a couple lord of the flies talents in a mediocre Draft class.

+ Somehow the Giants managed to hit every need on their roster while never reaching or overreacting. Receivers Hakeem Nicks and Ramses Barden will compete to replace Plaxico. Linebacker Clint Stintim and tackle William Beatty add depth and potential long-term replacements. Tight end Travis Beckum and back Andre Brown add some solid legs to the offense and its skill position rotation. The rich keep getting richer for a reason.

- Is it just me or is Virginia becoming a factory for NFL read but bloodless offensive tackle play? First, D'Brickashaw Ferguson has all the tools to be great yet still plays like a rookie at times well into his third season. Then, Branden Albert coming out last year would rather play guard than tackle. Now, Eugene Monroe to the Jags potentially becomes the next poster child for the outline of a great left tackle but none of the guts of one.

+ I know, I know. Every year, I seem to get excited for the Texans defense to take control in the AFC South. But, good lord, they finally could've put their line in order. Sure, linebacker Brian Cushing should be a nice complement to DeMeco Ryans inside. But the prospect of Connor Barwin coming off the edge opposite Mario Williams, while both flank Amobi Okoye is what could push this defense to the next level. Should Dunta Robinson stay healthy and perhaps even young tackle Frank Okam develop, Houston might finally leap into the AFC's top tier.

- A minor complaint, but this year's Mr Irrelevant might not be very irrelevant. Kicker Ryan Succop, taken with the 256 selection, might make an impact on a Chiefs team desperate for solid production in the kicking game. Every year, the last pick of the Draft is feted with a parade and banquet in Newport Beach, California, during the summer, a sort of fifteen minutes a fame for a player more likely to slide into sudden obscurity. However, Succop, a strong legged kicker, has a great chance of making a career with the Chiefs, stealing the award from a true Mr. Irrelevant.

The Leadership Of the Blind

2009-04-24T15:48:00.001-04:00

When it comes to this year’s class of left tackles, draftniks are in agreement about two things. One, it’s highly probable six left tackles are selected in the first round. A large number to say the least. And two, this year’s class isn’t all that great.

These two contentions are at odds, perhaps even contradictory. If the available talent is low, why is the demand still high?

Because, next to quarterback, left tackle is the most valuable position on the field, in part due to its protection of that unqualified most important position on the field. At least, according to some.

So it is a question of value… just of the position more than the player.

It’s fitting then that Michael Oher from Ole Miss is in the thick of this contradiction. Oher of course was the central character in Michael Lewis’s seminal book The Blind Side. Lewis chronicled the evolution of the game through the rise in importance of the left tackle position.

Starting with Lawrence Taylor, offenses faced freakish athletes rushing the quarterback’s blind side. The counter move in this game of chess was placing another freakish athlete in the speed rushers path. Tackles had to not only be massive men but display nimble footwork, excellent balance, and ungodly strength.

A rare athlete, indeed. Which in part explains why NFL teams covet even the potential for a quality starting left tackle. But this rarity should underscore also the possibility that most of these prospects won’t transform into dependable starters much less perennial Pro Bowlers.

Teams at the top of the Draft have visions of Joe Thomas and Jonathan Ogden. Yet with this class they might end up with Robert Gallery or Alex Barron.

Out of all the tackles, Andre Smith was the one universally thought to be worth a top three selection when the college season ended. Yet Smith’s horrendous postseason from the bowl game suspension to flight from the Combine to uneven pro day has instilled doubt in scouts about his potential to succeed as a pro.

Jason Smith and Eugene Monroe have apparently filled that overlarge void left by Andre. Yet at no point until the Draft season was well underway were Jason and Eugene considered worthy of a top three selection. Yet there their names are atop many mock drafts and, more importantly, team boards.

And then there is Oher. The epicenter of contradictions. A boy in a man’s body. Born black and poor now spoiled (and deservedly so) by a rich white family. A beheamoth light, even graceful, on his feet. A hard worker that suffers from sloppy technique.

No one emobies the contradictions of this year’s left tackle class quite like Oher.

Yet for all my skepticism I find myself hoping Michael Oher is available when Packers select ninth overall. Sure, the revamped defense needs rush linebackers, the defensive line is razor thin in terms of depth, and the starting corners while great are months away from qualifying for AARP benefits. But an elite anchor to the offensive line remains the more seductive if less sexy idea.

I don’t have a good answer for why I feel this way. The unknowns, the vexing variables, should throw up warning signs all over this potential path. But sometimes tried and true football logic overrides sound football decisions.

This weekend, I’ll be on the scene at the Draft. I recommend checking Throwing Into Traffic where Zac will be live blogging the Saturday selections. Check back Monday for my full Draft write-up. Enjoy the weekend.

Know Your War Rooms, the Rest (Cliff Notes)

2009-04-22T11:43:00.003-04:00

After months of anticipation, the Draft is nearly here. I'm only halfway through the Know Your War Rooms series (check here for parts one and two).

(Blame the delay in this analysis on several things: grilling in the park on a beautiful Saturday, a pesky virus caught from my roommate, laying the groundwork for new and ambitious projects.)

With time running short and much preparation to go before I cover this year's Draft in person, here's Fuhbaw's breakdown of the remaining NFL war rooms in breezy Cliff Notes style.

16. San Diego Chargers

GM AJ Smith is a top talent evaluator. The Chargers are a talent stacked team and Smith, brash bastard that he is, knows it. He also knows San Diego's Super Bowl window won't remain open forever, with LaDainian Tomlinson on his last legs. Add in the defensive struggles when Shawne Merriman missed all of last season, and expect Smith to target a few key players ready to contribute, ones likely to add teeth to his defense or speed to his offense.

17. New York Jets

New coach Rex Ryan has talked a lot about turning the Jets into an aggressive team. New acquisitions Bart Scott, Lito Sheppard, and Jim Leonard reflect that talk. Whether that aggression translates to the Draft (or to the field, for that matter) remains to be seen. The team needs a quarterback and may trade up should Mark Sanchez fall or Josh Freeman linger. The team needs a speedy wideout and depth along the defensive and offensive lines and could trade down to collect valuable picks. However sitting tight at each of their seven picks and selecting the best player available might be the best (non) move.

19. Tampa Bay Buccaneers

The Tampa 2 may not reign in Tampa much longer. New coach Raheem Morris brought in veteran defensive coordinator Jim Bates who runs a 4-3 scheme based on the old Dallas defenses of the 90s. The major differences between Bates's defense and the Tampa 2 honed by Tony Dungy and Monte Kiffin is a reliance on more size than speed and requiring aggressive man-to-man coverage at the corners. The Buccaneers lack suitable personnel, especially after the veteran purge early in free agency. New GM Mark Dominik even with needs on his offense, one short on playmakers, might be inclined to go defense with his selections.

21. Philadelphia Eagles

The future is always somewhere else in Philly. Andy Reid often goes big, selecting linemen in the early rounds, despite consistent depth there. And Reid also trades down for future picks if he doesn't like the available value. After trading the 28th pick to Buffalo for Jason Peters, the offensive line should be solid. That means the Eagles must target a playmaking receiver or running back at 21, right? Maybe. Or maybe they'll wait until one of their four fifth round picks comes up.

22. Minnesota Vikings

You might think that the only thing this team would need would be a quarterback. The front office would disagree with you. Without the ammo to trade up for Sanchez, the point is fairly moot anyway. And the Vikings could use depth, on the offensive line, in the secondary, and at receiver. The team doesn't shy away from small school prospects, so prepare for a couple head scratchers.

23. New England Patriots

Perhaps the most exciting thing about this draft once we get past the first ten or so rounds? Bill Belichick is holding eleven selections, six among the first 100. That, my friends, is draft day ammunition. The three second rounders in particular will begin to look like gold come Saturday morning. If there's anyone the Patriots covet, they more than likely can get him. It should also be noted that the Panthers, holding a disgruntled Julius Peppers, don't pick until 59, which is after the Patriots would pick four times if their selections remain unmoved.

24. Atlanta Falcons

The Falcons and GM Thomas Dimitroff proved adept in last year's Draft at addressing their pressing needs while moving around to select players at good relative value. This year their selections near the end of each round instead of the beginning, which will make that task considerably more difficult. Expect Dimitroff to try as his young playoff team still needs bulk along the defensive line and speed in the secondary. In his first draft, Dimitroff gravitated toward performers from big college programs.

25. Miami Dolphins

The Dolphins need a receiver or two. They could also use some more speed at the corners. But my bet is that Bill Parcells, despite the surprise playoff run last year, doesn't believe this team is big enough and talented enough in the trenches to win year in and year out. Don't be surprised if Parcells spends many of Miami's early picks on sizable specimens playing linebacker, defensive end, and guard.

26. Baltimore Ravens
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In case you missed Judy Battista's article in the New York Times this weekend, let me summarize. GM Ozzie Newsome is patient, thorough, and deliberate. The Ravens know exactly what kind of player they want on their team and construct their prospect board accordingly. Plus, Newsome trains each of his scouts in their scouting system making the chain of communication that much clearer from the scouting reports to the war room discussions. Consequently, the Ravens don't reach and don't overreact.

27. Indianapolis Colts

Team president Bill Polian’s strategy is the ultimate study in best player available. The phrase is tossed around plenty pre-Draft. But during the Draft no team honors its strictures better than the Colts. So we can talk the Colts needing another wide receiver, bigger defensive tackles, and depth at linebacker, but Polian will be content to sit back and select whatever player is rated highest on his board. As far as that board is concerned, Polian values character, intelligence, and production at big-time college programs over combine measurables, extremely to the point of fetishizing undersized, speedy players at just about every position.

29. New York Giants

New York’s transformation from underdog to frontrunner can in large part be attributed to GM Jerry Reese’s continuation of the steady drafting his predecessor Ernie Accorsi started. Like Accorsi, Reese values on-field toughness that lines up with elite measurables. Like Accorsi, Reese scours smaller programs for over-looked talent. Like Accorsi, Reese places premium on pass rushers and road graders. Most observers assume a Draft day trade with Cleveland for Braylon Edwards is imminent. But don’t be surprised if Reese isn’t lying when he says he’s comfortable going forward with Mario Manningham and Domenik Hixon.

30. Tennessee Titans

Tennessee is a motley crew. And coach Jeff Fisher and GM Mike Reinfeldt like it that way. The Titans put top measurables like speed and strength at the top of their board, letting concerns like character take a back seat, happy to jump on any player that slips because of character concerns. Fisher’s long tenure and success affords Tennessee some rooms for mistakes. Fisher gambles that the Titans support network is strong enough to tame an unruly talent. In the case of Albert Haynesworth, yes. Pacman Jones? Not so much.

31. Arizona Cardinals

Last season’s surprise Super Bowl run was a testament to GM Rod Graves’s stellar drafting the past several years. The perennial two-bit franchise finally found the perfect bargain shopper in Graves who wasted no time in restocking the roster with young, elite talent. There have been some misses (Alan Branch and Matt Leinart still ride the pine) but more often than not Graves has hit on productive college players from big-time programs at crucial positions: Larry Fitzgerald, Karlos Dansby, Darnell Dockett, Anquan Boldin, etc. Graves’s two biggest challenges this year come down to a decision to deal disgruntled Boldin for less than the Cardinals’ considerable asking price (currently a 1st and 3rd rounder) and to unearth the same talent as in years prior while selecting at the end of each round.

32. Pittsburgh Steelers

The Steelers have built their perennial contender through the Draft. While the Bidwells are considered penny pinchers, the Rooneys are tagged thrifty and brilliant because of their amazing Draft resume. Their offensive and defensive identity is set in stone which makes player evaluation for Pittsburgh that much easier, they know what kind of players are likely to thrive in their systems. Sure, the lines on both sides of the ball are getting a little old, but don’t expect GM Kevin Colbert to select a position because it fits a need. The Steelers aren’t afraid to trade up and down if they’ve targeted a player that can round out their considerably talented roster.

49. Chicago Bears

The Bears Draft? Jay Cutler, for better or worse. It's not like he needs anyone to throw to...

51. Dallas Cowboys

Amazingly, Dallas has eleven selections. Unamazingly, none are in the first round. Roy Williams is essentially their first rounder, and, like many first rounders, Dallas hopes for a big improvement during his second year with the club. Jerry Jones lives for hype and razzle-dazzle. But with so many middle round picks and such a talented starting line-up, the most sense might come from standing pat and selecting quality depth to build up the bottom end of the roster. The Cowboys tend to do well in the middle rounds with prospects from big schools.

59. Carolina Panthers

Losing a game changing defensive end - to trade, free agency, or retirement - has never left a team in good straights. (I'm thinking the Chiefs after Jared Allen, the Eagles after Reggie White, and the Vikings after Alan Page, specifically.) So Carolina would be stupid to give in to Julius Peppers's demands. But with needs throughout their defense, the Panthers might be tempted to realistically shop Peppers in order to land a couple immediate contributors. And as much as I would like Peppers free from the Panthers malaise, I still think its stupid on their part if they do the trade.

Carving Up Baby

2009-04-20T16:33:00.001-04:00

One of the vexing issues affecting how the NFL Draft shakes out this weekend centers not necessarily what each team's identity is. Rather, it comes down to what each team thinks its identity is.

But why say "identity" when we could say "need?"

A lot of pre-Draft analysis gets it wrong because of the focus on team needs. Sure, countless times teams have and will continue to draft players because of a perceived lack on the roster. Most of the upcoming Draft will unfold on need-based decisions.

But what appears a need to the outsider will often not mesh with what a team believes its most pressing need on the roster to be.

This is where the slippery notion of identity comes in.

For years, the New England Patriots eschewed drafting linebackers and corners in the early rounds despite aging and tepid play at both positions. The wholehearted belief in their defensive system, stressing responsibility over playmaking, deemphasized the perceived need for youth at those positions.

Last year, the Pats reversed course and drafted linebackers with their first and third round selections and a corner with their second. Those selections had less to do with the Pats refashioning their identity and more to do with having a roster air tight at nearly every other position. An exception that proves the rule. The Pats drafted so frequently in terms of their perceived identity – defensive linemen, receivers, offensive linemen – they had no practical choice but to draft against type.

On the matter of Draft day strategy, I have much to agree with when Zac at Throwing Into Traffic concludes that identity advancing talent is always a need.

I would like to take that a step further. Consider what the Lions should do with the first overall selection.

In the salary cap era, good teams tend to draft well because their identity is clearly articulated and that identity is wrapped up in success. That makes sense, right? The identity of a successful team is built around good-to-great players and coaches. These proven players and coaches eases the pressure on young players to come in and bear the burden of changing a team’s identity, much less contribute on the field right away.

What Detroit lacked in the Millen years was identity. It’s not that Millen didn’t try to impart a rough and tumble image to the Lions. Rather, he did it in words not deeds, actions irrelevant to the football field rather than action on his free agency and Draft boards.

What Detroit under Jim Schwartz needs and needs quickly is identity. Outside of Calvin Johnson and Julian Peterson, the Lions have nothing save Daunte Culpepper’s raging against the dying light, not a narrative any team wants entertwining mortally with their future.

Complicating this is when it comes to the Draft and identity, there’s a distinct tension. Secrecy and subterfuge are the methods of each war room in the lead-up to the Draft. Yet an identity is something that is claimed, or proclaimed, often loudly when effective.

Thus has it been with the Lions whom everyone assumes Matt Stafford the pick, the Lions hoping to sign him at a slightly discounted price by simultaenously negotiating with Jason Smith and Aaron Curry.

But is Stafford the right selection? Does he reinforce the identity Detroit is attempting to construct? Does he reinforce the identity they should construct?

The Lions need accountability and leadership, alongside talent, more than anything else. It’s not about offense versus defense. It’s not about paygrades.

The notion that Detroit should draft a quarterback number one overall because of the general value of the position in relation to the other 21 on the field is ridiculous and should be deleted from the final accounting. Drafting a quarterback simply because of a abstract value-fit sends the wrong message to the rest of the team and the fans. Ask Raiders fans how JaMarcus Russell is working out.

If there’s any lesson learned from his time at the Titans, Schwartz should know that rare talent shouldn’t be passed up. The selection of Chris Johnson last year was roundly criticized even though he was the best player left on the board when the Titans selected. Johnson, of course, transformed a previously limp offense into something potentially dangerous.

Quite simply, Stafford quarterbacked a Georgia team with an absolute glut of talent yet the Bulldogs failed to even compete for the National Championship, bettered by two teams in their own conference (and I’m not entirely sure Ole Miss wasn’t also better than Georgia by season’s end).

On the other hand, both Jason Smith and Aaron Curry are physical marvels as well as vocal leaders. A left tackle and a middle linebacker are not as rare commodities as an elite quarterback. In there own way they represent as much risk as Stafford does. Despite what Schwartz’s has said, risk isn’t the issue.

If the Lions, however, select Stafford, they take talent that doesn’t further what the team should be or the team the Lions have talked about creating. They cross their fingers and hope for a quick fix instead of assembling the most talented roster possible (Curry) or emphasizing a game changing nastiness (Smith).

The team can afford to take chances on talent. Yes, they need a quarterback of the future. What they can't afford to take is a chance on a player doesn't fit the identity they're striving for.

Stay Tuned

2009-04-16T08:05:00.004-04:00

Stay tuned. There's going to be some newness around here in the coming weeks.

I should be all out prepping for the NFL Draft. The home stretch nears, to unfurl the sports clichés. Thrusts and feints abound. Risers and sliders rise and slide.

I should be plowing through my Know Your War Room series. It's difficult and intense work pouring through past drafts seeking common themes, themes that match a team's successful or failed bid for identity.

And while difficult that work is ultimately rewarding and, more importantly, I believe, worthwhile.

But my mind is setting course for different destinations, not bobbing to the murmuring rhythms of pro football's offseason.

I think a lot about this format and this forum I've labored in, sometimes lovingly, sometimes not, for close to two years. (Christ, has it really been two years?)

Often I've surprised myself, no so much with the substance of my beliefs but the conviction of some or the lack thereof of others.

There is something alternately harrowing and cathartic about turning inward and prodding the head and heart critically for the true measure of your ideas and dreams and nightmares. So you love football – but why? So you think “x” - but “z”?

For me, the process of blogging has been as much about clarifying my ideas on the game as it has been about the game itself. This clarification is a minor subplot – not the dominant narrative. When I first tepidly began Fuhbaw I often joked that it comprised my coursework. The joke continued on a muted level until today with repeated metaphors to basic math or references to school supplies (the Notebook posts, for instance).

In every sense, Fuhbaw has always been a training ground, my own exclusive academy. I've found that focus useful, rewarding, but ultimately a little too exclusive, a little too inward looking.

When I first gave myself over to the internet (trust me, very late for a person of my generation) I sensed a thrilling but obscure glut of possibilities. My first internet love was the Spark. Does anyone remember the Spark, its true content now relegated to the internet wayback machine? One of those weird shining lights that simply wrote its own rules in the service of pointless absurdity (“breathable, deadly: pantaloons”).

I've never really done the whole two feet at once into the future thing. I'm a cautious and deliberate sort (note the use of both “cautious” and “deliberate” in that sentence). I think. I consider. I set aside. I obsess. I mull. I agonize. And I try not to subject the people in my life to this process.

So is it with blogging and me. Me as a blogger is me cast against type. I continue to be truly amazed at how rigid the format is. Take even the liberation theology/revolutionary manifesto/prophetic wail of Free Darko: formality abounds.

Boundaries are a virtue. They create space for inspiration to flourish. But not every boundary is suited for every inspiration.

Does this read like a letter of resignation? A middle-school break-up note passed in-between classes? A eulogy for a miscarriage?

This is none of those things.

This is a new beginning (there's those clichés again).

I don't want to say too much just yet as I'm in the early stages of this revolution (think “cycle” not “Bolshevik”). Suffice to say, what I will offer will be sportswriting fuller in concept, in content, and in completion. This isn't merely good intentions. This is a promise, more to you than to myself. Thus far, the promises have primarily been to myself. It's time to change that up.

Okay, Fuhbaw will be back all over the Draft beat shortly. Apologies for the blip in the feed. But the outcome should more than make up for the brief broadcast interruption.

Define Gutsy?

2009-04-14T16:14:00.002-04:00

At moment in which the NFL and its fans are the most starry-eyed, the dreams of the Draft still weaving their finger-crossed hopes, I find myself vaguely recalling dreams from which we've woken up.

Or at least the news that Byron Leftwich latching on with Tampa and Daunte Culpepper slimming down in Detroit has me remembering a time when both represented a new if slightly unnerving development in our idea of the prototypical quarterback.

I am, of course, talking about the fat man as quarterback.

Football has no shortage of exceedingly large men. Size has been a prized rarity since the sport's earliest days. The game with its neurotic concerns over accountability - you take that man, I got this guy - has always had a place for a rhinoceros who can occupy two or three opposing players, freeing up others to run unabated with or to the ball.

But as some point, as the game sped up and a rare size became bigger and beefier, size developed skill, too. The myriad hand fights a defensive tackle and offensive guard must wage underscores just how intricate the big man positions have become at the highest level.

Despite the developing skill of line play, however, big men were for the most part relegated to those same positions, defensive tackle and end, center, guard, and offensive tackle. There were, of course, a couple exceptions to the rule - Ironhead Heyward, anyone? - but for the most part size meant line play from an early age.

I remember the moment when the notion of a prototypical quarterback really took hold. Drew Bledsoe was supposed to be everything a quarterback can be. Six foot five. Two hundred and forty muscular pounds. Cannon arm. Limited mobility but superior reach. Pocket passing was shortly to be perfected by these rare creatures.

It was the early 90s and I felt a little put out that these gangling monsters would make quarterbacks like the Packers' Brett Favre or 49ers' Steve Young obsolete. It seemed conceivable at that moment that size would price 6'2" quarterbacks with moxie out of the future. (And Young especially while listed at 6'2" couldn't have been more than 6' exactly.)

The revolution never really came though. Sure, Peyton Manning's experienced wild success while encased in the rudiments of that prototypical frame (save the less-than-chiseled pecs). And Tom Brady was a string bean upon entering the NFL, building his slight frame into something more. But the Drew Bledsoe's came and went. Sure, Joe Flacco appears to be on the verge of promising career. But how does Carson Palmer's future look?

For the most part, the monsters never really stormed the village. The league's best passing veteran last season was smurfy Drew Brees. (And, no, I wouldn't say that to his face.)

Somewhere along the way, though, another development in the ideal quarterback sprang forth, the linemen-sized quarterback, one who could ward off the blows of defensive ends like King Kong and fighter planes.

The rational was somewhat sound. The rarest skill set belonged to the quarterback. No matter if a player has the size to the man the interior of the line, if he can run an offense with a big arm, place him behind center not at center.

In 2004, both Daunte Culpepper and Byron Leftwich had their statistically best seasons. Culpepper was a credible MVP candidate even in a year when Peyton Manning broke the touchdown record. Leftwich had the Jaguars on the verge of a playoff berth with his tough but immobile play.

Put the rhino at quarterback! Watch him bulldoze any would-be rushers. Hell, the success of Culpeppers and to a lesser degree Leftwich probably is directly responsible for Jared Lorenzen, the Pillbury Throwboy himself, being drafted.

Yet, just as quickly as it seemed the prototypes would truly become monsters, Culpepper and Leftwich toppled, both felled by leg injuries, robbing of them of their mobility. Lorenzen has probably ate himself out of the leauge. And JaMarcus Russell is on the cusp of a make-or-break season just two years after signing a fittingly ridiculously large rookie contract.

Only Ben Roethlisberger has experienced any sustained success as in the rhino-at-QB model. Consider, too, that he's only posted one truly elite season and been surrounded by a stellar supporting cast and ferocious defense.

I don't know how Leftwich will do at the Buccaneers. I don't know how Culpepper will fare in Detroit. I thought both showed plenty of promise last season in limited action. But like the weight these big guys carry, I'm inclined to think that the performance of a big QB fluctuates much like said QB's bathroom scale. The can be terrifying... and terrifyingly inconsistent.

Know Your War Rooms, Selecting 11-15

2009-04-13T07:04:00.005-04:00

In the Draft, the middle of the first round is where things generally start to get interesting or hectic, depending on your point of view.

As the amount of guaranteed dollars drops and the level of talent slowly thins, teams are more likely to trade up for a coveted prospect or down to net additional picks.

Probably more than anywhere else in the Draft, the consequences of these trades and selections in the tens shape a team's immediate fortunes. Consider too many of these teams exist in the league's middle class, going 7-9 to 9-7 the previous season, perhaps only a player or two away from reaching the playoffs.

Projections often fail mightily in guessing just how exactly these trades will reorder the first round. All the more important to know your war rooms. (Part one here.)

Let's continue with the second part of Fuhbaw's ~~five~~ three part analysis of each of the 32's war rooms and their tendencies. ~~Again, I'm discussing each team as their original draft slot comes up before trades (though all trades are noted).~~ Onward!

11. Buffalo Bills

Bill general manager Russ Brandon has been on the job for a little over a year. And in that time he's brought a more aggressive direction than predecessor, coaching legend Marv Levy. Levy was supposed to right the ship, which he did. But his moves were cautious, his management uncomplicated. Brandon has pushed further in the Draft and free agency than Levy while still retaining some of his conservative ways.

Case in point, Brandon's first Draft with the Bills netted more prospects from small schools, something generally avoided under Levy's guidance. But premium was still placed on players with consistent college production, a hallmark of Levy's tenure. Expect Brandon to stand pat, not moving up or down, to make his selections. The Bills traditionally don't engage actively in the smokescreens and shell games that some teams do in the lead up to the Draft. Brandon, however, will take measured risks on character, whether it's James Hardy in the Draft or Terrell Owens in free agency. If the stars align on a productive player with a few but no glaring red flags, expect Brandon to take a risk.

The real question about the Bills is whether the 6-2 start or the 1-7 finish is the real team. Losing Derrick Dockery to free agency and the specter of another long Jason Peters holdout indicate needs along the offensive line. Inconsistent to nonexistent pass rush indicate needs along the defensive line. And while their skill positions especially in the defensive backfield and wide receiver appear solid, playmakers anywhere would be welcome for this middling team.

12. Denver Broncos

As if new coach Josh McDaniels and new GM Brian Xanders didn't have a big enough job in rebuilding an atrocious defense, with the outcome of the Jay Cutler saga and trade, they must reconstruct the team's most important position on offense as well. In losing a franchise signal caller, Denver netted a trove of Draft day riches from Chicago. Of course, those riches won't buy McDaniels and Xanders anything but a ticket out of Colorado unless they hit on their several first day picks between this and next year.

Like any newness, we lack a long track record to discern tendencies of the current front office. Xanders worked under former Broncos GM Ted Sundquist and coach Mike Shanahan. Shanahan directing the war room for the most part wasn't afraid of character concerns and didn't shy away from focusing solely on team needs, occasionally reaching with his picks or trading up for a targeted player. McDaniels of course apprenticed under Bill Belichick perhaps leading us to believe, in tandem with the Cutler drama, the new Broncos will place high grades on unselfish play, versatility, and work ethic.

But, like I said, absent a track record, that's purely conjecture. There certainly no shortage of needs. Quarterback might seem the most pressing, leading many to believe a trade up is possible should Mark Sanchez or Matt Stafford tumble. Let's not forget the mess on the defense that in large part led to Shanahan's dismissal. It wouldn't surprise in the least if the Broncos spent most of their ten picks on defensive linemen and linebackers, even all of their five selections in the first three rounds. Adjusting the identity of the team 180 degrees into a defensively dominating group might soothe in part the raw feelings at the loss of Jay Cutler.

13. Washington Redskins

Are the Redskins a borderline playoff team on the cusp awaiting a stellar Draft class to push them over the brink? Or is the rapid aging of their best players setting the franchise up for a precipitous drop off sooner rather than later? Sporting a mixture of youth and experience with razor thin depth, Washington is an ever shifting identity crisis. Talented enough when healthy to challenge any squad yet unfocused enough to succumb again to any squad. Owner Daniel Snyder and VP Vinny Cerrato are the counterpoints to the consistent Dan Rooneys and Bill Polians of the NFL world. Nowhere is this more evident than on Draft weekend.

As far as the Draft is concerned, Washington embodies the small sample size problem. Joe Gibbs stabilized the franchise to a great degree in his three years if unable return it to the Promised Land. Before new head coach Jim Zorn's first season, Washington selected ten players, the most by the team since 2002. In the past seasons, the Redskins burned Draft picks in trades, handcuffing their ability to inexpensively shore up depth. Usually so short on picks, Washington's front office has concentrated on needs and performers at big-time college programs. Despite last year's relative glut of picks (accomplished by trading down early) the Redskins continued to focus on needs, selecting three receivers - two wideouts and a tight end - with their first three selections while heading off the beaten path in late round selections sifting for overlooked gems.

A familiar refrain of Snyder-owned Redskins runs, they don't lack for needs just Draft picks. And again this year, that's the case. With only five selections, and only one on the first day, Washington is badly aged along the offensive and defensive lines. Plus, the linebacking corps desperately needs more consistency and depth to keep apace in the NFC East. How much ground they can make up on Draft weekend is questionable with so few picks and might be dependent on trading down.

14. New Orleans Saints

Save a shiny statistical season by Drew Brees, the Saints all-in approach last season netted no sudden improvements. In time, the trade for Jeremy Shockey and Jonathan Vilma may appear big pieces of a championship puzzle. Right now, however, those trades' terms pilfered New Orleans's 2009 Draft while leaving many of the same problems unanswered. The main problem is, of course, how to fix an inconsistent at best defense.

In coach Sean Payton's first couple drafts with New Orleans, the Saints targeted small school prospects with one or two elite measurables, hoping to uncover diamonds in the rough. Sometimes it worked (Marques Colston, Jahri Evans). Sometimes it didn't (Usama Young, David Jones). Last year, Payton did an about face, focusing on players from power conference. It's too soon to tell if the sea change paid off. And it's difficult to tell if Payton will continue that strategy.

What's not difficult to see is the myriad needs on the roster. Defense remains a concern. Playmakers at linebacker, depth along the defensive line, skill in the secondary all constitute needs. As productive as the offense has been, depth in the trenches is shaky and could be addressed. And the consistency in the kicking game is a concern for a team with playoff aspirations. With only four picks, however, the Saints will have to trade down from their first round selection to afford themselves ample opportunity to address these needs.

15. Houston Texans

While many considered Jacksonville the most disappointing team in the AFC South last season, I expected greater things from Houston. Quite simply, two of their players are among the elite in the league while playing crucial and difficult to fill positions. And around Andre Johnson and Mario Williams, the Texans have drafted solid starters like DeMeco Ryans, Owen Daniels, and Steve Slaton. However, there's a pie-in-the-sky aspect to this Texans squad that continues to frustrate. Will Amobi Okoye really become the Luigi to Williams's Super Mario? Will Matt Schaub become something more than accurate and injury prone? Will anyone ever step up among their safeties to stop a big play at a crucial moment?

Coach Gary Kubiak and GM Rick Smith migrated from Denver three years ago and have upgraded the talent of a team that was once another expansion laughing stock, more 70s Buccaneers than 90s Panthers. They've focused on the less glamorous positions early in the Draft, the linemen and linebackers, while zeroing in on measurables in skill position players in the middle and later rounds. Like the Bills, the Texans are another team that's relatively quiet on Draft day, forgoing moving up or down, preferring to stand pat and make their selections according to their board.

While the high expectations for their defense last year didn't pan out, Houston may not consider the talent on that side of the ball as dire as some outside observers paint it to be. Sure, the corner and line play needs more consistency, but they have a number of young players on the roster with which they hope to see marked improvement. The more pressing needs are at playmakers, whether that's at outside linebacker, wide receiver, or safety. Depth along the offensive line and in the backfield are likely to be addressed. But given their overall solid but not spectacular roster, the Texans shouldn't stray too far from selecting the best player available regardless of need.

The Joker's Deck

2009-04-10T14:34:00.001-04:00

Apologies for the delay in commentary. It’s been a hell of a week in my non-football life.

First, receivers and the Draft. I suppose there’s no more fun position in the league to debate. But it’s uncanny how receivers always become hot fodder for trade talks in the lead-up to the Draft.

Déjà vu. Again, we dream potentially new and fabulous destinations for Chad Ocho Cinco née Johnson and Anquan Boldin. This year’s hot stove talk is percolating over Braylon Edwards as well.

Each situation has its points of departure. But it’s the similarity that puzzles me.

Anquan’s deal is over a lack of deal, a new one anyone that puts him close to pay parity with fellow wideout Larry Fitzgerald.

Braylon’s deal is a two parter: 1) another potential victim in Eric Mangini’s Cleveland campaign against talent, and 2) a foci for criticism after an inconsistent at best season during an awful Browns season.

Chad’s deal is, uh, as far as I can tell a function of Chad being Chad and ‘Nati being ‘Nati. Ocho Cinco’s transformation from brilliant court jester to raving lunatic happened so quickly and so completely. The constant however was the Bengals allowing their team to bleed through free agency and slide further into irrelevance.

Each of these three receivers is at a different point in his career. Each shoulders differing levels of responsibility for being on the trading block. Each comes with his own amount of baggage for a potential new destination.

The similarity? Each of their teams is stupid to trade these three receivers unless they receive a ridiculous offer.

That being the case, boredom aside, why do we annually talk up the potential blockbuster trades of wide receivers? Is it because Randy Moss pulled the receiver diva coup to get out of the Black Hole? If top flight receiving talent is a rarity, why can we conceive of it given up so easily?

The wide receiver diva archetype is so ingrained that we hardly question how an individual situation comes to pass. Receivers that reach an impasse with their teams over money or playing time or performance are instantly fit to that archetype.

Despite any characterizations to the contrary, I do believe in the primacy of team. Football is after all a team sport. It’s beauty comes when all these sundry parts are whirring at top speeds with clockwork precision.

I don’t know if the position naturally sets itself against the team, isolated on the wings yet in the spotlight. I don’t know if that spotlight attracts the more egomanical among athletes. I don’t know if a receiver’s isolation on field works against the interdependency a receiver’s success has on every other moving part in the machine, that final piece to push a play to completion.

But I do know that there’s an eerie intersection at work when we imagine jettisoning a receiver who fits the archetype in the lead up to the Draft.

The Draft is about renewing an idea of our team, with some exceptions, no matter the previous season’s record or current roster. The important word there is “team.” In over-simplified football psychology, the receiver is often the one that tugs at the team’s cohesion.

No matter the worth of a talented and realized receiver on the field, when our teams exist mostly as ideas, receivers fitted into the archetype become expendable or transferable. That realm of ideas is a dangerous place to map out reality.

How did that work out for Oakland?

Second, well, I don’t have a second. Just go to Throwing Into Traffic for more Draft talk. You’ve heard the name, but Zac goes beyond the skinny on what makes Darius Heyward-Bey the most intriguing receiving talent in this Draft. Listen up, people, this is the truth.

Burn Your Passport

2009-04-07T17:05:00.001-04:00

It was Super Bowl 39. The Eagles were driving in fits and starts down the field. They were down ten points but it felt like it could have been a hundred.

What should have been a thrilling contest felt dull and lifeless. My friends munched on miniburgers and downed beers, already amusing themselves with chatter about surf rock and Space Ghost references. I stared at the TV trying to find something to love about the game.

I knew the Patriots scored 24 points, I just wasn’t sure how. Tom Brady dinked and dunked my memories into oblivion. The exacting nature of Bill Belichick’s disciplined defense sucked the air out of every Eagles drive before the seemingly inevitable Donovan McNabb interception.

I felt numb. When did football turn into this?

The Patriots dynasty, confirmed that night, was built entirely on storylines that played well to the crowd and reducing the game to a series of scribbles on a whiteboard.

One of the reasons I started Fuhbaw, started obsessing critically about football, applying ideas I've stumbled across in the course of my life to a sport that I thought I left behind, is the degree to which I hate the Patriots Way.

It's not that I hate the New England Patriots per se. After years of being a middling franchise, their jump to elite status is encouraging for the bulk of the league's middle class. And Tom Brady's abilities despite his abilities is an entertaining if not entirely too saccharine narrative. Plus, the emphasis on team in a team sport – which if one pays too close attention to the commentary can seem like anything but – speaks to hallowed football principles.

Yet those virtues disguise vices.

(Show me a pre-Randy Moss highlight reel of the Patriots that doesn’t end in a field goal.)

There’s a couple things going on here. Belichick’s brilliant game plans deceive opponents, transforming deficiencies in talent into perceived strengths. A great coaching job to be sure. But we watch sport to witness superior athletic talent on display, not to be duped by the illusion of talent.

To accomplish this, the coaching staff squashes the individual identities of the talent that they do possess. Randy Moss is a notable exception (and perhaps the only reason I can watch the Pats without cringing). It’s one thing to enforce the team concept for the betterment of the team and thereby the betterment of the sport. It’s quite another to strip talent of its uniqueness to maintain an illusion.

It’s the four yard outs and draw after draw. It’s the two-gap responsibilities and cover three shell. It’s bend but don’t break. It’s “just do your job” screamed on the sidelines.

All this translates into boring, belabored football. The victories over such football evoke relief more than triumph, freedom from the low level hum of mind numbing precision.

I feel like I'm constantly tipping my cap to Belichick's evil genius exploits. As a fan, at some base level, one simply desires success, perhaps at whatever cost. But the cost is important.

Yes, we watch our teams and hope they win. But if our teams lose we don’t necessarily walk away with nothing. We still witnessed. We were there. We can remember the beautiful catch improbably plucked out of the air. We can remember perhaps heroics in defeat. We can concede defeat to the superior team or the lucky team.

Why wasn’t there more outrage over Spygate? Because Spygate didn’t change anything. It just confirmed what we already knew to be true. Belichick’s Patriots steal from the sport what isn’t rightfully theirs.

Defensive signals. Victory. Doesn’t matter.

I know this may sound like a diatribe. Perhaps it is. I don’t mean it any outsized outraged way. Belichick is paid to do what he does and he does it remarkably well.

He’s also a fantastic villain. Bloodless, arrogant, intelligent, and frumpy. He’s no hero for sure… but he could be an anti-hero.

This is all to say I won’t be joining my man Zac at Throwing Into Traffic in his measured dreams about Patriots West.

Zac makes several great points. And the language of his dream could come to pass. Matt Cassel in KC and Josh McDaniels in Denver make the AFC West an instantly more interesting division.

But I cannot root for this spread of the Patriots Way. And I may not have to rail against it. Watching Romeo Crennel blow down his house of cards in Cleveland and Eric Mangini jealously guard his toy train set in New York, it became abundantly clear New England's success isn't easily duplicated.

McDaniels could break that mold, he after all opened up the Patriots offense and realized a space for Randy Moss to flourish. But considering the horrendous start McDaniels is off to thus far I can't express any confidence either way.

What I do know, whether it's a culture war or a castle storming, pitchfork in hand I know what side I'm on.

Know Your War Rooms, Selecting 1-10

2009-04-06T16:18:00.004-04:00

The NFL Draft is suffuse with variables. So much is possible. So much dependent on what happens as the event unfolds.

The cumulative effect is a bit disorienting.

It's impossible to know if the Seahawks will select a tackle or quarterback or wide receiver in the first round. Teams guard their scouting reports and draft boards like Fort Knox.

But what can't be guarded is a front office's track record. Patterns come to the surface from history. In part, a team's philosophy of roster building emerges from their prior selections.

While analysis of a front office's draft history won't lead us to absolutes, it can paint a fuller picture of the likely scenarios than a simple mock draft. It's not just team needs, it's a matter of style because in the end the Draft is about a team's identity more than anything else.

This analysis will be a ~~three~~ ~~five~~ three parter with a look at each team ~~in their initial drafting position before trades shifted the order (and portends to even more on draft day).~~ With that, let's better know your war rooms for the league's 32 teams.

1. Detroit Lions

The fact that Detroit's war room is an unknown is a probably a good thing given the franchise's flirtation with futility this decade. General Manager Martin Mayhew is a holdover from the Millen days, but remains highly regarded despite the association. Coach Jim Schwartz brings his deliberate and creative approach from Tennessee, a team that's drafted reasonably well under Jeff Fischer, Pacman Jones notwithstanding.

With no past drafts to scrutinize, only the offseason's myriad free agent moves gives a glimpse at the team Schwartz and Mayhew want to construct. Obviously, the new Lions value size and strength, cutting undersized and underperforming players like Mike Furrey, Shaun Cody, and Leigh Bodden, while adding Bryant Johnson, Grady Jackson, and Phillip Buchanon not to mention Julian Peterson.

If Schwartz sticks close to the lessons learned during his time at the Titans, expect the Lions to place value on top measurables in place of unquantifiable notions like character or moxie. While some speculate Detroit's interest in Jason Smith represents a bargaining tactic with Matthew Stafford, don't be surprised if the Lions truly target Smith with the first pick. He's a top athlete with rare size. So far it's been Schwartz's mission to make the Lions bigger so they can get better. Expect more of the same draft weekend.

2. St Louis Rams

The Rams are a difficult franchise to figure out. They've had success in seasons past but have been an unmitigated disaster of late. Add in the likelihood that the team is still up for sale and the Rams appear to be on shaky ground. Yet new GM Billy Devaney made a truly inspired hire with new coach Steve Spagnuolo. Spagnuolo had the pick of his jobs last season but rebuffed interest from the Redskins and others to await a better job. On the surface, the Rams don't seem to provide Spagnuolo with the security he sought.

That said, the Rams aren't without talent. Steven Jackson, Oshiomogho Atogwe, and Chris Long are solid building blocks. Devaney has been with the Rams for a couple years, it's unclear what hand he's had in the draft room up to this point. The inconsistent drafts the past few years directly lead to the club's general lack of identity. Will Adam Carriker and Chris Long make for a formidable defensive front? Or will the team waste their talents on poor schemes and tepid team play?

There's hope that Spagnuolo carries over his hellacious defense from New York. To do so, the Rams will need to draft for strength and speed since they lack for it on the roster. The Giants have transformed into a success by constantly focusing on pass rush. Targeting linebackers and edge rushers throughout the draft would be a big step to installing Spagnuolo's defense. Of course, cutting Orlando Pace is a clear indication of St Louis's intentions, especially with the second overall pick. Commentators have penciled in the top tackles Jason Smith or Eugene Monroe with certainty. After that, it's up to Devaney and Spagnuolo to create a tougher and deeper team, something lacking from their drafts of late.

3. Kansas City Chiefs

We can all mourn the loss of Herm Edwards the quote machine, but Chiefs fans won't miss the horrible in-game gaffes and abysmal clock management. Fans are not likely to miss Carl Peterson's wildly inconsistent drafting either. While Peterson's 2008 draft still has the potential of being a team defining class, hopes rest with new GM Scott Pioli turning Kansas City into New England West.

Obviously the Patriots loom large over the new Chiefs. Pioli got his quarterback in Matt Cassel from his old team. And Pioli's success in assisting Bill Belichick construct the Patriots offers hints about the direction the Chiefs will take. Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. New England's made some notable misses in the past few seasons. They haven't assembled a great class since 2005 and have leaned heavily on free agency to shore up skill positions, especially in the secondary and at wide receiver. For a franchise with such considerable success, my hesitations may sound like quibbling, but it's important to separate myth from reality.

A good indication of Pioli's direction could be how he helped build the Patriots in the early part of the decade, mainly, focusing on rare intersections of size and strength. Pioli and Belichick nabbed linemen early and often while building the Patriots. Pioli also focuses on players from big time programs with consistent on field production while ignoring workout warriors. He also places a high value on football people, sons of players and coaches, who can fulfill roles. Provided new head coach Todd Haley can refrain from tearing the roster apart, expect Pioli to craft a savvy tough team in KC.

4. Seattle Seahawks

My buddy DJ Noid has been waiting for this day, the draft where Seattle finally has a top pick so they can nab an elite talent that's eluded them drafting near the end of the first round year after year. No doubt, Seattle wasn't as bad as their 4-12 record suggested. Still, there's no shortage of holes on the roster starting with quarterback and the offensive line, once considered strengths of the team. I love Hass for whatever reason (photo in the banner no small point) but it's unclear whether he can regain his Pro Bowl form.

GM Tim Ruskell is an odd one. On the one hand, he projects a measured approach to the Seahawks rosters, re-signing proven veterans before they hit the market, drafting high character players with solid college production. On the other hand, Ruskell will drop mega contracts on players, whether a wise investment or not. Add in how badly he fucked up the Steve Hutchinson transition tag fiasco, and it's tough to know which Ruskell is the real one.

That said, Ruskell's draft record is remarkably consistent. Ruskell likes players from big schools in power conferences with solid stat sheets. He doesn't get hung up on measurables or workout warriors. He values production over potential. In essence, the Seahawks secondary is very short. With picks near the top of each round this year, Ruskell should have a chance at players with higher ceilings. And with the Seahawks needing help at quarterback, tackle, safety, running back, and corner, he'll have no shortage of options.

5. Cleveland Browns

While I don't know if the Jets should have fired Eric Mangini, it's unclear if he's up to the task of remaking (again) the Cleveland Browns. During his time in New York, he unearthed a few nice starters and role players in the Draft. But when he's not alienating his current stars Mangini will have to transform a defense that's never lived up to expectations.

With new GM George Kokinis, the ManKok (that's never going to get old, is it?) need to bolster a tepid pass rush, deepen a depleted secondary, nab some pass catchers, and settle on a signal caller. Oh, and they need to catch up to the Ravens and Steelers, too.

In drafts with the Jets, Mangini focused on elite measurables like speed in corners and rushers, strength in linemen and backers. He's also placed a high value on versatility, as evidenced by players like Brad Smith and Leon Washington. With only five picks this year, the Browns might need to actively trade down on Draft weekend to address their glaring weaknesses. The war room in New York that Mangini was a part of wasn't afraid of trades, often moving up to select a targeted player. For a team short on depth, being short draft picks doesn't help.

6. Cincinnati Bengals

Let the jokes fly. Cincy hasn't necessarily done terribly on Draft weekend. It's just that they've ignored issues like character and chemistry while they've nickled and dimed promising starters out of town. Just when you think the Bengals can't take a chance on a troubled talent, they turn around and pluck the longest rap sheet they can find. It's bizarre. The Brown family definitely marches to the beat of their own drummer. And I don't know if that's a good thing.

Beyond the convictions, other patterns emerge from recent Cincy drafts. They focus on solid performers from big time schools early in the Draft. Many early picks have been spent on defense these past few years. Keith Rivers was an inspired pick as was Domata Peko. But the Bengals still have needs on that side of the ball.

And despite drafting receivers to eventually replace Chad OchoCinco and the now departed TJ Houshmandzadeh, the Bengals couldn't go wrong selecting one from this year's talented class. Should they want Carson Palmer to remain upright, depth along the offensive line could be a key to this Draft. While I still think Palmer's overrated, the team seems committed to him. Likely Palmer and the Bengals' fortunes are intertwined.

7. Oakland Raiders

It's no secret what the Raiders value in prospects: speed. Al Davis's long draft resume reads like the roll of a track meet. Basically what I wrote last year still applies:

Oakland, the Black Hole, Al Davis's age - combine randomly and insert joke here. No doubt the Raiders have struggled the past five seasons. And part of those struggles are due to drafting inconsistently, in addition to poor coaching, dysfunctional management, and aging or injured veterans. Davis continues to head up the war room and despite his foibles of late he still cares passionately about building a winner in Oaktown. There is of course a type of player that typifies the Raiders, one they seek out in the draft. Cocky, swaggering... more tough than technician. Davis prides himself on being able to tell an athlete just by looking at them. Character concerns that might scare off other teams mean less in the final accounting for Davis and the Raiders. Plus, Davis isn't afraid to gamble on injury history.

While Davis's fetish for speed and top measurables constitute a considerable known, his maverick ways make his decisions difficult to predict. The Raiders need linemen and receivers and more depth in the secondary. But Oakland has never been a needs team. Davis will select the best players to his mind and let the chips fall where they may. The thought of Michael Crabtree being on the same team as Darren McFadden is seductive. Yet it's unclear if Davis even puts Crabtree on his board. One thing you can definitely say about the Raiders, they make Draft weekend interesting.

8. Jacksonville Jaguars

I'll never understand how the Jaguars got as talented as they are by drafting so inconsistently. And, after this year, we'll know if the fault lies with coach Jack Del Rio or now former GM Shack Harris. The Jaguars are seduced by top measurables sometimes selecting players late who haven't seen the football field much because of an excellent vertical or good three cone drill time.

In general, the Jaguars have gone directly after their needs whether that means trading down a few spots for Reggie Nelson or trading up for Derrick Harvey. The 2008 class was mostly a disaster, Harvey and fellow pass rusher Quentin Groves looking out of sorts much of the season. The team still has myriad needs in the interior of both lines as well as in the secondary and receiving corps.

Currently, Jacksonville is throwing out a huge smokescreen over potentially drafting a QB. It's unclear if they're simply hoping to entice another team to move up to the eighth overall selection or if there's another player they're hoping will be on the board when they select (Crabtree anyone?) or both. I know David Garrard has an awful statistical season last year, but the man was running for his life from day one. To keep apace with the Titans and Colts, the Jags will need more weapons and to become bigger and tougher in the trenches. However, he goes about it, you can bet Jack Del Rio knows this.

9. Green Bay Packers

Perhaps I shouldn't be allowed to analyze my Packers drafting. It's the one area where I without qualification adore the team's strategy, with minimal deviation from the company line. I can criticize GM Ted Thompson for head scratchers in free agency or coach Mike McCarthy for boneheaded play calls. But how the Packers draft is at once a thing of beauty in its elegant simplicity while being as dizzying as a whirlwind in its operation.

Thompson is a gifted talent evaluator but understands the limitations in predicting success in the NFL based on scouting. Instead of standing pat on Draft weekend and crossing his fingers as each turn comes up, Thompson constantly trades down to acquire more selections thus increasing the likelihood of hitting by increasing the number of players he brings in during a draft class. The strategy have transformed the Packers from an aging squad into a youthful one with a bright future and good cap number (please don't go away, salary cap).

It's such a simple and logical idea. It's also fittingly self effacing for the low key, tight lipped Thompson. With the selections he makes, Thompson excels at scouting wide receiver talent so much so that it's not a need in the least. Thompson though takes the highest player rated on his board regardless of need, why the Packers selected receiver Jordy Nelson with their first selection last year. In terms of needs, linemen and linebackers are paramount, but it would be out of character for Thompson to reach for a player. He does set up his board a little differently than most, placing high emphasis on character and on-field production, which leads some to criticize his selections as reaches. And I'm pretty sure Thompson is completely comfortable with people thinking whatever they want to about his drafts.

10. San Francisco 49ers

The Mike Nolan experiment is over. The Mike Singletary experience is proving to be a far weirder one than anyone ever dreamed. Looking through the last four years of San Fran drafts is chilling. Is there anyone on that team besides Patrick Willis and Frank Gore?

What direction the 49ers go with the tenth pick will provide a huge indication about the direction Singletary wants to take the team. Will he go big and grab the best rush backer available? Or will he take Mark Sanchez if he falls to the tenth pick and try to add firepower to a flaccid offense? Will select the best playmaking receiver to complement Vernon Davis?

There's no shortage of needs. It certainly says something that Singletary was able to squeeze some quality wins out of such a talent poor squad. In essence, I wouldn't be surprised if he focuses the majority of his draft on the offense and defensive lines in an effort to get bigger in the relatively shrimpy NFC West. I think Singletary believes he can get by on Shaun Hill if his defense plays with enough fire and Gore plays keep away. The 49ers might emulate the Chicago Bears teams Singletary excelled for in the 80s and early 90s.

Cuddles the Bear

2009-04-03T12:17:00.004-04:00

Some solutions are just so obvious, make far too much sense, that collectively we look right past them.

I don't know if the fault lies with the mundane answer being too transparent? Or simply too boring?

Whatever the reason, from time to time, the route formed by the shortest distance between "A" and "B" sometimes surprises in its forehead slapping simplicity.

Case in point: Jay Cutler to the Chicago Bears.

Everyone knew the Bears were interested. Everyone knew coach Lovie Smith has edged closer and closer to the end of his post-Super Bowl grace period. Everyone knew the Broncos were short on leverage except the wide interest in Cutler. Everyone knew Chicago quarterbacking with few exceptions has ranged from less than stellar to downright tragic these past couple decades. Everyone knew the price.

Hell, Cutler even grew up a Bears fan.

But everyone wrote off the Bears because of their penny pinching, because of their defense fetish, because of their distaste for flair.

Never underestimate the straight lines desperation draws.

Yesterday I mentioned Cutler represents a potential paradigm shift for some teams, Seattle was the specific example. And on the surface Cutler's mere presence on the Bears roster represents a new development, incredible resources poured into the game's most important position.

While the Cutler Rush might represent a Chicago paradigm shift from a personnel standpoint (debatable considering they've spent two first rounders on quarterbacks in the last decade), in terms of their offense, it's more of a lock than it appears at first blush.

Alternating between Rex Grossman and Kyle Orton these past four seasons, the Bears have simply asked their offense to not fuck it up. They'll ask Cutler to do more, to put up points, not just play keep away while the defense takes a breather.

The offense might appear different on the aesthetic level, the underlying ideas in operation will be much the same from Denver to Chicago, from Grossman/Orton to Cutler. Namely, the onus will be on the quarterback, set apart from the rest of the team but still responsible to the defense, not to play keep away, rather to provide a cushion of sevens and threes.

It’s not that Cutler won’t add an element of beauty to Chicago’s game, rather, he’ll accomplish it by being effective at it. Consider that Cutler is simply in Chicago terms a more talented, more realized, less flawed Grossman. Whatever changes he affects on the field, Cutler won’t swing the balance back from defense to offense, precisely because football is still a team sport and he’ll be all by his lonesome (Forte and Olsen are certainly talents but they’re weapons at offensive positions that only further serve to reinforce the defensive mindset).

The larger impact is the one Cutler has on the NFC North. In a sense, Cutler announces a literal arms race in the division. For a division in which last year, a first year starting quarterback was unquestionably the best among the four teams, Cutler topples a precarious and flawed balance.

As a Packers fan, a typical reaction might be disquiet that a hated rival landed a rare talent with a bright future ahead of him. Honestly, I’m relieved the division is finally catching up to some of the terms of this century. Most of all I look forward to eight plus years of battles between Cutler and Aaron Rodgers, both perhaps bringing the best out of each other twice a year or more.

Imagine, too, should Detroit land a premiere signal caller in this or next year’s draft. It’s a plausible notion that could more easily than any other route transform the division from a rotating one horse race into a free-for-all, strength found top-to-bottom.

(Perhaps that’s asking too much of the Lions franchise, but I’ll still maintain that Jim Schwartz has thus far done nothing to undermine reasonable hopes.)

In this whirlwind, I'm trying to figure out just how exactly in the Cutler trade did Jerry Angelo say "screw you" to the city of Chicago, the Bears franchise, and its fans. Normally, it's Angelo's first priority. I must admit, that message is not as crystal clear as it usually is.

Angelo in this case addressed a huge need for the team, a need that existed as an open wound for fans in the Windy City. He jumped at a rare chance aggressively, finally putting the weight of his convictions behind its outcome, good or bad. Sometimes a fan can't ask for anything more from their team than to do something, anything, just do it decisively.

Of course, Cutler came at a considerable cost.

Chicago now only possesses two picks in the first 100 of this year's draft, selections 49 and 99 at that. Throw in next year's first rounder and Chicago lacks a chance to inexpensively shore up depth.

For a team heavily effected by injuries the last two seasons since their Super Bowl appearance, depth is a serious concern, along the defensive line, in the secondary, behind the aging offensive line... and especially in the wide receiving corps.

This only serves to further the burden on Cutler’s shoulders. That’s the gamble that the Bears are taking on Cutler, that his shoulders are big enough.

In the end, Cutler exchanges navy blue and orange for, uh, navy blue and orange. Fitting for a change not as revolutionary as it seems yet is still rife with far reaching implications.

On the flipside, what are the odds Josh McDaniels cuts Kyle Orton by the end of training camp?

The Burden Of Modesty

2009-04-02T17:53:00.001-04:00

Never mind. Apparently, Cutler's now a Bear.

A day after cautioning against wild conjecture, I’m reaching for that pie in the sky again. No, not concerning the Draft just yet.

Rather, Jay Cutler in trade and the resulting possibilities race through my mind.

I could perhaps approach this topic more practically. Zac at Throwing Into Traffic weighs the implications in the likely scenarios (Browns, Redskins, Jets, Lions, Bears, 49ers) while adding a couple overlooked but intriguing possibilities (Seahawks, Eagles).

The Seahawks call in particular presents a paradigm shift of sorts. Where Seattle has heretofore stressed consistency, building both an offense and defense around the idea, Cutler could transform their implements of precision into weapons. For the Broncos, Matt Hasselbeck and a swap of first round picks could by an unexpected route give Josh McDaniels what he sought in Matt Cassel. Drafting Sanchez fourth overall, McDaniels could have his USC quarterback to mold and buy himself time while the wily veteran Hasselbeck absorbs the shock of transition.

Forget the likely scenarios. Sure in business terms, the Redskins’s every itchy Dan Snyder is given. And the quarterback voids at the Jets, Bears, Lions, and 49ers make them assumed players.

But what about football terms? Outside of economics and personality types, what trades make the most football sense?

If this whole Cutler situation was mucked because of philosophical differences on both sides, where can those opposing sides regain balance? Four ideas hit in quick succession.

Buffalo Bills

With the acquisition of Terrell Owens, the Bills anounced their entry into the AFC East’s arms race. But it doesn’t solve the questions surrounding Trent Edwards as field general for a squad desperate to identify as a bruiser. Cutler’s arm strength and vertical game would unleash the potential of Lee Evans + TO and create space for Marshawn Lynch to punish defenses set on their heels. It could be what Dallas was supposed to be, yet failed to achieve, away from the spotlight.

In turn, Edwards would give McDaniels a signal caller with many of the traits the Patriots model covets: size, mobility, intelligence foremost. Most of all, Edwards could be as close to a blank canvas yet with NFL experience as McDaniels could find.

Houston Texans

I’m no fan of Matt Schaub. The fact that he’s made me think highly of Sage Rosenfels at isolated moments, tells me something is amiss. But he’s incredibly accurate as well as being big and mobile, all things that nominally work well in McDaniels’s system.

For Houston, Cutler can finally leverage everything possible out of Andre Johnson. Plus, Gary Kubiak brought the Denver system with him to the Texans which would allow for an easy adjustment. But really the notion of finally matching Johnson to a quarterback who can utilize all his strengths is purely enough.

Carolina Panthers

The idea of Cutler plus the Broncos’s 12th overall selection to Carolina for Jake Delhomme and Julius Peppers makes some sense. The Broncos desparately need an game changing defender while Champ Bailey continues his slide into irrelevance (c’mon, tell me now that Gibbs didn’t get the better end of that trade with Clinton Portis). Steve Smith needs a quarterback he can respect and one that can make the most of his downfield speed.

However Delhomme isn’t really an easy fit for McDaniels’s offense… He is in fact an older and less talented Cutler. But experience is a huge plus for the Patriots system. Look at the success of Chad Pennington in Miami and Kurt Warner in Arizona, both teams using variants of the New England offense McDaniels ran.

Miami Dolphins

In some senses, Pennington is the perfect Parcells quarterback. Smooth and tough. Handsome Chad is rarely rattled even though his physical gifts don’t quite back up his moxie. Observing Jets training camp before the Favre trade I was impressed with how much velocity Pennington was putting behind the ball in July. Then December came and Pennington’s passes started to slow, the out routes shortened, and the Dolphins play calling reverted down the stretch.

But packaging Pennington and his successor Chad Henne for Cutler would give the Dolphins a huge piece to stay apace in the AFC East while the Broncos would receive a talented leader and starter while providing McDaniels with another Michigan quarterback, this one he could groom from virtually Day One.

None of this scenarios will likely play out because of course pro football is a business and in the offseason business takes a front seat. What should happen often doesn’t, especially when big bucks are involved.

Coincidentally, Cutler stirred up mild controversy last year when he claimed his arm stronger than that of Broncos legend John Elway. Measuring such things objectively is impossible – and proven pointless by the Kyle Boller Theorem of Cannon Arms – but Cutler’s claim displayed hubris to many whether or not it hit close to the mark.

Now Cutler can rival Elway in another facet: sulking his way out of one franchise. Elway pulled the primadonna stunt with the Colts, then in Baltimore, upon being drafted. His trade to Denver beyond transforming the Broncos into fast rising contenders in part hastened the Colts middle of the night flight to Indianapolis.

Some, probably Colts fans, might term Cutler’s impending flight Denver’s divine retribution for stealing a once-in-a-lifetime quarterbacking talent. I prefer to think of it as demonstrating how short of a distance exists between such rare specimens as Cutler and Elway.

What the World Needs Now

2009-04-01T12:05:00.002-04:00

The NFL Draft = anxiety.

It should be no secret to regular readers that while dreams make for some good material, I prefer the known to the unknown. Solutions in one sense. Mining the deeper truths buried beneath the surface in another. But in all senses concrete provides a better foundation for analysis than clouds.

Outside of heavy-handed analysis and Mel Kifer's sculpted do, the Draft however is light on the concrete.

Drafts are unique as sporting events because they offer nothing in the way of closure. After months of speculation all that follows is, well, more months of speculation. Dreams do not become real so much as shuffle off to the next phase of REM sleep.

It’s not that there’s nothing to say. The sheer volume of draft-centric websites that have cropped up over the past several years disproves that notion out of hand. Rather this wealth of data - mock drafts, scouting reports, lists of measurables - proves the inverse: just how little we know. Far from alleviating anxiety, the information overload underscores it.

Next week, I’ll kickoff Fuhbaw’s Know Your War Room series, a sifting through the tendencies of each NFL front office for clues about how these dreams might take shape. Does your team's GM draft for need or take the highest rated player on his board? Does he place measurables above production?

That analysis won't lead to anything definite except perhaps a fuzzy picture of possibilities and limitations. But this cottage industry of draftniks can’t answer the fundamental question either: what impact this rookie class will have on our teams?

Malcolm Gladwell confronted this problem in a New Yorker article some months back, using the difficulty the NFL has scouting talent as a framing device for difficulties predicting success in important professions, specifically teaching.

The point Gladwell makes about teachers goes doubly so for all NFL players, though in the article he focuses on quarterbacks, namely the job is so difficult, the environment so unique in its challenges, that no objective measure consistently and accurately predicts who will succeed and who won't.

Thus, pro prospects are by their very definition unknowns, pure potential in NFL terms. This gap in substance transforms prospects into, alternately, vessels of hope or harbingers of despair for fans.

I can stare at as many wonky draft sites as a human can read in a day. I still won't know who will be on the board when my Packers pick ninth overall. I still won't know if BJ Raji or Brian Orakpo or Malcolm Jenkins or Michael Oher will become a Pro Bowl caliber, much less solid starting, pro for my team or anyone else's.

And, of course, the Draft itself, the event the last weekend of this month, won't bring us any closer truths. But it will bring some measure of relief. The end of smokescreens and speculation. All the ideas we invested in these prospects, all the hopes and hesitations, will lead us to think differently about our teams and their chances for the upcoming season than we did before the weekend.

Last year during the Draft, I was sneaking around the upper balcony when the Jets selected Vernon Gholston sixth overall. The Jets fans cheered, thinking they landed their DeMarcus Ware, their Shawne Merriman. They busted out their four syllable, five clap cheer - "Ver-non, Ghol-ston" clap clap clap-clap-clap - and howled wildly amidst scattershot high fives.

Gholston, however, had the worst rookie season of any first rounder from last year, save maybe Keith Rivers's busted jaw.

So, as we hurtle toward the Draft, let me caution a bit of restraint even though I plan on losing my head in this drama as much as anyone. Let's just all agree that it's silliness while we let ourselves be engulfed by the angst.

The Madness Of Method

2009-03-30T15:09:00.000-04:00

Filed under the "Comes As No Surprise" category, I like much of my sports-obsessed demographic spent the past four days consumed with college basketball.

After a pretty blah opening weekend, the great games this weekend were a welcome rebound: Michigan State-Kansas, Mizzou-UConn, and of course Pitt-Nova.

Whether it’s the opening round upsets or the Sweet Sixteen buzzer beaters, every year college basketball taunts the rest of organized sports with its overwhelming and dramatic playoffs.

And I like many can’t help but ruminate on what playoffs would do for college football.

College basketball’s appeal is as much the sport as it is the tournament itself. As the Counselor says, “The tournament is beautiful in its simplicity, I'll never understand why pro football and thunderdome are the only other forums that recognize the value of the ‘Two Men Enter, One Man Leaves’ competition structure.”

Amen.

Why then it is impossible for the NCAA to grasp what a true playoff would do for the football?

Change of course threatens entrenched and lucrative interests. The NCAA and top-performing programs make cash hand over fist in the current system. Even mid-tier schools walk away handsomely compensated with shared revenues off the field or being offered up as sacrificial lambs to powerhouse programs on the field. Everyone wins in the BCS system… except for the players… oh, and the fans. The customers get the shaft. The NCAA plays up the purity of the college athletics when it suits them, while acting like a business when profitability is involved.

The concerns are many. A playoff would add too many games to the season. A playoff would undermine the tradition of the bowl system. A playoff would magnify the disparaties in talent between the conferences.

The excuses are just that. If you believe hallowed tradition includes split national champions in 16 seasons over the course of 50 or so years, you have a skewed idea of what’s untouchable. Or, if you believe it’s USC’s right to destroy a lesser Big Ten opponent in the Rose Bowl every year, you’re a true football masochist.

The public defense of the current college football system runs something like this: the regular season of college football is without peer, functioning as a playoff of sorts.

The breakdown in this logic of course occurs once we reach the postseason. I can think of no better illustration of college football’s faults than pointing to the disparity between the end of the football season and the end of the basketball season.

Every year, the college football season ends in bickering and bitching. Every year, teams excluded from a shot at the championship call for change. This past year it’s Utah among others. But every year, it’s several someones. And this in turn undermines the work players and coaches undertook all season to prove themselves the best. For players, coaches, and fans it’s a cruel joke.

The critics of the playoff proposals all have legitimate gripes. Plus One is simply a cosmetic extension of the current system and its foibles. Eight or sixteen teams would still rely on dubious rankings and could potentially undermine the conference structure by excluding conference champions. Anything more than sixteen teams would add too many games to the season.

The answer lies in the defense of the current system, namely, that the regular season is the best thing the college game has going for it.

I say formalize the regular season as a playoff. Transform the entirety of the season into a recognized playoff that funnels into an elimination-style postseason freed from controversy as much as humanly possible.

It’s a notion I’ve been toying with for much of the past couple months. There are distinct difficulties to constructing a season-long tournament.

First, there are 118 Division 1-A football teams. Second, eleven separate conferences functioning as unique entities award their own eleven champions, to say nothing of the four independent schools. Third, a season long one-and-done elimination is an impossible sell because each team must be allowed a full season schedule to support and maintain their programs.

(For the moment, let’s put aside the political concerns inherent in prying the football postseason from the moneyed interests surrounding the game, like the bowl commissions and corporate sponsorships. With a true fix to the college postseason, the NCAA should be able to make more money while preserving some façade of the status quo, like using the current bowl sites for the biggest year-end games.)

The conference issue is perhaps the biggest and thorniest. First, Notre Dame, Army, Navy, and Western Kentucky would need to relinquish independent status and join conferences, a difficult but necessary step. Second, the end of season playoff would need to include each conference’s champion to ensure each conference participation in the college postseason.

But a conference championship wouldn’t be a team’s only potential ticket to the postseason. This is where it gets tricky, but bear with me. Cap the conference schedule at six games. Why? Because the remaining non-conference schedule of five regular season games will comprise a round-robin tournament between groups of six teams vying for one of twenty automatic bids to a 32 team elimination playoff.

That’s right, the college football season will include not one, not two, but three playoffs: the conference level, the round robin level, then the final one-and-done true playoff running from December through early January. The “regular” season would revert to eleven games, six conference games and five as part of a round robin. The postseason instead of being four weeks of staggered contests and bitching would be a five week elimination producing an undisputed champion

Now, you may quibble with some of my math. Eleven plus twenty doesn’t equal 32. The most logical yet least likely solution is for the NCAA to promote a twelfth conference to Division 1-A while including only two more teams, funneling current independents into this conference, and encouraging a redistribution of teams an overloaded conference like the Mid-American with its thirteen teams or Conference-USA with its twelve.

However, in light of that unlikely scenario, I’ll propose a minor bit of controversy: nominating one at-large bid for the playoff. Thirty-one of the 32 teams would be undeniably deserving of their playoff spots. An oversight committee modeled on basketball’s selection committee could determine the seeding for a playoff while also selecting the one at-large team.

I think it’s important to note that college basketball is not without its controversy. But it sidesteps grave concerns about the legitimacy of its champions by including as many worthy teams as possible and allowing them ample opportunity to prove themselves on the court. This is where the NCAA has failed with college football thus far.

I’ll be the first to admit that my plan is not without its drawbacks. With only six conference games to determine a champion, large conferences like the SEC and ACC would need to rearrange their methods for determining a champion. Less affected would be the smaller conferences like the Big East and Sun Belt with eight teams apiece.

Also, the determination of the groupings for the round-robin in-season tournament would probably rely heavily on the prior season’s performance if not generated randomly. I’ve intentionally not filled out too many details about the round-robin tournament because its mechanisms provide area of compromise for the several sides of the playoff debate.

The conference play and round-robin play would necessarily rely on tiebreakers in the likely event of teams finishing with similar records. Such is sport at any level. As long as the tiebreakers are agreed upon, the hope would be for minimal gnashing of teeth, perhaps a far-flung hope considering college football.

Though my proposal increases the overall games of the season to sixteen, only four teams would play more than the fourteen teams currently play. For the sake of clear and undisputed champion, it is a minor sacrifice.

Again, I’ve left some parts of my proposal intentionally vague. The five games of the round-robin tournament and six games of the conference “regular” season play could be intertwined over the course of eleven or twelve weeks from August to November. Or the round-robin stage could follow the conference schedule.

Consider too that a team that wins its conference as well its group-stage opens the door for another bid. That bid could be determined several ways, likely by the next best team in a conference or round-robin group. Again, ample room to create compromise for varying sides of the playoff debate.

Given that the BCS recently re-upped several television contracts, it's unlikely change is on the near horizon. In the meantime, the madness of college football will remain in the frustration with the system and, not like its fellow sport basketball, in the excitement of its play on the field.

If you have any suggestions or tweaks or extreme reactions, I'd love to hear them in the comments.

Friday Walkthrough, Future Past Tense

2009-03-27T13:11:00.003-04:00

An expansion of the regular season. Continued campus workouts for pro prospects. Michael Vick's looming, potentially expanding, legal troubles. Roll call at voluntary team workouts. Delineations on rules new and old designed to protect vulnerable players on the field.

Some topics discussed this week in the NFL. But not a lot actually done.

I've got my own reactions to an expansion to the regular season. In theory, I'm against it, given the increasing speed and power of the game and thereby the increasing wear and tear on players' bodies. And I would address expansion in detail if I felt it was truly going to happen.

But this one smells like a rat. With the coming negotiations over the CBA - and this purely conjecture on my part - the commissioner and the owners are positioning regular season expansion as leverage, a bargaining chip they can dispense, in the coming negotiations.

Consider that more regular season games would require an increased roster for each team which means an expanded payroll. Consider too the teams struggling to sell out stadiums for eight home games, like Jacksonville or Detroit, where there must be some resistance to expansion.

Instead, out of the owners meeting, Goodell painted a picture of unanimity on the issue of expansion. I'm skeptical.

Anyway, in the time-honored tradition of going light before the weekend, here's your Friday Walkthrough, links to can't miss reads of the week.

Speaking of the wear and tear of the game on players' bodies, a very good article about researchers determining some of the reasons why NFL players have a dramatically lower life expectancy than average US males. The numbers are staggering. Based on position, some players face a life expectancy over twenty years shorter than their non-football playing peers. Tie this in with recent research about the danger of repeated concussions and the picture of post-football aging for pros can be a pretty bleak one. (Dan Raley, Seattle Post-Intelligencer)

On the other end of the spectrum, Smart Football speculates on Tim Tebow's new quarterback coach, Scot Loeffler, and what he indicates for Florida's upcoming season and Tebow's pro potential. There's definitely some insight on why Tebow returned for a senior season when he already "has achieved all that is humanly possible in college." There's little doubting Tebow is one of the college game's greatest players. And, I get a lot of mileage out of the "projects as an NFL tight end" joke. But I think we're all curious whether Tebow will adapt to the NFL or the NFL will adapt to Tebow. (Chris, Smart Football)

Finally, here's the Football Outsiders mock draft. I've like what they've done here, mainly thinking about how different GM's and front offices tend to draft. This mock will be a good warm-up for my Know Your War Room series which attacks much the same ground but in greater detail. I don't agree with all of the Outsiders's assessments, but as always, they provide good food for thought. (Bill Barnwell, Football Outsiders)

On that note, have a great weekend everyone.

To the Concerns Of Many

2009-03-26T12:38:00.013-04:00

Dear Michael Vick,

I haven’t a clue what it’s like to spend time in prison. And you’ve been in serious prison no less! Not like Club Fed down in Florida. We’re talking Leavenworth. Real Federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison. I hope that trademark elusiveness has served you well.

I imagine you’ve had a lot of time on your hands. Maybe the facilities have enough in the way of resources to help alleviate the long stretches of boredom.

I know some prisons offer courses in different trades like personal fitness training or landscaping. Some places can even give you training as a paralegal. With all your recent experience in the justice system, you might have a jump on that career track.

With your future in the NFL in doubt, I suppose it doesn’t hurt to explore some other options.

Even with all that time on your hands, I’ll confess surprise when I learned you were writing a book.

It’s not that I doubt your tutors at Virginia Tech didn’t do their absolute best to keep you academically eligible; rather, I pegged you for the quiet type that might shun the spotlight for awhile considering your time within it these past two years.

People have speculated the book might simply be an attempt to raise some quick cash. Your recent financial troubles are well documented. It’s a long hard fall from 130 Million Dollar Man to hounded by every federal, state, and local justice agency for every cent you’ve made.

(Oh, sorry about that “hounded” analogy, I suppose you’re sick of those.)

However, if your book project is a sincere attempt to help rehabilitate yourself, not just your image, then let me make you an offer: I will help you write your book.

You may be asking yourself why you should even consider a writer such as myself with minimal exposure who as of yet has not published a book on any subject.

A completely valid question.

Here me out though first.

Some people have come to your defense, noting, among other details, that you never physically harmed another human being in the course of your crimes.

Your defenders point to the hypocrisy inherent in the justice system vigorously pursuing your crimes when more violent and dangerous crimes run rampant in southern Virginia. It’s the value of an animal’s life over a human’s life, they say.

Let me make this clear: I am not one of your defenders.

A few years in prison and other detentional facilities seems fitting to me for leading an illegal interstate operation, an operation built upon depraved practices inconsistent with the moral progress of society.

Some arbitrary balance of an animal’s life versus a human’s life is irrelevant to your crimes. The weight of one crime has no bearing on another. Knowingly breaking a law then attempting to cover it up doesn't exist in shades of gray.

(The balance is perhaps not irrelevant to the fervor with which you were dogged – oops, sorry, did it again – by the media and protesters, but irrelevant to the hard time you are doing and the hard work you must yet do to become a productive member of society.)

Facts are the public is split down the middle on you and the weight of your crimes. I imagine not many who feel as I do will reach out to you as you attempt to piece your life back together.

But for some reason, maybe because I’d like to believe we can all change if we’re honest and sincere enough in our attempts, I am offering you my services as one disgusted and deeply unsympathetic to your crimes.

I don’t doubt your abilities, watching you singlehandedly destroy the Lambeau mystique leaves me incapable of such. But your path to recovering your abilities and your good standing in society is a long and difficult one and won’t be affected by preaching to the choir or making excuses.

If you want your book to really address your fans as well as your detractors, you need to confront hard truths from all sides of your story. I can help you do that. No questions can be left off the table. I would expect your full cooperation with delving into your past, the good and the bad.

And, if I find you sincere in your attempts to atone for your crimes, you have my word as a man to paint your actions as sympathetically as my powers allow. Some ugly facts you may not want to see light may surface, but absolute truth is your only path to convincing doubters to give you a second chance.

So please, consider my proposal. I have extensive training as a researcher and have written enough material these past few years to fill two books. As for my objective and impartial nature, I can give you recommendations from several ex-girlfriends who can attest to my patience and thoughtfulness.

Only the truth will set you free, truth you can only approach from all sides of your story.

(Unless of course you don't feel a stitch of remorse for your actions and/or haven't learned from your mistakes. Then you may want to go the sensationalist "My Side Of the Story" route. And in that case you can go to hell for all I care.)

Sincerely,
Cian O'Day

Kings Of the Urban Jungle

2009-03-24T13:40:00.001-04:00

Today's discussion chances to be a dangerous one. For a franchise whose only consistency results from consistently deflating hopes, stoking any dreams, however measured or qualified, runs the risk of colluding with the captors at worst or extending a slow numbing of the extremities at best.

With that in mind, I promise to proceed with caution, Detroit Lions fans.

A common refrain for NFL teams toiling at the bottom is some variant on “things can't get any worse,” “there's nowhere to go but up,” etc, etc.

I would suspect eight years under Matt Millen would inspire a distinct disbelief in such cliches for Lions fans. And, while 0-16 might represent a historical low, vast improvements by no means follow logically.

While there have been big splashes on the NFL's free agency calendar thus far - Haynesworth to Washington, Houshmandzadeh to Seattle, TO to Buffalo - there's a lot to like in new coach Jim Schwartz's roster turnover. The Lions were terrible almost everywhere, from the game plans to the pass defense, from the blocking schemes to the d-line. Drastic upgrades required just about everywhere.

Outside of Calvin Johnson, not a single Lions player is untouchable. But Schwartz and GM Martin Mayhew have still identified the players that can help the team while they upgrade the talent behind and around them. Daunte Culpepper at quarterback, Jeff Backus at tackle, Dominic Raiola at center, Kevin Smith at running back, Ernie Sims at linebacker, Cliff Avril at defensive end.

It's not much of a nucleus, but it's a starting point. More important are the cuts, ridding the team of as many memories of 0-16 as possible. Jon Kitna, Leigh Bodden, Edwin Mulitalo, Cory Redding, Shaun Cody, and Mike Furrey all gone, all players supposed to perform at a high level that failed to do so for one reason or another.

In place of bloated contracts on veterans threatening to sink the team's payroll down the line, the Lions have bargain shopped through free agency. Solid corner Phillip Buchanon from Tampa is joined by Anthony Henry from Dallas in trade. Mercenary defensive tackle Grady Jackson provides an enormous stop gap in the defensive interior. Bryant Johnson from San Fran lines up some size opposite Calvin Johnson. And Maurice Morris from Seattle backs up Kevin Smith with experience.

These moves have created a bigger team, inside and at the corners on defense, in the backfield and at the wideouts on offense. Furthermore, all these moves represent solid if not spectacular upgrades over their departed counterparts. But, of course, the trade for Julian Peterson is a big leap forward on the depth chart surrounded by a bunch of careful steps.

Last week, I pondered the Julian Peterson trade from the Seahawks perspective, what Peterson's departure means for a defense that never quite lived up to its billing. Peterson certainly wasn't the problem, perhaps a glut of riches at linebacker and breakdown in front and behind him more to blame for Seattle's underachieving ways.

Facts are, Peterson's the all around kind of playmaker that should remind Schwartz of Keith Bulluck in Tennessee, not just with his range and strength, but also with his fiery play. The Lions defensive personality has been no more compelling than a houseplant these last few seasons. Peterson will do everything in his power to transform that. Where Peterson supplanted youth in Seattle, he will be asked to unburden it from unrealistic expectations in Detroit, giving Ernie Sims a more than capable mentor to follow.

I've been reluctant to call Detroit in 2009 or 2010. And before the Draft it's impossible to know what direction the Lions are heading in. It's not so much a question of Stafford or Jason Smith. It's everything that happens after. The Tennessee team Schwartz apprenticed under valued physical play, speed, and top measurables over unquantifiable notions like "heart" and "character." It may have saddled the Titans with Pacman Jones drama, but it also netted them Chris Johnson and a beastly offensive line.

Perhaps the Lions need to take a cue from crosstown neighbors, the Pistons. Despite playing up in Auburn Hills some twenty miles outside of Detroit, the Pistons embrace the rough and tumble identity of the city.

I'm not pushing for a Malice-at-the-Palace type incident, rather a team identity that emphasizes physical play and dangerous athleticism despite any loss of humility. Goodness, if anyone desperately needs swagger, it's the Lions and their fans.

Easier said than done. But Schwartz looks so far to understand that. There's something potentially very prescient when Zac at Throwing Into Traffic says of Detroit, "It's a 2008 Dolphins world." With one offseason, Bill Parcells turned Miami into a bigger and meaner team, a team that looked more lost in 2007 than Detroit did in 2008.

I don't want to sound the horns too loudly, but so far Jim Schwartz appears to get it. And we'll be keeping close tabs on it.

Forget the Remainder

2009-03-23T14:38:00.001-04:00

The soap opera surrounding Jay Cutler – admit it, during the offseason lull some part of you loves it – casts a long shadow but it shouldn’t obscure the comparatively muted drama of Julius Peppers.

If Cutler represents potential, the promise to fulfill lofty yet familiar narratives, Peppers is further along that trajectory and at the same time something else entirely. He’s achieved that familiar greatness yet still brims with more to give the game.

Already established as the game’s most fearsome end, already racking up gaudy statistics, this is Peppers still not playing at the level he could play. This is Peppers confined by a system sapping his talents without maximizing them.

I’m of a few minds about Peppers, his ability, and his demands. On the surface, what Peppers wants is ridiculous. It’s not the trade demands. It’s not the short list of contenders.

Wanting out of the Carolina death trap is in some sense understandable. Malaise ruined Kris Jenkins's best years with the Panthers. Jon Beason and Chris Harris are some of the scary best at their positions, making for a hard hitting backcourt up the middle of the field. But Carolina manages to isolate those defensive talents, leaving them cast adrift in a sea of underachievement.

Wanting clear of such frustrating dysfunction is understandable for a player like Peppers, in his 29th year, at the peak of his athletic powers. What is strange is his desire to play the rush linebacker in a 3-4 system, like James Harrison, like Terrell Suggs, like Shawne Merriman. In some sense, the desire to switch systems is an acknowledgement by Peppers that he can offer the game even greater impact.

The price point aside – outside linebackers are often compensated less than defensive ends in any scheme – is the position change going to affect what Peppers is looking for? Namely, the maximization of his considerable talents?

When Bill Belichick fielded the question of Peppers translation to a 3-4, he dodged it by saying Julius would be successful in any system. For a player of Peppers’s size, 6’7” with a considerable wingspan, 285 sleek pounds, he could truly be a terror rushing at the quarterback hand off the ground, free to roam before the snap of the ball.

But, in run defense, Peppers size and strength make him an almost waste for the outside linebacker position. With the body and strength to fight off tackle/tight end double teams, flowing to the ball behind linemen is a redundancy.

Consider Peppers's main suitor mentioned in flirtatous whispers, that is New England. Belichick’s defense rests on discipline in its front seven. Lineman control two gaps upfront, linebackers respond to gap assignment based on the unfolding play, flowing to the ball, rushing the quarterback, or dropping back in coverage, according to predetermined reads.

Of course, we all know that Belichick’s success has stemmed from getting the most out of his players, whether Troy Brown or Randy Moss, Tedy Bruschi or Vince Wilfork. Belichick would adjust, sensing the possibilities in the larger game outside of his gameplans.

In that sense, the only way Peppers can truly be free is if he can be fortunate enough to find a coach who won’t contain his talent by a system. The list of such defensive geniuses in the NFL is short. Belichick, Rex Ryan at the Jets, Dick LeBeau at the Steelers, Steve Spagnuolo at the Rams, Jim Johnson at the Eagles… and potentially, here’s a curveball, Jim Bates now at the Buccaneers.

(Bates presided over Jason Taylor’s best years in Miami, letting Taylor freelance in his 4-3 system, in effect turning it into a hybrid 4-3/3-4 scheme. Bates has had a rough tumble around the league the last couple seasons, but with a defensive minded franchise like Tampa could be a good fit for Bates. And a piece like Peppers could provide a terrifying identity for a team in flux at the moment.)

Part of the problem is that the NFL isn’t about innovation, it’s about the best players playing each other. The structure of repeated battles are slow to change. In college, where talent varies wildly, innovation can render a significant strategic advantage. The returns are less, the risks greater in the pros.

A player like Peppers presents ability that can thrive in the NFL’s status quo. But that in turn masks reasons to alter the status quo to harness still uptapped abilities. Innovation in football often arises to disguise a deficiency like lack of size or speed. In this case, the inverse could reap great rewards, however counterintuitive to conventional football logic.

The local media paints Peppers as a quiet, keep-to-himself teammate. While the trade demand didn’t materialize out of thin air, it’s a bit out of character for a player that’s steered clear of making waves. My first reaction was a shaken head, worried that this discontent would turn out badly for both parties, Julius and the Panthers.

And it still might turn out badly, especially if Peppers doesn’t budge from his short list of trading partners. Peppers shouldn’t make the same mistake, painting himself into a corner with a new team or new position on the field, placing different but ultimately similar restrictions on his talent that led to this frustration in the first place.

Friday Walkthrough, Draft Buzz

2009-03-20T11:30:00.007-04:00

In a little over a month, the 32 NFL teams will send their representatives to Radio City Music Hall here in New York to pick through the next crop of NFL talent.

In the meantime, we speculate and dream, poke and prod, sift through the explosion of Draft-centric websites, hoping to glimpse any idea of what our teams may do the last weekend of April.

Yes, we're thinking Draft.

Today, I mail in my post in typical Friday fashion with links to what you should have already read this week. I call it the Friday Walkthrough, in the time-honored tradition of going light before the weekend.

Forget those cobbled together scouting reports available all over the web. Get yourself over to Throwing Into Traffic for Zac's What Dreams May Come series. I'll remind you that Zac threw the spotlight on Chris Johnson well before the jackals were tearing apart Tennessee for selecting him in the first round. In short, listen up, kiddies.

Despite his inexperience, Zac enumerates Mark Sanchez's cool demeanor, his blatant disregard for pressure, as the why Sanchez in part can break the recent string of former USC starting quarterback struggles.

We all know of Aaron Curry's immense talent, but Zac takes it one step further in musing on why Curry could change the game, becoming a force unstoppable only a byproduct of his impact.

Finally, the case for Pat White staying under center. Plain and simple. If it doesn't happen, a little part of all of us dies.

Have a great weekend everyone. We'll be drinking like a viking and watching basketball every waking moment. We suggest much the same. Fuck Utah State!

The Misfits

2009-03-18T12:18:00.000-04:00

There are a lot of angles to the Jay Cutler-Josh McDaniels dust up. And, because it's the offseason lull between free agency's big money days and the Draft, many are covered.

Rookie head coach McDaniels has been lauded for a tough line stance with his new team's established star.

McDaniels's also been chided for his tactless overreaching, a cautionary tale proving the old "a bird in the hand..." adage.

Cutler, the pouty face of the franchise, has caught hell for being overly sensitive to the cold machinations of the game. Others have pointed out the circular logic of Cutler demanding a trade because he was the subject of trade talk.

Even Cutler's agent Bus Cook has warranted suspicion for his amorphous role at the center of significant quarterback controversies in successive seasons, lest anyone forget his client Brett Favre and the tense standoff with the Packers.

But by far my favorite analysis comes from Zac at Throwing Into Traffic who without venom or malice presses the "Fire Josh McDaniels" button for all the right reasons.

(Honestly, if you're not getting your day-late, thought-heavy NFL analysis between Throwing Into Traffic and here, where are you getting it?)

Teams are not the manifestation of one person's identity. This is McDaniels's first mistake. In tacitly accusing Cutler of such, he has in turn drawn himself into that fallacy. I'm not saying both sides are blameless. But Cutler's job is to perform on the field. McDaniels's job is ready his team as whole for their job. So far, he's stumbling out of the gate.

Plenty of people doubt Cutler's worth. He's presided over a mediocre 17-20 record in his two-and-a-half years as a starter. And despite Cutler's impressive numbers last year, the Broncos folded miserably down the stretch.

Blame should be thrown on Denver's atrocious defense (rushing yards of 158 to Oakland, 147 to Carolina, and 289 to San Diego, all in loss). But inevitably fingers will always point to Cutler's play which also slipped, throwing 7 of his 18 interceptions in the last six games while accounting for only 8 touchdowns (6 passing, 2 rushing).

Consider, however, Cutler's accomplishments and potential relative to his development. In 2006, Cutler was the third quarterback taken in the first round. Both those selected before him sit the bench behind capable veteran starters simply because they've lacked the mental acuity - to say nothing of the complete skill set Cutler with which outshines his peers - to handle the starting role. Phase one, perhaps.

In fact, no quarterback of the 2006 class comes close to Cutler. Kellen Clemens. Tarvaris Jackson. Brodie Croyle. Bruce Gradkowski. And those are just the illustrious names!

Cutler is well ahead of the curve considering quarterbacks from the previous draft class. From 2005, only Jason Campbell, Aaron Rodgers, and ironically Matt Cassel come close. Campbell in Washington has never bore the burden of the offense quite like Cutler in Denver. Rodgers lacks Cutler's in-game experience. And Cassel was swaddled with a top-rate supporting cast and coaching staff in his maiden season in New England last year.

Is he Peyton Manning or Tom Brady? No. But he's also an immense rarity in the league, a promising talent with production and valuable experience heading into potentially his best years.

So why the drama? Shouldn't McDaniels recognize this with much greater depth and understanding than we outsiders ever can?

The simple answer to all this strife is that McDaniels is following in the footsteps of his mentor Bill Belichick, chasing the illustrious Patriots Way, ripping the "I" out of "Team," playing hero to a thousand high school football coaches scattered across the country.

But more important to note is that McDaniels is following more closely the path of Belichick in less ideal ways.

Cleveland fans know what I'm talking about. Before the Evil Genius was winning Super Bowls with discarded veterans and pluck, he was catalyzing the downfall of a once-illustrious franchise with his callous mismanagement of its biggest star.

Belichick divided a city and team with his ouster of Bernie Kosar, the face of the Browns franchise, a move that helped hasten the team's departure for Baltimore. Had fans not fought so hard to keep their team, there might not be a revived Cleveland franchise today.

The facts are Belichick's grave missteps in Cleveland are consigned to the dusty volumes of history because his inordinate success in New England. Belichick should be lauded for running with a good thing when he sees it (in Tom Brady) and using it as a foundation for future success.

That's the real Patriots Way, truly learning from the past's mistakes while sticking steadfast to one's principles, however ruthless.

Perhaps Belichick's greatest lesson, the only way to sell anything in the NFL, hokey "teamwork first" mantras or anything else, is with sustained success. As much as Belichick prepared for Drew Bledsoe's departure in New England, he didn't force the issue. As much as, Belichick developed contingency plans in case of the worst for Brady, he continues to stand by one of the main reasons for his success.

In one sense, McDaniels's has misinterpreted his former boss's stoicism for inflexibility, not that he's alone among Bill Belichick's former pupils. Eric Mangini seems to be pulling the same act in Cleveland, and one could argue Charlie Weis is guilty of the same at Notre Dame.

If McDaniels is not careful, he will be follow in the footsteps of his former boss, ousted from his first head coaching shot in this league.

Feint! Parry! Riposte!

2009-03-17T15:03:00.003-04:00

We could talk the drama unfolding around Jay Cutler.

We could talk Nature versus Nurture when considering the sundry paths of Alex Smith and Aaron Rodgers.

We could talk the little moves of the NFL offseason like Jon Kitna to Dallas and what that could mean for Roy Williams whose best seasons came with Kitna.

But a less sexy news item arguably is more important to the league than anything else on or off the field. That is, Sunday the 32 player representatives elected DeMaurice Smith as the next NFLPA chief.

Smith election comes as somewhat of a surprise. An attorney with minimal NFL connections, certainly no playing experience, no labor experience, and a job history of defending those accused of white collar crime, Smith in some sense is a typical dark horse candidate.

The rancorous battle between favorites Troy Vincent and Trace Armstrong, both former NFLPA player presidents, opened the door for a third way. Smith’s election allayed concerns of a union divided before its most important battle, the Collective Bargaining Agreement’s looming end and potential 2011 lockout.

Smith by all accounts secured his election with a strong presentation and detailed plan about the NFLPA’s immediate future. Beyond strategy to employ in coming negotiations with Commissioner Goodell and the owners, Smith has highlighted better care for NFL veterans, an issue controversial and divisive under previous union chief Gene Upshaw.

Upshaw casts a large shadow over the new union head’s tenure… but Smith might represent a few more departures from Upshaw, a few new directions the union was interested in heading in this next round of negotiations.

When Kevin Mawae was elected player president of the NFLPA last year, he expressed strong interest in a rookie payscale, something Upshaw flat out dismissed. There were other grumblings by NFLPA representatives that a rookie payscale would be a solid compromise in the coming labor negotiations, a way to keep football revenue in the hands of veterans while loosening up some cost for the NFL owners.

The two frontrunners, Troy Vincent and Trace Armstrong, represented parts of the Upshaw tenure. Vincent was presumably Upshaw’s successor before falling out with the former chief. The exact reason has never been fully enumerated. Some link Vincent to an attempt to force Upshaw out. What truth is in that, I don’t know. Vincent and Upshaw diverged at some point yet Vincent still represented Upshaw’s hardline about refusing to roll back the portion of the player’s pie.

Armstrong was likely more tied to the Upshaw line than Vincent, representing an incumbent candidate of sorts.

In the end, the player representatives rejected the two likely candidates and some reach of Upshaw’s direction for an unknown commodity with an attractive vision.

While Smith was a typical dark horse candidate in one sense, he wasn’t in another. Smith won on the first ballot. Divided among four candidates, the process portended to be drawn out with several rounds of voting to winnow down the field to two. Instead, after each candidate’s presentation and 90 minutes of deliberation, Smith emerged the clear winner from the field. (Claims of an unanimous vote might be a fabrication but a simple majority out of four candidates is nothing to sneeze at.)

So far Smith has said all the right things about wanting to ensure football in 2011 and beyond while also motioning to a hardline stance in preserving the NFLPA’s gains.

Whatever plan Smith used to wow the player representatives will only become clear to us over the course of the coming year as the owners and union try to first preserve the salary cap before the 2010 NFL year. But in some sense it’s clear that the issues at hand won’t necessarily be influenced by the shadow of Upshaw’s tenure.

It Never Rains In Seattle

2009-03-16T13:23:00.001-04:00

How to write a eulogy for a dream never fully realized?

It’s one thing to ruminate on the end of Montana/Young to Rice. Or Ray Lewis out of Baltimore as it looked just a couple weeks ago.

Those accomplishments are identifiable, potential made concrete in championships, echoed in the reverential tones of adversaries past.

Sometimes that which makes the most sense, however, seems destined to never work out. We express surprise from the outside looking in when a combination so complete on paper never coalesces into a force unstoppable. But it’s a potent reminder that the game unfolds not according to one logical progression, rather manifests from myriad destinies colliding and the resulting chaos.

So it was with the Seattle linebackers for much of the last three seasons.

Julian Peterson is leaving Seattle after three mostly great seasons for Detroit, traded by the Seahawks, breaking up what could have been the best starting linebacking corps, one to three, in the league.

Pro Bowlers Peterson and Lofa Tatupu along with the insanely athletic Leroy Hill fueled high expectations for a defense often undersized along the front and thin in depth.

After a Super Bowl run in 2005 with Tatupu and Hill, Peterson was to be the final piece, propelling an overachieving defense into a consistent playmaking unit.

The Seahawks defense of the last three years has been anything but consistent, however.

There were flashes of brilliance. Tatupu's three interceptions against Philly in 2007. Peterson's dominant mid-season stretch in 2006. Hill's campaign of terror against the Redskins in the Wild Card round a season ago.

It's not that Tatupu-Peterson-Hill were ever bad. They simply never seemed to propel each other to greater heights. The 2007 season appeared to be a turning point, if they couldn’t exactly synch up, each could take his turn dominating for stretches. But in 2008 as the rest of the defense backslid, the trio couldn’t halt the regression or stop opponents from racking up yards especially on crucial third downs.

Part of the problem may have been Peterson’s acquisition in 2006 bounced the promising Hill to the strongside linebacking position, a spot often devoid of playmaking potential. While Peterson more than capably ran in the weakside spot, he might have hindered Hill’s development, Hill who often played like he busting at the seams the few chances he had to rush and react.

I don’t know if it’s addition by subtraction, a concept I tend to find shortsided. It certainly makes sense from a payroll standpoint after franchising Hill this year in the wake of GM Tim Ruskell’s big contracts to both Tatupu and Peterson. (Is it just me or does Ruskell have a fetish for bloated contracts? Shaun Alexander. Marcus Truffant. Patrick Kerney. Tatupu. Peterson.)

The offseason is often flush with optimism. Veterans seem easier to replace in March than they do in August. Hill steps over to Peterson’s weakside spot, his athleticism and experience softening that blow of Peterson's loss. But the Seahawks likely won’t have nearly the same talent on the strongside in coverage of tight ends and fighting through double teams on running plays.

In some sense it’s a vote to let the young Hill and Tatupu continue to develop together. And for Peterson it’s a chance to be Jim Schwartz’s rangy weakside backer a la Keith Bulluck in Tennessee as well as a vocal professional leader the Lions so desperately need.

What was supposed to be a perfect balance of youth and experience, was instead an up-and-down seesaw between brilliance and disappointment. The line that connected Tatupu and Hill to Peterson is broken down the middle, youth goes one way, experience another, each allowed to write their story from here on out.

When Sisyphus Took a Breather

2009-03-12T16:49:00.000-04:00

The NFL’s season of hope marches on. The biggest names of free agency may have signed those names to bloated contracts. But the draft is still a month and a half away allowing fans of each team to continue to dream big or small.

The Combine’s forty times and vertical leaps are posted and in the books. Scouts now crisscross the country evaluating prospects at pro days, arraying every last measureable to arm themselves for war room debates during the last weekend of April.

Prospects are rising. Jason Smith, the tackle from Baylor, Darius Heyward-Bey, the receiver from Maryland, and Everette Brown, the pass rusher from Florida State, to name a few.

Questions surround the top quarterbacks. Can Stafford or Sanchez save your franchise? What of Josh Freeman, the live arm from Kansas State?

Possibilities abound. Could Michael Crabtree end up on the same NFL roster as Darren McFadden? Will Detroit select a quarterback and elite left tackle with their two first rounders a la Atlanta a year ago? Which USC linebacker – Rey Maualuga, Brian Cushing, or Clay Matthews – will storm the league? Which will flame out?

Perhaps the significant promise and uncertainty of the season underscores any impending tragedy all that much more.

If it’s not clear, I’m talking specifically about Andre Smith this year.

The big tackle from Alabama, the elite talent in large part responsible for the Crimson Tide’s National title contention until the final weeks of last season, is in the midst of a tumble down many draft boards. While unfortunate given his talent, Smith’s fall is certainly not unprecedented.

In 2008, Malcolm Kelly and Brian Brohm both dropped out of the first round into the later half of the second. Kelly, the Oklahoma playmaking receiver, fought injury in the scouting season, then ran an unimpressive forty at his pro day while immaturely blaming coaches and trainers for his poor results. Brohm, the Louisville quarterback once considered a number one overall pick, struggled to disprove critics about his arm strength and down senior season.

In 2007, Brady Quinn and Alan Branch toppled from top programs to first round afterthoughts. Quinn, the Notre Dame quarterback, waited painfully for his name to be called under the glaring lights of Radio City Music Hall. Branch, the Michigan defensive tackle, faced questions about his health and conditioning, unable to regain elite status in scouts’ eyes.

In 2006, Matt Leinart and LenDale White slid in different measure. USC’s quarterback and running back, respectively, a team that competed for the National Championship just months before, Leinart fell to ten because of a loaded draft class while White fell to the second round because of poor conditioning and a pissy attitude.

In 2005, Aaron Rodgers and Luis Castillo lasted until the end of the first round despite top talent. Rodgers, the quarterback from Cal, confronted a dearth of quarterback needy teams. Castillo, the defensive tackle from Northwestern, owned up to steroid use that scared many teams away.

Scouts are complaining about Andre’s flabby body, suspect strength, and lack of motivation. The only thing keeping in the conversation is his excellent play on film and obvious talent.

The hesitations are enough to knock Smith down millions in the payscale. But at some point the risk of his talent will match up with a more modest contract and a team will take a chance on him.

Only draft weekend will tell how far Smith will fall. And only Smith’s reponse to his tumble will give us any indication if he’ll end more like Castillo and Rodgers (playing to promise) or like Branch and Leinart (benchwarming).

One of the surprising aspects of a trainwreck, like Smith’s extended NFL interview, is how difficult it is for outsiders to fathom his underwhelming, at time bizarre, effort. Whether that’s going AWOL form the Combine or ditching his in-season training regimen in the most important months of his football life. But like any trainwreck, no matter how incomprehensible, we find it hard to look away.

We think of football players as living large lives because they occupy so much of the public eye, not just in terms of how much of the camera’s frame they take up. But often these players exist in a bubble from high school to college, from college to the pros.

Small circles form. Talent dictates desires. Shared dreams run roughshod. Preset plans envelope telling signs. Dreams feed more dreams.

Then the bubble pops, suddenly, at the moment these dreams should be taking form.

Maybe it comes down to the truth that Andre is blowing our dreams, the ones we’ve had for him, not his.

The Mild Promise Of Wild Dreams

2009-03-11T16:04:00.002-04:00

Monday, in a slow NFL news day that featured a couple mid-level free agent signings, Matt Jones's jail sentence received top billing.

Jones was busted last year for possession of cocaine, found cutting up the stuff with a Foot Locker credit card in the backseat of a parked car. This year he failed a random substance test, per the terms of his rehab, because he was drinking beer with buddies while golfing.

Given the choice between a brief cool off in the pokey or another shot at rehab, Jones chose – at the urging of the judge and his mother – jail time.

After three mostly disappointing years, the cocaine bust threatened an end to Jones’s considerable on field promise. Slapped with a three game suspension, Jones responded with the best year of his career. While not fulfilling his promise, his play at least acknowledged that it’s still there.

Drinking a beer or three is no great crime. But in Roger Goodell’s NFL perception is everything. The Personal Conduct Policy outlines a series of guidelines which players are expected to follow. And any breach of that conduct leaves a fine line for the player to toe.

In all likelihood, Jones will receive another shot. But perhaps one that affords him little to no room for mistakes.

I couldn’t help thinking of another professional football news item from Monday buried by Jones’s jail sentence. While the talented if heartbreaking Jones continues to jeopardize his pro dreams, another set of dreamers is trying their own run on professional football, albeit in an unconventional manner.

Monday, the United Football League (UFL) announced a broadcast deal with the Versus channel for its “premiere” season beginning this October. Today, the UFL officially announced the head coaches for its four inaugural teams.

Jim Fassel will coach the team playing in Las Vegas. Denny Green the team in San Francisco. Ted Cottrell the team in New York. And Jim Haslett the team in Orlando.

A late infusion of investment saved the fledgling league. Prospective owners of teams in respective cities dropped out of the venture over the course of the last year. The most recognizable sports name Mark Cuban backed out, among others, claiming to be “too busy.”

All four teams are owned by the UFL. Whether the UFL looks to investors to buy teams or plans on selling interest publicly in the teams is unclear. In commissioner Michael Huyghue’s January blog entry on the UFL site he writes:

We will be offering an IPO structure where fans get to own a piece of their team. This isn't a cosmetic stock certificate but real shareholder equity. Our fans will be instrumental in selecting our team nicknames. On controversial decisions, like whether or not to bring Michael Vick into the UFL, we will rely on online fan-voting on our official website.

Letting fans pick the nicknames? There’s no way this could go wrong. (I already submitted “Bridge & Tunnel Crowd” for the New York team and “LOLcats” for the San Francisco team... I thought maybe “Zombie Hookers” for Las Vegas was a bit much.)

Consequently, the UFL is treating 2009 as an exhibition season of sorts, a trial run. The four teams will play each other twice in a six game schedule. Probing markets still considered for UFL teams, the Las Vegas is slated to play one home game in Los Angeles while the New York team one home game in Hartford, Connecticut. A championship game is tentatively scheduled for Thanksgiving weekend in Las Vegas.

What, I wonder, does the UFL hope to accomplish? And how does it expect to do so?

All prospective new professional leagues start from the basis that football is insanely popular in America and that the market can bear more competition because of this high-pitched popularity.

The demand for more pro football is the basis for the success of former professional leagues rivaling the NFL. But the game’s popularity has also played a seductive temptress to upstart leagues, beckoning them to grand ventures and collosal failures.

The AAFC in the 40s set up the first west coast team in San Francisco. The AAFC’s most popular and best team, the Browns, chased an NFL team out of town fleeing for the coast, the Rams from Cleveland to Los Angeles, specifically. After four contentious years, the AAFC and NFL merged in part, three of the AAFC’s seven teams were absorbed by the 10 NFL teams in 1950.

The AFL in the 60s arrived on the heels of the football boom ushered in by television. Television allowed easier access to the sport, creating greater demand in markets not served the the NFL’s 13 teams (expanded to 16 by the time of the merger). The eight original AFL teams (eventually 10) also benefited from a glut of professional-ready talent produced at the college level, allowing them to present a similar level, if in a more open-ended style, of competition as the NFL.

What worked for the AAFC and AFL didn’t for the USFL in the 80s and XFL in 01.

The USFL originally predicated its venture on year-round interest in pro football, starting as a spring league. Fluctuating attendance and decent television viewership led the league to attempt direct competition with the NFL in fall. That combined with sky-rocketing player contracts to secure the precious few top prospects led to the league’s demise.

The XFL’s failure resulted from straddling too many audiences while pleasing none. Owner Vince McMahon’s WWF approach irked staid football fans. The rule changes geared towards a more physical game led to low-scoring affairs, often tagged boring by mainstream audiences. And the risque trappings including stripper-like cheerleaders allowed sports commentators to dismiss the league’s credibility out of hand.

The UFL banks on too much talent crowding the sidelines in the pros, billing themselves as the place “where future stars come to play.” They envision themselves as a development league of sorts. It’s a current void once occupied by NFL Europe. But a void that could either be a financial boon or a blackhole.

With the UFL’s modest financial payscale, they won’t be able to spark a bidding war with the NFL like the AFL and USFL did. But they’ll need talent the NFL can’t or won’t play.

Enter the NFL’s crackdown on lawbreakers and misfits reflecting poorly on the league’s image. If the UFL is to make it, they might have to reap the discarded fruits of Roger Goodell's stringent Personal Conduct Policy.

The UFL is already opening its arms publicly to employing Michael Vick should he make it out of the halfway house. And with other talented players courting infamy like Pacman Jones and Matt Jones, UFL could provide a haven for players with considerable skill yet flamed out of the NFL not because they lack talent but because they ran afoul of the league’s high personal standards.

It begs the question if a few controversial stars and a collection of practice squad players and broken-down veterans will work toward the UFL’s long term success. The XFL crashed in part due to a perceived gleeful sidestepping of morality.

Will the UFL chase big, controversial names to build intrigue at the expense of providing that place where the future stars come out to play? Is the goal of an independent development league really a strong enough mission statement to weather the fluctations of a fledgling league is bound to encounter?

Should the UFL make it to its “premiere” season – a worthy question in these economic times – they could possibly face competition from a couple other nascent professional leagues. The AAFL potentially dead in the water is still scheduled to start play in Spring 2010. That’s the same target date for the New USFL.

Both leagues are furthering their competition from the NFL by placing themselves in Spring. But will likely target at the same level of talent that the UFL intends to mine.

Given the economics, it’s unlikely all three nascent leagues will even see the field. Perhaps even unlikely that one launches. But like every big venture before them, these leagues will have to toe a fine line of their own if they want a shot at being off and running.

A Matt Jones or Michael Vick might find moderate redemption in a league like the UFL... but it's worth asking what kind of future would they give the UFL?

Catching Hell

2009-03-09T23:05:00.005-04:00

Regular readers know that I don't often muse on matters outside the dimensions of the football field. But sometimes these boundaries are challenged by certain individuals, by certain situations, lines blurred between the professional and the personal.

Deadspin and With Leather and their ilk expose the tabloid aspects of pro football, among other sports, with aplomb. Kissing Suzy Kolber ruthlessly tweaks the establishment and its self-importance. Pro Football Talk churns the league insider rumor mill at a breakneck pace. The Football Outsiders crunch the numbers with humor and insight.

I’d like to think here (and at spiritual sibling site Throwing Into Traffic) you glean another facet of the game. Call it aesthetics. Call it artistry. Call it the reason a football sticks to a last-string wide receiver’s helmet in the biggest game of his life and why we care.

I don’t care what you call it, all I know is that the explanations and analysis of sports writers and commentators often ring hollow when discussing this game that I love. Vapid quotes pulled from postgame pressers. Moralizing tirades. Lame stereotypes and self serving generalizations. It's kneejerk reactions in place of insight.

So I draw up boundaries to focus on what I am qualified to write about: the game as we witness it.

Unfortunately, the distinctions are not always clear. Take, for instance, Terrell Owens.

Owens, along with Randy Moss and Marvin Harrison, has long been the top receiver of his generation. It’s a fiery group that’s set to flame out over the coming seasons. Harrison is likely already reduced to ashes. Perhaps Moss torches defenders for a couple more seasons.

Owens smolders somewhere in-between.

His numbers are still great if not otherworldly any more. But it’s not his play on the field that defines Owens as a football player anymore.

No, it’s Terrell Owens as TO the primadonna. TO has questioned the leadership of his quarterbacks. He’s attempted suicide… or he hasn’t, depending on which report you believe. He’s insinuated homosexuality among his teammates. He’s demanded raises, threatened holdouts, arranged media circuses, criticized coaches, incurred fines, slept through team meetings, and ultimately divided locker rooms.

But on the field, Owens has played through pain, posted incredible numbers, run amazing routes, scored with machine-like efficiency, made lesser defenders look like fools, driven opposing defensive coordinators crazy, and been a central reason for the best seasons among three different teams and their respective quarterbacks in this league.

In the bluster since TO’s release from Dallas until his signing to Buffalo, we’ve been told that his greatest crime is fracturing a team’s psyche in pursuit of his own selfish ends.

A half truth at best. Owens’s greatest crime is something else… related but equally incriminating of competitive sports as a whole as it is of Owens.

Owens's crime is not that he's a jerk. Rather, it’s that Owens is an insanely gifted, incredibly hard working, compulsively productive jerk. And that, in the wake of tantrums and vicious insinuations, he may just be right more often than not.

Jerry Jones was lauded in many corners for finally ridding his Cowboys of the TO headache. An impressive assemblage of talent like the Dallas Cowboys had no business being held back by a primadonna wide receiver that questions the temerity of his team when the chips are down.

And if you believe the Cowboys are finally on the cusp of the Super Bowl, you haven't been watching the same Cowboys that, in concert, as a team, dropped three of their last four games this season and a clear shot at the playoffs.

The Dallas Cowboys are in their current predicament because they operate at all levels with desperation, without an identifiable plan. Owens was never the answer, but desperation opened up Jones's checkbook in 2006, $25 million wide.

Playing with an urgency and focused desperation on the field is one thing. Using it as a business and roster building model is something else entirely.

TO claims he was the fall guy for Dallas's shortcomings. Not a surprising claim, considering Owens's penchant for self aggrandizement, but in a sense not terribly far from the mark. First, Bill Parcells was forced out after directing the team's only marked improvement in the past decade. Then Wade Phillips assumed the playcalling duties from, before firing, defensive coordinator Brian Stewart.

Now Owens is run out of town.

Do you think Dan Reeves, hired in the offseason to troubleshoot Dallas's problems, quit before the end of his first day because Jones wouldn't fire Terrell Owens? No, Dallas's problems are manifold and deeply rooted.

And that's to say nothing of Tony Romo's horrendous play in games which have counted the most. At one point, Romo was poised to be the next Brett Favre, Favre of the MVP years. Best when the play breaks down, constantly creating something spontaneous and vital.

Now, Romo's poised to be Favre of the Jets, teetering on the edge of damaged goods. He did come to rely on Jason Witten too much late in the season, as TO charged, heaving the ball into the seam despite double coverage, often resulting in incompletes or, worse, interceptions (a pick-six against the Steelers in particular). In the Cowboys' three late season losses, Romo threw six interceptions versus three touchdowns, completing about 53% of his passes, all while losing three fumbles.

(It should be noted that those three losses were to three of the four teams making the conference championship games. Add in Dallas's loss to the Cardinals earlier in the season, and the Cowboys faltered against every team in or a game away from the Super Bowl. So much for preseason favorites.)

Owens wasted little time in gnashing his teeth over the Cowboys pathetic play late in the season. While breaking from the dull script nearly every player in the league reads from when frustrations run high, something was lost in Owens's bitching. He was telling the truth.

Rick Gosselin, the Dallas Morning News writer, might be right in saying Owens faces a sharp decline in his skills, now nearing 36, a tender age in receiver years.

Gosselin has forgotten more about the sport than I will possibly ever now, but I think he's wrong on this one, simply drawing obvious parallels to other great receivers reaching the same age while forgetting the particular receiver in question. TO now possesses a potent reason, in addition to his insane drive, to prove himself.

Hall-of-Fame linebacker Joe Schmidt once said you have to be a son-of-a-bitch to play this game. Owens's problem is that in a league of son-of-a-bitches he's the biggest and best one. He absolutely is a distraction. But the league doesn't lack for them. What of Ben Roethlisberger's motorcycle accident? Or his comments critical of former coaches, Bill Cowher and Ken Whisenhunt? Great teams don't avoid distractions... they overcome them.

We pin these failings on Owens and they stick because he plays the part so well... and because his words often approach truths that are more difficult to address or solve.

I haven't a clue if Owens will work out in Buffalo. He'll work hard. He'll demand the ball when things are tough. (And more often than not, he'll be right in demanding it.) My friend, the Counselor, has a fantastic quote of his father's concerning Dick Jauron, namely, that Jauron has "a bicep for a brain."

But Jauron's also an Ivy grad whose unyielding bicep-brained approach could play well with Owens and his distaste for the moral equivocations inherent in so much of the game. If nothing else, entertainment aside, Owens holds himself to a high standard and consequently everyone else around him.

For a team that's so often underachieved, Owens might deliver just the kind of harsh truth they need to hear.

The Receiver Who Wasn't There

2009-03-05T15:57:00.001-05:00

The offseason, especially during the heady days of free agency and the draft, is the time to drastically re-imagine our teams.

New faces come. Familiar faces leave. Hope vacillates somewhere in-between.

Sure, the list of re-upped players lengthens. Ray Lewis in Baltimore. Kurt Warner in Arizona. Kerry Collins in Tennessee. Jon Stinchcomb and Jonathan Vilma in New Orleans. Jeff Saturday and Kelvin Hayden in Indianapolis. Tony Richardson and Brandon Moore in New Jersey.

More often, however, teams start the subtle and not-so-subtle shifts which will shape the story of their 2009 season as distinct from 2008.

Take the Jets, for instance. On paper thus far their offseason has reflected the words of new coach Rex Ryan, namely a commitment to physical (even “violent” according to Bart Scott) football. Trading for corner Lito Sheppard and signing linebacker Scott and safety Jim Leonard places the focus on defense, especially defense as Ryan imagines it.

Ryan in his time at Baltimore ran a defense as fluid as it was vicious. In stark contrast to the rest of the league, Ryan taught his system tailored to his players then allowed them to run as they saw fit on the field. He imparted his vision, one that included his players, and made them see the field through his eyes.

Of course, having talent like Ed Reed and knowledge like Ray Lewis makes football that fluid possible. It remains to be seen whether the talk and the signings will add up to such visionary football at the Jets.

Will Ryan’s tenure shape up like his father Buddy’s in Philly (good but not great)? Or in Arizona (miserable)? Or will he write a different story?

Take the Lions. No team needed a roster purge more than Detroit. Not a single splashy move among Jim Schwartz’s myriad moves, but a bunch of short contracts on reliable veterans.

Exeunt Jon Kitna at quarterback, Leigh Bodden at corner, Dwight Smith at safety, Mike Furrey at receiver, Edwin Mulitalo at guard, and Dan Campbell at tight end.

Enter Bryant Johnson at receiver, Grady Jackson at defensive tackle, Maurice Morris at running back, and Anthony Henry and Phillip Buchanon at corner.

Do those names look interchangeable to you? Perhaps if you stare at stat columns for too long. But the most important part is the jerseys that the incoming players wore last year, namely not silver and Hononlulu blue.

Also, several of these new Lions inked short contracts of two or three years which will theoretically give Schwartz time to draft and groom better talent. In the meantime, he’s nabbed some players that have no vivid memories of 0-16.

Or take the Buccaneers and their big purge. Jeff Garcia, Derrick Brooks, and nearly everyone over thirty gone. Some young talent in Kellen Winslow and Derrick Ward. And a looming identity crisis for a franchise that lost nearly all its veteran leadership in a few short weeks.

So then what to make of the biggest free agency move thus far besides Albert Haynesworth to the Redskins? What to make of TJ Houshmandzadeh to the Seahawks?

If this is the time to let our imaginations run wild about new combinations as great players leave old teams and join new ones, why am I in the midst of a creative block about Houshmandzadeh packing up for the gray shores of Seattle?

Because it’s Cincinnati, somehow, magically, their best and most consistent receiver hits the free market still in his prime. TJ’s big and strong. He’s quick enough though not blazingly fast. He plucks every pass and secures it, rarely fumbling. He worked his own way into being an elite receiver, never catching fewer than 90 passes in the last three seasons, never fewer than 900 yards in the past five.

The newly released Terrell Owens might possess more natural talent, but Houshmandzadeh is the kind of receiver that never takes what talents he has, which are considerable, for granted. He’s the kind of player you don’t mind paying big – $40 million, $15 million guaranteed big – in his early 30s because of the respect that he has for his conditioning. Three or four great years on the contract and TJ is easily worth it.

But what do those potentially great years portend to look like? And what effect will this have on Seattle as a whole, a team struggling between the team that they were and the team that they think they are.

Houshmandzadeh’s game is all stealth. His routes are so crisp that the resulting production tends toward machine-like consistency. Working underneath and often inside, TJ chips away at defense often running to its heart and snagging pieces of it, little by little. By the end of game, the spectator turns around and without any spectacular dashes or circus catches realizes Houshmandzadeh just put together a helluva game.

There aren't any interesting pictures of Houshmandzadeh on Flickr. I usually scroll through Flickr to find a photo real, something funny, something taken by a fan, something without sticky copyright issues. For this post, I pulled a screen grab from an MTV Cribs episode. The only interesting photo of Houshmandzadeh on Flickr is also a screen grab, one I ran on here midseason, showing TJ cleaning the mud off his cleats with a Terrible Towel.

There’s no silly fan event photos. No weird banquent guest photos. No goofing around in training camp photos. No sideline emotion photos.

It’s as if outside of the dimensions of the football field, Houshmandzadeh ceases to exist.

And I’m not so sure on the field he doesn’t also take on similar ghost-like qualities. He just disappears. He just makes a defense pay. It’s not art as Larry Fitzgerald creates, one distinct moment from the next. It’s a body of work that builds up over time, piece by piece, a mosaic of sorts.

Obviously, a West Coast Offense like Seattle's thrives on receivers with TJ’s skill set. Yet it’s still difficult to gauge his impact.

What room have they sealed Matt Hasselbeck in? Will he ever return to form as the best quarterback no one ever thinks about? Does Jim Mora plan on turning Seneca Wallace into a little Michael Vick? How much cap room can the linebackers eat up before it sinks the team’s ability to rebuild its offensive and defensive lines?

These are not questions Houshmandzadeh is asked to answer. In some sense, he will just be free to be, to do his job in a more sane environment than Cincinnati and let the Seahawks’ chips fall where they may, perhaps much like the rest of the team that remains nearly invisible until the second round of the playoffs most years.

The Good Soldier

2009-03-03T22:30:00.001-05:00

I spent much of this past weekend screaming. Perhaps not the best of ideas as the lingering cold assaulting my cigarette scarred lungs rendered my voice already raspy and rusty.

But I couldn’t help it. The whirlwind first weekend of free agency stuffed in too many head scratchers for my excitable head.

Who the fuck is Jason Brown? Why did he nab that larger-than-life contract with the Rams? How the hell did the Bills fuck it up so badly with Derrick Dockery, letting him walk away for no compensation whatsoever? Why did the Giants sign two defensive linemen when they already have five or six starting caliber ones?

But something gave me pause above all else... and, yes, it's concerning the Lieutenant.

Kellen Winslow Jr is both undoubtedly a talent and undoubtedly difficult to work with. He hails from fine NFL stock inheriting both otherworldly skills and healthy skepticism to the league's machinations.

The NFL is not kind to its players on any other day than the one on which they ink a sizable contract or two... a day that doesn't come for most who don that jersey with the NFL logo stitched into the collar's base. Certainly not a truth that escaped Kellen Winslow Sr during his brilliant but injury-shortened Hall of Fame career.

Winslow Jr's first two seasons were lost to injury, one a byproduct of the game's violence, one his immaturity. (Interesting to note that Winslow's motorcycle accident, for all the high expectations surrounding him, didn't affect nearly the response that Ben Roethlisberger's accident a year later did... and I'm not talking public outcry but language in pro contracts.) He matched those two lost seasons with two brilliant ones, helping bring the Browns to the brink of the playoffs in 2007.

Last year, however, was a disaster in Cleveland. Injuries and indifference pervaded the club. Fellow pass catcher Braylon Edwards struggled with drops resulting from a lack of focus. After a decent start, teams keyed on Winslow and sunk what was one year prior a nearly unstoppable offense.

Midseason Winslow was hospitalized with a staph infection. It was the seventh incident of staph for the Browns in the past few years. Staph infection probably went a long way to ending center LeCharles Bentley's career and helped end Joe Jurevicius's season if not his career.

Let me repeat that. Seven players. Several of whom the franchise paid millions of dollars for to play. Over the course of two to three years. Staph infections.

Winslow spoke out about it when the Browns were remaining hush-hush on publicly and didn't address his concerns internally.

And this outspoken critique in part gets Winslow tabbed as a locker room cancer. For speaking out about what in NFL terms has become an epidemic.

Now, I'm not naive to Winslow's failings. He talks a big game. He's accomplished some good things, but nothing truly great yet. And he's gone to the media about lesser concerns.

But the team justified moving perhaps their pass catcher with best intersection of pure talent and accomplishment because he became a headache... and the media bought it hook, line, and sinker.

The ESPN article running down Winslow's trade to Tampa characterizes as Winslow as giving Cleveland "too many" headaches. It must be hard attempting a cover up of a team-wide health epidemic as opposed to actually fixing said epidemic.

I love the NFL but sometimes I feel like it's a world populated with high school principals, steadfast in their belief that the institution can do no wrong, that any honest open dialogue amounts to a punishable offense, whether that's a stint in detention or cutting short of a promising career.

And it's not just the teams, the media brandishes their finger-wagging disdain whenever there's a stereotype to pile on. Stereotype in this case, a big talking, big play receiver.

I'm not saying the Lieutenant is a saint. Rather, this notion that Winslow is a "troublemaker" given his resume on and off the field the past three seasons, from the time he's returned from his first two lost seasons, is short-sided moralization on the part of media allowing the Browns to absolve themselves of any blame by pushing it on Winslow.

Ask LeCharles Bentley about staph. Ask Joe Jurevicius. Hell, ask Winslow, I'd love to hear his side of the story again.

For their troubles, Cleveland is getting a second round pick this year and a fifth in 2010. For Tampa's troubles, they're getting an elite tight end now with a reason to prove himself. Stay classy, Cleveland.

Know Thy Family

2009-03-02T16:01:00.004-05:00

“Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.”

In some twisted modern NFL appellation, Bill Belichick is the Godfather.

Or, at least, the trade that sent Matt Cassel and Mike Vrabel to Kansas City, Scott Pioli’s new project, for a mere second round draft pick highlights that Belichick ascribes to a similar honor code as the Don Corleone.

I mistakenly clicked on Jay Mariotti’s column where in tones venomous and paranoid he accused the New England-Kansas City trade of amounting to collusion. (I refuse to link the column here and don't recommend seeking it out.)

Perhaps, though it seems a stretch. Pro football is a world of honor codes and backroom deals. That fact may anger the more nebbish among the press corps, but it is a reality nonetheless… certain teams simply won’t work with one another – can you imagine a trade between the Raiders and Broncos? – and the moves transacted away from the football field play into the larger game among and between the league’s 32 teams.

I guess the question is really what game is Belichick playing?

I hesitate to call Belichick’s regime at the Patriots “ethical” for obvious reasons. Spygate dismisses that term out of hand.

But Belichick’s tour around the league from the Giants to the Browns to the Patriots displays a distinct and consistent character. My man Zac at Throwing Into Traffic hit the nail on the head when he referred to the Belichick Mafia. Belichick adheres to an almost tribal sense of what’s right, loyalty foremost, whether or not the substance of those actions fall within the pale of rightness.

David Halberstam’s Education Of a Coach goes to great lengths to portray Belichick as a man of principle and the Patriots success as a reflection of those commitments. It’s an old school repose netting a new school boon.

Halberstram’s book was published a full two years before Spygate broke to the general public, the repeated references to the mountains of tape Belichick and cohort Ernie Adams wade through taking on a sinister meaning in retrospect.

Where Halberstam tried to sell Belichick as a principled free thinker, drawing on the lessons of the past to avoid the mistakes of the present, through a glass darkly we now see Belichick as possessing a complex relationship with morality but still a strict code with responsibilities and rewards.

Eric Mangini’s departure to the AFC East rival Jets is painted as defection. Perhaps Josh Daniels’s move to the Broncos is desertion as well. Not so with Pioli and Romeo Crennel who moved on with Belichick’s blessing.

Of course, the real problem is assigning higher morality to professional sports. Outside of sportsmanship, morality becomes murky when coaches and players are saddled with the singular commandment to win and win often. No doubt, we do invest professional sports with our ideals as we look to athletic grace and strict rules to reinforce some notion of how the world ought to be. But then of course is the matter of men as they are versus how they ought to be.

It should be noted in this mini drama played out that Belichick is not only doing right by Pioli, his long time second-in-command, but also his young now former quarterback.

Instead of following Cassel's coming out season with more toil behind the Golden Boy Tom Brady or exile to some backwater like Detroit, Belichick sends Cassel to a familiar newness, surrounded by Belichick people. That truth is lost in a bit of this back-and-forth bluster.

What does the move mean in football terms? The skinny on Cassel and his skills translating to other non-Patriots teams involved the system he flourished in, his discomfort with the five-step drop, and the quality of players and coaches that surrounded his maiden season.

With the Chiefs, a few of those concerns are taken care of. Coach Todd Haley will likely keep Cassel working out of a shotgun in a pass-first dink and dunk system that threatens vertical and burns with draws often enough to allow Cassel ample space to work in the intermidiate portion of the passing tree.

And, of course, before Cassel was appended to the trade, commentators praised the acquisition of Vrabel, an experienced defender to add cache to a very young roster that in all likelihood will become younger over the course of this offseason.

Either way, Belichick continues to remake the NFL to his liking, or impose his preferences where they can imposed. In some sense, it's not the petty squabbling of Packers and Vikings or Broncos and Raiders.

I'm not trying to paint the transaction as heroic or even ethical. It's not. Despite the Patriots PR department trying to spin the trade as simply bad timing on the part of Tampa and Denver, there is however a familiar method to the gesture.

It's a more a question of when do we start sympathizing again with the bad guys. Or rather realize the distance between ourselves and our enemies may not be that great.

Atonement For $100 Million

2009-02-27T15:03:00.002-05:00

Wait a minute, did Dan Snyder just do something, uh... right?

No one questions Snyder's passion. Just the big spending ways and overbearing ownership of the Redskins franchise he deeply loves.

Snyder bought the Redskins out of love. He made his fortune due to a charasmatic, tenacious, and aggressive demeanor. He’s a man deeply and personally intertwined in his ventures, singular in nature and personality. Snyder succeeds at business because he believes deeply in the bullshit you and I cannot muster any response to save a defeated sigh.

Where tenacity in the business world translates into dollar signs, in the world of pro sports tenacity from the top becomes meddling and equates to a divisive front office.

Business makes sports professional. But business doesn’t make professional sports profitable.

Pro sports operate in a rich world of values all its own. The most successful owners in the NFL stand in the background, nurturing continuity and consistency, allowing their football people, the coaches, GMs, and VPs, to take care of football decisions.

The success of any sports team is dependent on a combination of on-field and off-field factors, a concoction without measurable formula. Much of pro success depends on something as delicate and abstract as psychology, somewhere found in the balance between talent, teamwork, payroll, and trust.

Not that football people are masters of subtlety, but subtleties abound. Especially for the precarious position of the owner. In charge but not in charge. Aloof but not entirely distant.

Snyder is not a man of subtlety. And his actions especially in free agency have put him in the center of the Redskins struggles at the edge of the NFC playoff picture year in and year out. Struggles undoubtedly that wound Snyder deeply.

To salve those wounds he’s repeatedly gone to the checkbook. A cycle vicious, ongoing.

But with one humongous payday to one humongous defensive tackle, has Snyder perhaps finally gotten the big spender thing right? Is Albert Haynesworth and his 6’6” 320 lbs frame of football fury worth $100 million?

As my man Zac at Throwing Into Traffic states, Prince Albert to the Redskins makes sense by simple offseason math.

The Redskins were terrible at creating pressure last year. Haynesworth’s disruption of the pocket’s fleshy underbelly not only nets the big man an impressive sack total for a defensive tackle but creates opportunities for his teammates.

Tennessee ranked fifth in the league last year in sack total with 44 overall. Noting that only one player approached Haynesworth’s 8.5 sacks, the production was mainly spread around the defensive line, specifically 30.5 sacks by eight of Haynesworth’s fellow defensive linemen.

That number alone crushes the 24 sacks the entire Redskins defense netted last season. And much of the credit for that distributed total can go to the play of Haynesworth demanding double and triple teams (while often beating those double and triple teams for those 8.5 sacks, 22 hurries, and 7 tackles for loss).

So Haynesworth should shore up an awful pass rush and raise the level of play of his teammates around him.

But such simple offseason math usually doesn’t work out with such simplicity in reality.

Remember Shaun Rogers and Corey Williams to Cleveland last year? The Browns great Achilles heel in 2007 was an underperforming front seven, especially along the line. Despite a fine season from Rogers and a decent one from Williams, the Browns broke down just about everywhere else on the offense and defense. Injuries, regressions, poor adjustments, atrocious depth… 2008 was a debacle for Cleveland.

Haynesworth was central to a complex enigma of a team crafted by Jeff Fisher in Tennessee. A terrifying pressure defense that rarely blitzed their linebackers. A turf-churning ground offense that thumbed their noses at conventional field position wisdom. Daring and gambling, yet old school in values like building monstrous lines on both sides of the ball.

Prince Albert is bevy of complex moves and weight-room sculpted power as well as old school hustle. He's the face-stomping hood and the shocking maturity resulting from real remorse.

What Haynesworth will mean to a Redskins defense, or rather team, is of course as yet unclear. Washington is no backwater, playing second fiddle to the college game in its own humid backyard like the Titans do. The Beltway is always buzzing with overblown expectations. His teammates will no longer be the pick-up drivers like Kyle Vanden Bosch and Keith Bulluck. Instead, he'll take his locker room seat next to luminaries like London Fletcher-Baker and Clinton Portis.

One of the major differences in this signing for Snyder and for the Redskins is that no one can quibble that a defensive tackle deserves it more than Haynesworth. When Brandon Lloyd and Antwaan Randle El pulled down their huge Washington paydays, more accomplished and, yes, better receivers toiled in points such as Cincinnati and Arizona for remarkably lesser dollars. No one, however, has played the defensive tackle position quite like Prince Albert has for the last two-three seasons.

But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. At the same moment Snyder signs perhaps one of the best defensive free agents of the past few years, he hands another overlarge check to corner DeAngelo Hall.

In one morning, Snyder perhaps atones for the sins of free agency contracts past by maybe – just maybe – paying the right player the right ridiculous number, then turns around and throws cash at a greatly overvalued corner who flamed out the last time large guaranteed money was dumped in his lap.

It’s been awhile since Washington “won” the offseason Super Bowl. The jokes lingered the past couple seasons even as Snyder and the Redskins uncharacteristically stalked the sidelines during free agency’s big money early days. Something didn't feel right when the Jets and not Washington dropped money on damaged goods with a potential great payoff.

So here Washington is, front horse in the offseason race again. The weirdest part may be that when it comes to Haynesworth they may have gotten it right.

This Isn't What Ghost Called Hazy Paradise

2009-02-24T14:02:00.001-05:00

For the better part of three days I’ve layed on my side and hoped I wouldn’t cough again. No such luck really. The mild fever, the nose turning on and off like a tap, the spacey logic, all of that is okay by me… this cough is killing me however.

So apologies. Even though time I’ve had in spades, my inclinations haven’t bent toward the myriad offseason pursuits of NFL 2009.

I do see multiple if not ironies then paradoxes in these early days of the non-football wasteland. Teams expelling hard campaigners like Deuce McAllister, Fred Taylor, Jeff Garcia, Chris McAllister right before the Scouting Combine.

“Out with the old, in the with the new” doesn’t quite cover it. While some of the veteran cap casualities might be facing the hard truth of retirement, several will stick somewhere.

I’m not against the youth movement. I’m not overly sentimental. Sentimental, yes, but not overly so. Fred Taylor of last season didn’t look like Fred Taylor of even the prior two-three seasons. Taylor always ran with that weird line through his body, slightly forward, making his cuts through hips down to his knees leaving his chest swiveling forward like the compass point to due north (or due endzone).

Last year, Taylor looked almost bent over, crumpled before he hit the line outside a few breaking runs. Of course, the only consistency in Jacksonville was the offensive line’s consistently atrocious play.

And Deuce played on a couple busted knees when he did play. And Chris McAllister has played in only 14 games in the last two years. And Garcia’s not started a full season since 2002 (though perhaps he could have in 2006 with Philly).

Yeah, these guys are damaged goods. And they’ve lost millions because of it, sent packing before roster bonuses could take effect. (Making Nnamdi Asomugha’s contract with all the guarantees all the more amazing.)

But compare the known factors for these veterans against their relatively few unknowns. The legitimate questions surround their health over a full season. But teams know what they’re getting when these players suit up.

Then think about the Scouting Combine wrapping up today.

The Combine exists to provide another small measure of how these players will stack up in the pros, once money is involved… and consequently it gets real.

Andre Smith loses millions for going AWOL. Debate is around whether one of the best players in college football who played through injury should be downgraded because of that injury. Michael Crabtree this time… but do you remember when we had this debate about Adrian Peterson? Anonymous receivers from places like Abilene Christian are jumping up boards with 4.3 forty times.

And the craziest part? That all this “underwear football” as Brad Childress calls it isn’t lunacy. Last year’s ROY candidate Chris Johnson separated himself at the Combine after playing at mid-major East Carolina. For every Lions wide receiver that nailed their top 10 spot in Indianapolis only to subsequently flame out, there are legitimate players who treat the Combine as part of what it takes to earn their spot in the NFL, then go out and earn their role on an NFL team.

While the combine provides more information for teams to make their decisions come draft day, there's simply no formula for projecting success in the pros. And for battle scarred veterans, there's no guarantees to provide against further injury and further deterioration of skills.

Five days in Indianapolis or five million on a two year show-me contract aren't a solution to either problem.

Banned From the Roxy

2009-02-18T12:28:00.004-05:00

In case you missed it, this is your new defensive coordinator of the Tennessee Titans:

Jim Schwartz may have taken on the NFL's uphill battle of the young century: namely, make Detroit relevant for the first time since George Plimpton's book Paper Lion.

But Schwartz did leave his own pair of shoes to fill at Tennessee.

Working closely with a defensive minded head coach in Jeff Fisher, Schwartz constructed a ferocious defense that evolved from the Gregg Williams's blitzing style 4-3 of the late 90s Oilers/Titans into a 4-3 that rarely blitzes but was just as brutally effective.

Schwartz did it first of all with great players. Having Albert Haynesworth, Keith Bulluck, and Jevon Kearse in his prime would makes any defensive coordinator's job that much easier.

But Schwatz also did it with advanced statistics that attacked the why's and how's of the game by first looking at what worked then working backwards, establishing trends on paths conventional football logic might never tread.

It took awhile for the ethos to take hold in Tennessee. A couple playoff runs early in the decade sapped the roster, led to a short spate of rebuilding... but the Titans of the last couple years gleefully threw conventional logic by the wayside and embraced a loose approach to the game. Whether calling an onside kick while clinging to a close lead or adjusting their fourth down decision making to include field position as well as distance, the Titans chased victories attacking all phases of the game.

A lot of Tennessee's recent success is directly due to their dominant defense. With Fisher, the longest tenured head coach in the league, there will always be an emphasis on dominant defense. But each coach under Fisher has put their stamp on Titans.

And now Chuck Cecil, once one of the most feared defenders in the league, gets to put his stamp on the next edition of the Titans defense.

Chuck Cecil was one of my first home team heroes. The Green Bay Packers of my childhood were anything but scary for opponents in the 80s – outside of Charles Martin’s disgusting hit list. And the team certainly wasn’t successful.

But as apathy with the Packers’ contemporary conundrum crested high, Cecil arrived onto the scene to return a relevance however minor to Green Bay.

Drafted in the fourth round, Cecil made his mark early with a series of vicious hits, first in training camp then on the football field, plunging ever forward with his head, repeatedly cracking open the bridge of his nose like a pomegranate, little beads of blood trickling out garishly for our amusement.

Even in Green Bay’s surprise 10-6 1989 campaign, Cecil was a dose of brutal reality in an otherwise unreal year. Don Majkowski maybe have been the Majik Man – what I wouldn’t give to find that t-shirt – leading improbable fourth quarter comeback after comeback. But it was Chuck’s busted honker more than Tim Harris’s sack celebrating six shooters that underscored the price tallied of this miracle success however brief.

Unfortunately, the head-first assassin spearing tackles also exacted a price of their own. Repeated concussions robbed Cecil of years off his violent career.

Cecil’s on-field antics got him notice, got him fines, got him a cover article in Sports Illustrated.

The dangerous hits also got Cecil a big-at-the-time contract with Arizona after the 1992 season. My young self was outraged when the Packers didn’t pay up for their biggest defense star (that outrage was soon mollified after Green Bay signed Reggie White to a monster contract).

But after one year, Cecil was out of a football for a year, the toll taken on his brain and neck. He came back for a season with the Houston Oilers amidst the quickly crumbling relationship between the franchise and the city.

As time went by and the uncritical passion of my youth evolved into complicated love/hate relationship I have with the game today, I began to see Cecil’s brief career in a different light, one out of the halcyon glow of youth, one more attuned to the harsher hues of the game and the toll it takes on the body. There's a delicate balance between playing the game with requisite violence and pushing that violence too far. Sometimes things just happen on the football field, sometimes they happen for a reason.

It’s not that Cecil should be vilified. He played the game hard and with a commendable physicality. But he pushed the line on what was acceptable, taking a step further into turning his protective gear into weapons. If he wouldn’t have done it, someone else would have. Indeed, there were those before him, Jack Tatum for example, and he had plenty of contemporaries… some might even consider Roy Williams and the horse collar tackle a spiritual successor in the unbroken line of vicious safety play of which Cecil can claim descent.

Cecil was merely the poster boy. During Cecil’s day, he was at the center of a legitimate debate about how to play the game. He was playing it the only way he knew how, smartly and violently, to overcome lack of size and speed.

Size and speed were taking over the game. The NFL was in flux. Defenders, especially backs, were still working around the restricted contact initiated at the end of the previous decade and how to deal with the West Coast Offense which thrived on underneath timing routes made possible by the limited contact. Ferocity in the middle of the field was an almost necessity to disrupt the careful ballet of a timing offense. It’s a legitimate goal, how it’s achieved, though, required delineations, delineations which would come over the course of the Cecil controversy.

I’m not saying Chuck Cecil will instruct his Titans defense to tackle with the crown of their helmets and incur a rash of neck injuries and concussions amongst his players and their opponents.

I’m not saying that the Titans defense will play dirty under Cecil.

Since his playing days Cecil’s been a successful coach of the Titans secondary for much of this decade. No doubt he’s matured, taken a longer look at the game and how to play it.

While I don't expect the Titans to replicate Cecil's now clearly illegal hits on the football field, they may take on some of the desperation with which he played the game. Under Gregg Williams, there was a firebrand quality to the Titans defense fitting its coaches personality. Under Schwartz, they were physical, precise, and inspirationally simple in part a reflection of their coordinator.

What qualities the Titans defense takes under and from Cecil remains to be seen. His job will be much more difficult if Tennessee can't re-sign its best player in Haynesworth. But whether Prince Albert re-signs or not, I can't imagine the Titans flagging in ferocity.

The Manifold Combinations

2009-02-17T14:15:00.000-05:00

The Combine starts tomorrow. Weigh-ins, interviews, long jumps, vertical leaps, bench presses, sprints, drills, drills, drills.

It's the beginning of a circus of poking and prodding that continues until the tense weeks before the draft. Maybe circus is the right description for the atmosphere, but it's really more akin to judging cattle at the state fair.

For all the workout warriors and can't miss prospects that miss terribly, it's easy to say that the Combine is manifestation of the NFL's collective madness. Strident yet sometimes horribly wrong proclamations. Otherworldly lines of questioning. Flagging focus amidst intensity. Presumptions of self-absorbed universes.

But for every Mike Mamula (whose pro career wasn't actually that horrible) there's an Antonio Cromartie who truly separates himself with elite numbers that translate to the football field.

And I would imagine in this day and age with the glut of NFL caliber talent nurtured in small schools, the Combine is even more important to provide objective measure where there cannot be one on the football field.

We know Michael Crabtree isn't going to run the 40. And while it hasn't really been said yet, once the scouts assemble, the whispers will start, the speculation will run rampant. Unless Crabtree, one of the best players in all of college football the last two years, runs well at his pro day, the talk won't die down.

More to the point, the scouts from each NFL team aren't comfortable with the idea of a player who doesn't hustle through the Combine's events with deadly seriousness. It is after all an extended job interview. The primadonna act, at least it's perceived, will only get a player so far...

I'm no scout. I don't pour over college game tape half of every day. But of the college football I've watched, a handful of players on the 2009 Combine's invite list have stuck out on game day. I'll be interested to see how they test, how they measure up.

I worry about Pat White. In a weak quarterback class, White might get more consideration at his college position than he would have, say, last year when Matt Ryan, Brian Brohm, Joe Flacco, and Chad Henne were vying for early round consideration.

And what this greater consideration means, I can't say. White was a hell of a college quarterback. But he is also the sum of all that doesn’t translate into a successful pro quarterback. He’s the NCAA all time leading rusher at quarterback. He excelled in a run first spread offense. He’s undersized and slight of frame. No one can question his toughness. But they’ll question his arm strength.

The last thing I want is for White to simply be a Mountaineer for life and nothing more. Not that such noteriety is so bad. But ridiculous talent like his must have some place on Sundays.

Obviously tomorrow will go a ways toward shaking out just players who have dominated during the season will fare on draft day. Of course, we all interested to see how guys with name recognition fare under the Combine’s bright lights. Peria Jerry, the stellar Ole Miss defensive tackle, or Malcolm Jenkins, the touted corner from Ohio State, will command attention. Even guys like Louie Sakoda, the kicker from Utah who played a central role in the Utes BCS busting run last season, will be picked apart.

Here’s some players I’m really interested in tracking as they post numbers over the next several days.

Hakeem Nicks, WR UNC, and his ability to catch the ball behind his back.

Stephen Hodge, SS TCU, the Horned Frogs’ seek-and-destroy robot.

DJ Moore, CB Vanderbilt, sole playmaker on Commodores’ bowl winning team.

Jonathan Casillas, LB Wisconsin, sped through the Badgers mediocrity week in and week out.

Anthony Parker, G Tennessee, run blocking on the move a thing of large beauty.

Sammie Stroughter, WR Oregon State, guy making the tough sometimes unheralded catches.

Whether these guys make the cut or not, they've played some great football up until now. How far they can go might just be coded somewhere between their bench presses and agility drills.

Tag, You're It

2009-02-16T13:21:00.002-05:00

Football is an ever forward projection. Coaches don't sell backslides or regressions to their players or to the public.

Sure, some teams and players do get worse. "Rebuilding" is a dirty word. But in the hyper competitive NFL, stasis is nigh on untenable.

Progress, improvement, turning the corner - call it what you will. The company line is always about getting better.

In the league, there's three basic ways, right? Free agency, the draft, and player maturation. Other less easy to identify factors loom large in a team's fortunes: leadership, stable lineups, good communication. But those are issues to be ironed out in training camps, or, if not ironed out, at least confronted.

Free agency is less than two weeks away. And the combine kicks off this week Wednesday. These two events are interrelated. In the heavily compartmentalized NFL, we tend to think of the draft and free agency as separate. But their impact on teams will be closer to one.

Some sportswriters will caution against the free agency spending spree. Remember the Redskins! Beware the cap hell! Others will applaud the opening of pocketbooks while making ridiculous designations like "winners" in free agency before a down of football is played.

But it's important to remember that free agency isn't truly free. And the draft isn't really a blank check shopping spree at the supermarket.

The draft order and the resulting slights of hand, in trades, in feints of interest, will culminate in its own drama during the last weekend in April. It's an on-paper series of pirouettes and dagger plunges. There's a surrealism to it because none of the prospects fought over are real NFL players yet. These players are pure potential, pure vessels of hope.

A chance to make good on real NFL production, free agency is for the players... or rather some of the players. Very few of the best make it to market. Enter the franchise tag.

Sorry, Nnamdi Asomugha, your destiny is more toil in Oakland at least another season, perhaps forever. Perhaps the best corner of his generation is taking a Zen-like approach to his situation. At least he'll make another heap of cash, but without a long-term deal, won't get the guaranteed money he richly deserves. Al Davis loves aggressive shutdown corners. And even if he didn't, doubtless he wouldn't let his team's best player walk.

Matt Cassel's already been tagged (best treated by Throwing Into Traffic). Some assume him traded. Some assume him starting. I find it's best not to make rigid proclamations about what Bill Belichick and the Patriots will do. They excel at going against common logic and finding better sense in more universal, if less obvious, truths.

There's some other big names that might make it to market. TJ Houshmandzadeh, Ray Lewis, Bart Scott, Jeff Saturday. Perhaps presumptuous because one never knows the status of these talks, but I can't imagine DeMarcus Ware, Antonio Bryant, Jahri Evans, Karlos Dansby, Brian Dawkins, and OJ Atogwe returning with anyone but their respective teams.

Perhaps most intriguing this year in the franchise tag drama surrounds two elite defensive linemen: Albert Haynesworth and Julius Peppers.

Prince Albert can't be tagged this year. The modified franchise agreement between Haynesworth and the Titans last year included incentives for certain achievements, preeminently unimpeded free agency upon making the Pro Bowl.

Haynesworth has played the defensive tackle position the last few years like few players have in the history of the sport. Disruptive in the run game, nearly unstoppable on passing downs. He represents perhaps the most complete and accomplished player set to hit the free market. He won't reach 30 for another couple years.

He could succeed where others have failed, resurrecting terrible franchises like Detroit. He could resign with Tennessee to continue their run at a championship through dominant defense.

But perhaps most importantly to Haynesworth's fellow players is his example of lifting the tag, his bondage, through his play on field. Seattle tackle Walter Jones faced the tag year after year until he was finally given a long term contract. Haynesworth used what little leverage he had at his avail to deftly give himself a shot at free agency. He quietly made what threats were necessary to work around the tag agreement for the future. Then he went out on the field and proved it in his play.

Contrast that with the situation in Carolina. The Panthers are facing an important decision between two of their best players. Tackle Jordan Gross and defensive end Julius Peppers are scheduled for free agency. Peppers wants out of a confusing Carolina situation.

A top team last year that faltered in the playoffs is usually not the kind of place players want to leave. In perhaps the strangest logic of this young offseason, Peppers wants to go to a team that plays the 3-4 alignment.

An interesting request. Especially since there are fewer 3-4 defenses in the league than 4-3's. But that's not what makes Peppers's request a head scratcher.

No, he wants to play outside linebacker in a 3-4. He wants to be James Harrison, a DeMarcus Ware, a Shawne Merriman.

I guess a worthy goal in some abstract sense because those guys, playing hands-up rush backer, net a lot of sacks in their respective defenses.

Consider, however, that Peppers is 6'7" and 285 lbs. His athleticism and frame is so rare that he's a born end. He could pack another 10-15 lbs on his frame and make a great 3-4 end.

While, Peppers coming off the edge as a straight ahead rusher is a scary proposition, it doesn't make a lot of sense. I can't imagine the defensive coordinator who wouldn't put him at end in any scheme. It's like Steve Smith asking to be tight end or fullback because he loves to hit people. It's all well and good as an idea. But the body type is just all wrong.

Stranger than Peppers's request is that he's telling anyone who will listen about it. I haven't a clue if he's felt out some of the 3-4 teams about this to gauge interest before going public with his demands. And I haven't a clue who put this idea in Peppers's head or if it simply came to him in a burst of inspiration.

Regardless, it doesn't seem too wise to air the grievance itself in public. To threaten going public, yes, that's a tactic. Threaten causing a distraction for team and training camp. But I just can't see how this difficult situation can play out well for both parties as a bargaining chip is compromised for both sides who need an outsider to play ball with if they hope to make everybody happy.

It's a strange play by a strange player. Peppers should be the most dominant of his generation, but like Kris Jenkins before him, he's let the malaise of Carolina affect a couple key years in his career, being an intermittent but not truly unstoppable force these past two seasons.

The franchise tag rankles many of these top players who are seeking the security of guaranteed dollars. If they want to play their way out of it, or at least give themselves a shot to, perhaps it's better to follow Prince Albert's example than replicate Orange Julius's frustrations.

The Quiet Afternoons Of Ray And Brett

2009-02-13T14:25:00.001-05:00

They say Brett Favre has retired. Even as a lifelong Packers fan, I'll play along. At least, I'll play along as far as Ray Lewis getting paid is concerned.

I'm sure sports blogfrica just like mainstream media is rife with leery-eyed doubt around Favre's retirement. And who could blame them? Certainly, not me.

For the the past couple years, I figured the man needed his time. He earned it to a certain degree... maybe not as much as he was alloted or believed he deserved. But contemplating throwing a body into another sixteen week grinder when that body is a late 30's edition, well, that's a temple buster.

The story now is about the damage to his throwing arm, one that caused his passes late in the season to take strange detours in the swirling Meadowlands winds. As many ugly Brett Favre interceptions as I've seen in my life – and, good Lord, there have been many – Favre's late season collapse this year did look particularly inept.

Sure balls were forced into coverage, that's a given. But there was a distinct lack of drama, maybe a theater of confusion, around his nine picks in the final five games. The confusion in this late season breakdown appeared from an outsider’s perspective to stem at least in part from a systematic miscommunication between Favre and the rest of the Jets. Laveranues Coles would never be Donald Driver-Antonio Freeman-Robert Brooks-Sterling Sharpe.

But now the bitter end is blamed on a bum throwing shoulder. On the surface, a surprisingly mundane reason for the exiting of a legend… never mind Achilles felled by an arrow shot behind cowardly fortifications landing not in his heart or between the eyes, rather his exposed heel.

Criticisms of Favre are career long and ever evolving (and not without merit). Perhaps initially they sprung from jealous opponents befuddled at his charmed play. Eventually when his reputation outpaced his onfield accomplishments, the claims of detractors gained more traction. He threw too many picks. He didn’t win enough championships. And, perhaps, worst, he put himself above the team.

Favre was folksy enough even in his primadonna vacillations. A reveller in his own mythology, that folksiness transmuted into folk heroism, as much as football with its ever replaceable cogs can support a folk hero. When football wasn’t enough, a stunning string of personal tragedy wrote the remaining tale.

For the critical fan of the game, the mythology bordering on hagiography could rightly chafe and disgust. There’s something romantic about clinging desperately to the spotlight, being peeled off the field as Matt Birk once said. Something romantic in the idea, something ugly in its operation.

Even as he leaves a wake of destruction in his off stage shuffling path, he’s given credit for loving the game. And I don’t doubt that he does. But we as fans were always buying his play on the field, not necessarily his leadership qualities, leadership that was called into question late this season by teammates Thomas Jones and Kerry Rhodes.

In last year’s tense standoff between Favre and the Packers, few were lacking for an opinion. The greatest icon of a franchise (if not exactly its greatest player) and his itch versus a young team’s future. Two camps, more or less, arrayed on either side and hurled pointed words at each other until Favre was finally shipped off to New York, safely sheltered from Minnesota or Chicago.

Compare and contrast this with Ray Lewis’s situation in Baltimore. Lewis is the Baltimore Ravens even if he is no longer its greatest player. And he might be facing the end of the his time with the franchise that gave him his first shot and stuck by him through the considerable, and occassionally frightening, drama of his career.

Beyond their outsized love for the game, the comparisons between Favre and Lewis stop there. For Lewis, there is no question about his fire to play. There is no exhaustion followed by itching regret. There is no question about Lewis’s leadership. You can hear it in Ed Reed’s voice when he talks about Lewis and his total absorption into the game.

That absorption makes his leadership undeniable, perhaps even a little overbearing at times as he stumbles upon teammates playing cards in the lockerroom and ruining the banter with his need to talk blitz schemes or coverage technique.

But that leadership is essential nonetheless.

Ray’s situation this year is also contrastingly free from outsized drama. Despite coming up through the 90s and being essentially a star of yesterday on a downward trend, exactly like Favre, the play between Baltimore and Lewis simply boils down to money. While there must be deeper feelings, both sides acknowledge the business side of the game. It’s all professionalism.

So here’s Baltimore contemplating life without its signature star. With a player that has something left in the tank. A player who if is his body keeps changing as it has over the course of his career might end up looking like a defensive tackle. Body aside, Lewis is always a middle linebacker.

Another contrasting point between Favre and Lewis, I'm not so sure a record has ever been sacred to Ray Lewis. He's been injured, missed large chunks of seasons. Plus, he’s also rested for playoffs push, not caring about how his team wins, just that his team wins. Favre can say he doesn’t do it for the records, but there’s a showmanship to it. It feeds his bumpkin routine. The records, well I didn’t mean to break it, sir, honestly…

I'm not going to tell the Baltimore front office what to do. General Manager Ozzie Newsome has constructed a consistent winner, not to mention the league’s most fearsome defenses perennially, by knowing when to pay up and when to let walk. Adalius Thomas? A nice player. But nowhere near the terror at New England he was in Baltimore.

I don’t know how it will play out between the Ravens and Ray. I don’t know if Lewis is serious about not taking a hometown discount. I don’t know if Baltimore is honestly considering not making a serious run at the team’s signature player.

I just know it will feel a little weird to see Ray in anything but the gaudy purple and black doing his ritualistic pregame haka.

While we all imagine the quiet afternoons of retired Brett spent toiling on his tractor, we cannot imagine Ray ever anything but arm’s length from a football. If there’s ever a star at his twilight that deserves a king’s ransom, it’s Lewis.

NFL 2008 In Haiku

2009-02-10T09:55:00.002-05:00

No more whiskey soaked Sundays surrounded by blaring HDTVs and raucous alternating delight or agony.

No more consolation prize Monday nights to lubricate the week's lurching start. No more bargaining with a God I only believe in during football season for Green Bay victory.

No more Fitzgerald twists mid-air. No more Chris Harris battleship sinking hits. No more Purple Jesus on the loose or McNabb on the leash. No Haynesworth triple teamed or DeMarcus double barreled.

No roughness, necessary or unnecessary. No turf world turned upside if briefly. No bounties denied, no fingertip touchdowns.

No more pro football.

At least not until September. Fuck, that's a long time from now.

Before we jump ahead though, let's put the final nail in 2008's coffin. So far, my favorite comments on the season past come from Zac at Throwing Into Traffic, specifically through the prism of Super Bowl 43 (read it now).

Instead of reflecting back through 43, I prefer starting with 2008 from the beginning. To add a little challenge, I'm recapping the season in haiku form. And in the spirit of football's starting 11 players, 11 syllable haiku, 3-5-3 style.

So here's the 2008 NFL season in haiku.

Brady broke –
Chad grows Fins, East goes
Miami.

Look! It's Ed
Hochuli dressed in
orange and blue.

Pass rushers
fall, more keep coming,
Giants roll.

Mario,
world not enough, much
less Houston.

Garrard hit
from behind, story of
Jaguars' year.

Wildcat, you
look like something I
forgot once.

Vince Young's head,
a landscape in foam.
Call Kerry.

Chargers charge
slow but bolt to post-
season field.

Goodbye Matt!
Fords won't validate
your parking.

Neckbeard! You
give Chicago hope
yet crush it.

Keep throwing
the bomb, Campbell, thing
of beauty.

Cleveland, what
happened? Horse Balls shrunk
sinks the Browns.

Seattle:
where wide receivers
go to die.

The South is
rising, but this time
NFC.

Flacco and
Ryan, surpass where others
struggle – rooks!

The Cowboys
implosion set for
post bye week.

Buffaloes
roam into the cross-
hairs of East.

Pacman back
both playing, fighting
drunken brawl.

Prince Albert
and Chris Johnson, win
streak Titans.

The pinky
of Romo, digit
too famous.

He got a
broken face, doesn't
stop Anquan.

Can't wait for
end of season, must
fire right now!

London lit
by young Rivers but
Drew's on fire.

Matt Cassel!
You found Randy, it's
not so bad.

Detroit freed,
Roy Williams times two
in Dallas.

Thanksgiving –
tryptophan nap or
Lions loss?

Greg Jennings
cannot pass rush, the
Packers sunk.

Portis blocks
crush like the Redskins
playoff hopes.

Six face ban,
supplement to blame,
pee in cup.

New York talks
subway Super Bowl,
Favre falters.

Plaxico
takes revenge on leg
in sweatpants.

Fitzpatrick
versus Dorsey: a
regression.

Tampa Bay,
swarming defense now
tired, napping.

Cutler's guns
cool, Broncos' gallop
slows to trot.

Brees closes
on record, Saints on
parity.

Lions make
history, just not
victory.

Shanahan,
ultimate leader,
without troops.

Pats sit home
as Chargers into
playoffs sneak.

A trophy
isn't always victory,
right, Peyton?

Adrian
on sidelines for Vikes'
biggest drive.

Giants or
Titans, matters not,
fall the same.

McNabb short
reviving Chunky
Soup career.

Fitzgerald,
Larry, now you know,
USA.

Field strewn with
bodies, yes, Ravens
v Steelers.

Harrison
on a quarter tank,
putters home.

Holmes's toes
rob Larry's hands of
MVP.

Terrible
towels wave at the
season's end.

The Notebook, Pro Bowl

2009-02-09T12:09:00.002-05:00

Didn't watch it.

Who won? Did anyone really?

I posed to myself the annual question: to watch the Pro Bowl or not? Who knows, it might be a fine game this year. Maybe some of the 4th quarter electricity from the Super Bowl could carry across the Great Plains and Pacific Ocean currents to Hawaii.

But like every year, I opted to return a week early to my life, my life outside of football that is. Sunday was a fine day on the East Coast. The Spurs traveled to Boston to face the Celtics. It seemed a shame not to take a long walk and spend some time on other projects postponed during the height of football’s frenzied playoffs.

What I did realize, though, during this year’s internal debate, I can’t remember ever watching a single Pro Bowl during the course of my life.

Even as a football obsessed young boy, when my blind allegiance to the NFL and pro game crested at its height, I couldn’t muster the requisite intrigue in the league’s low key semi-spectacle. I who used to pray to a God I only truly believed in when the outcome of a Packers game was at stake, I would pray mid-Summer for Fall’s haste, despite the coming of school and the loss of Summer’s freedom.

Even that football-crazed child would choose burrowing tunnels through the excessive snow of the freezing Wisconsin Winter rather than peer into a lesser football paradise just one last time.

If my 10 year old self couldn’t bring himself to watch the Pro Bowl, certainly the same edition two decades on in experience and cynicism had no chance.

I've read that the game is for the players, not the fans. Indeed, those guys deserve a trip to Hawaii and a little extra bonus for a good season, especially the guys on rookie contracts. But I'd rather watch what happens when Larry Fitzgerald, Peyton Manning, and Jay Ratliff go to a beachside bar to play a game of Scrabble. That's pro players do right? Play boardgames?

I don't want to bitch and moan about it. It would be nice if the league could rectify this problem. The regular season is good, the playoff system is good. But baseball and basketball both knock the pants off of football in their all-star games. In all, the looming labor crisis is a much more important focus for the league and the players.

And the general fan isn't really complaining with the send-off the NFL gave us this year with one Super Bowl final quarter for the vault. Because when it comes down to it, no one will remember the outcome of this Pro Bowl unlike, say, last year's MLB All-Star game... and that might be comment enough on it.

Hasten the Slow Decay

2009-02-06T09:16:00.002-05:00

Ah, the offseason is upon us.

Fear not! Fuhbaw plans to attack this (not so) long national nightmare with a vengeance... much like last year.

Free agency, the draft, the looming labor crisis... training camp will be here before you know it.

I'm coming to think football is a cyclical thing, not in the year-to-year sense, the waxing and waning of dynasties, the balance between the conferences... I'm not talking about that.

Rather the season's intensity is underscored by its long absence. The harsh reality of football is over. Now is the necessary renewal of hope.

Yes, hope even for Lions fans. Chris at Smart Football is offering words of cautious optimism about Jim Schwartz, which if you read Smart Football regularly words of cautious optimism equate roughly to a teenage girl hopping up and down, screaming "Oh My God!" over and over again.

Players will heal their wounds, rest tired bodies. Coaches will tear apart game plans, re-fashion systems and teachings. General managers will poke and prod fresh-faced kids like cattle, run a weary eye over crusty veterans. Owners will fret over gates, squeeze what they can.

And, we the fans, will begin to believe again that our team can win it all... maybe not this year, fans of Chiefs or Lions will say. But that far flung hope persists.

Never mind that 16 weeks of nagging injuries, last-second heartache, muddy uniforms, myopic playcalling, etc, etc should tell us different (well, unless you're a Steelers fan). In some compacted version of the American dream, at some point, we will all feel like our team has a chance. (And like the American dream, some will never attain it.)

So as you long for football in the thawing late Winter or warming Spring, tell yourself that the game wouldn't be nearly as good without this long goodbye. Tell yourself we'd have futbol, not fuhbaw. Tell yourself college basketball and Wimbledon will do. Tell yourself... Yeah, I'm not buying it either.

Super Bowl Pity Party

2009-02-03T08:00:00.000-05:00

I'm still skeptical of this greatest Super Bowl ever talk.

Yes, 43 was a damn exciting game. But both teams were perceived as having reasonable shots at winning. The league's most exciting offense against its best defense. This was no paradigm shifting upset like Super Bowl 3.

Also, much of the first three quarters was marred by numerous penalties, sloppy play, and questionable playcalling. James Harrison's return for touchdown amazed, but little else outside of Ben Roethlisberger's ugly scrambles proved worthy of the NFL Films vault before the hectic fourth quarter. This was no seesaw game of memorable plays like Super Bowl 32.

This was no perfect game plan executed near flawlessly like Super Bowl 42.

Make no mistake, this was a great game. Exciting when it mattered most, played passionately if not exactly beautifully.

The coming weeks are for the Steelers to bask in victory, to set up terms of their reign. But before we hurtle forward into that new future, let's commence the pity party for Arizona Cardinals, so close in loss, so deserving of their Super Bowl ticket.

Cardinals 23 Steelers 27. Ian Leslie at Cardinals Gab says:

After being so solid all game, the Cardinals let Santonio Holmes torch them for 73 yards and a score on the Steelers game winning drive. The Cardinals didn’t give up, as they had 35 seconds to get a touchdown, but Warner was stripped by Lamar Woodley with five seconds remaining, and Pittsburgh recovered it. I thought it was very strange how they didn’t review the play, though, as it looked like Warner’s arm was moving forward, and the Cards could have had at least one more shot for a ‘Hail Mary,’ but it just wasn’t meant to be. Overall this season cannot be judged as a failure from this one game, but the Cardinals do have a very interesting offseason ahead of them, with many question marks.

Hawkwind at Revenge of the Birds says:

On a play that ends one teams season and crowns a champion, why did the officials not take a second look at a very close play? With :15 seconds on the clock and the Cardinals out of timeouts, Warner drops to pass and immediately feels pressure. He shuffles in the pocket and loads up for a deep pass, but LaMarr Woodley gets his hand on the Warner's arm and knocks the ball loose. The play was ruled a fumble and the Steelers took possession with just a few second left on the clock. I don't know if the play would have been overturned, but there's no doubt in my mind that if that play was outside of two minutes, Ken Whisenhunt would have challenged the call. If a play is that close in a game of this magnitude, why not take a second look?

Before I get blasted by Steelers fans, I'm not blaming the officiating for the outcome of the game or saying that they're the reason the Cardinals lost. I'm simply saying that in a game that was obviously called very tight, they missed some huge calls as well.

Scott Allen at Raising Zona says:

You could argue that Warner’s turnover at the end of the first half was a difference maker. Sure, you take that play away, things might have turned out differently. However it could have also changed the complexity of the second half and how each team approached their game plan on the offensive side of the ball. Plus, even after that play, the Cardinals still were able to stay in the game.

Don’t blame the referees. Don’t blame the turnovers. Don’t blame the pro Pittsburgh crowd. In fact, don’t even blame replay booth at the end of the game in which it was ruled Warner fumbled on the final play of the game. That play was too close to overturn and the referees, no matter how one-sided the calls may have been, made the right call there.

Sure I also just placed some blame on the defense. Let’s give credit where credit is due though. Pittsburgh is a great team. They were able to overcome the comeback. They never lost composure, which the Cardinals may have a little in the third quarter.

And finally Will Leitch at Deadspin says:

The thing is, you, I and everyone else on earth thought this game was over midway through the third quarter, and, all told, probably at halftime. That would have been much worse than this, I think. If the Buzzsaw's one Super Bowl appearance had ended in irrelevance, and pointlessness, and obvious inferiority, it would have justified what everyone else had said. The Charles Pierces of the world would have been right. We shouldn't have been here in the first place. We were just some dumb fluke that everyone could forget about. We were not like you, like your pain. Like everybody's pain.

See, in a way, losing this way — in the most soul-crushing, sweet-God-what-a-game-holy-frack-where's-something-tall-to-jump-off? fashion possible — justifies it all. The Buzzsaw were not going to lose a Super Bowl the way the Falcons did, or the Chargers. That would be pedestrian. That would be dumb. That would make the whole thing seem silly.

No, losing like this makes it all worthwhile. This was not a 27-7 shellacking, the Steelers simply piddling out the clock as everyone prepares for work tomorrow. Losing like this, after a shocking comeback, after a Yes This Team Is What We Had Hoped For And Dreamed About After All fourth quarter, lends gravitas to it. Now, the Buzzsaw is not the obvious doormat of the professional sports industrial complex. We now have some tragedy. We now have some pain. Real pain.

The Notebook, Super Bowl

2009-02-02T14:35:00.001-05:00

America got Faith Hill and Jennifer Hudson on pre-recorded tracks. America got Bruce Springsteen’s crotch in their collective faces.

America got General David Petreaus flipping the coin and an Air Force flyover to ruminate on Pat Tillman’s memory, that confusing intersection of America’s sport, our ideals, and the histories we write.

We waded through a bevy of depressing commericals – CareerBuilder.com and Conan excepted – and we slogged through human interest story after human interest story in the several hour lead-up to kickoff. (Ben Graham, honestly?)

But none of the spectacle – save perhaps Hudson’s touching performance, artiface be damned – was nearly as messy or contentious as the game itself. Super Bowl 43 wasn’t overwhelmed by its trappings or upstaged at its own party.

A great Super Bowl? Maybe.

For three quarters the game was a sloppy mess of questionable calls, tepid play, missed opportunities, and confusing football. Before the electric fourth quarter, I couldn’t help thinking the game had all of the appeal of a make-out session with someone’s grandmother.

Football isn’t required to be sexy. But there was a disturbing lack of artistry… to the Cardinals passing attack, the Steelers zone blitz, the Cardinals pass coverage, and the Steelers running game. All the necessary components were there but they were operating in strange ways.

The chess match that begun two weeks ago almost threatened to sink the contest before it started. Certainly, Ken Whisenhunt and Todd Haley looked like they out-thought themselves by the Cardinals poor early performance on offense. Larry Fitzgerald almost didn’t make a reception throughout the entire first half. Only on the Cardinals final drive of the half was Larry finally targeted: one incomplete and one stick moving 12 yard reception.

Even as the Steelers marched up and down the field, they repeatedly faltered at the precipice of early domination. When the field condensed and Pittsburgh’s physicality should have cleared repeated touchdown paths, the Arizona defense outhit and outhustled the Steelers, holding the offense to a mere 10 points.

With so many of the game’s storylines veering sharply off script, James Harrison’s brilliant read-and-react interception return touchdown became all the more crucial. While I’ll not deny Santonio Holmes’s well deserved MVP trophy, the voters could just have easily split the award between Harrison and fellow outside linebacker LaMarr Woodley who both carried the game through its indecisive moments.

On the flipside, had Arizona completed the comeback, Larry Fitzgerald’s astounding fourth quarter resuscitation would certainly have merited consideration for the best performance. As amazing as the 64 yard catch and run was, the one yard twisting touchdown pluck spoke more to Fitzgerald’s vintage.

But, undeniably, the Cardinals near comeback was kicked off by Darnell Dockett. He nearly singlehandedly killed Pittsburgh’s first and second drives of the fourth quarter. Even the impressive five tackle, two sack stat line doesn’t do justice to the havoc Dockett caused throughout. Had the Cardinals hung on for the win or perhaps found Fitzgerald outleaping a gang of black-and-gold defenders for the winning score as time expired, Dockett still might have been my MVP.

If anything, however, the Super Bowl isn’t about possibilities, it’s not about what might have been. A play here and a play there might have crowned the Dallas Cowboys the dynasty of the 70s, not these same victorious Steelers.

I cringe at throwing out phrases like clutch, but there was an undeniable aspect in the on-field relationship between Ben Roethlisberger and Santonio Holmes that came into full flower on the Steelers final substantive drive.

Roethlisberger continues to be the insanely athletic quarterback who instead of making it look easy, insists on making it look as hard as possible. Luckily for him Santonio Holmes displayed enough grace and speed to counterbalance Big Ben’s bizarre aesthetic for the highlight reels.

I was lucky enough to be staring right at Holmes’s shoes during the game winner. Out of assembled company, shouts of disbelief rang loud. But it was clear, I just shook my head in amazement.

Among coworkers this morning, we wondered if Roethlisberger was simply too stupid to know how to lose. It’s not of course to call Roethlisberger a moron, rather to note that the game is often played better when it isn’t overthought, or thought through at all.

I can imagine a scenario where there wasn’t a single play called on the game winning drive. A pure kind of football that beguiles the game’s tendencies toward meticulously planning and rote drills. Just get open, I’ll find you.

We might have witnessed Larry’s playoffs, but this was Santonio’s game. James Harrison’s game. Heath Miller’s game. LaMarr Woodley’s game. And, yes, finally Ben Roethlisberger’s game.

Unfortunately, the game was Terry McAuley’s too.

I received a text from harDCore reading, “The fix is in,” after the bullshit roughing the passer call on Dockett. Sitting next to DJ Noid, a Seahawks fan still smarting from Super Bowl 40, I heard the notes of disgust as the Steelers continued to receive the benefit of the doubt seemingly again and again from the officiating crew.

Officiating professional football is a ridiculously difficult task. Still, one hopes in the big games that it doesn’t become a storyline. Not the case with 43.

In a game so physical, the coach’s might argue that the repeated unnecessary roughness calls were in fact very necessary… to intimidate, to put force behind words.

And for most coaches there’s always a certain situations where they’ll take the penalty. But there was something noticeably excessive in the tilt towards Pittsburgh. Perhaps the fact that both challenges thrown by Whisenhunt he won clearly says something.

And the fact that 43’s last substantive play, the Woodley strip sack of Kurt Warner, wasn’t reviewed by the booth calls into question the quality of the game’s officiating.

Perhaps it would have been simply a hollow exercise as Mike Pereira, the NFL’s head of officiating suggests, but sadly it might take something away from a very exciting and earned Steelers championship.

And maybe that’s where I’ll leave it. Pittsburgh earned this one. Arizona was exciting. They were merchants of hope, gleeful anarchists stumbling upon the king’s treasure room.

But the Steelers reaffirm the difficult road traveled. We know how they’ll wear the crown, relatively classy and with a strong deference to past accomplishments. I still don't know if it's a great Super Bowl. But I've got no problems with our champions.

Friday Walkthrough, Super Bowl

2009-01-30T15:09:00.000-05:00

I began this season talking trash about the Pittsburgh Steelers... nearing this season's end, I won't make the same mistake.

Minutes before week one’s Sunday kickoff, I sat in a bar with a Steelers fan, the Texans getting set in Pittsburgh to undertake another year of half victories and predictable defeats. At the time, I firmly believed Houston's twin towers, Andre Johnson and Mario Williams, would take it to a Pittsburgh team weakened at cornerback and along the offensive line.

I leaned over to the Steelers fan just before kick off and boasted something like, “You may win this game, but the Texans are going to knock Big Ben on his ass.”

Predictably, rightly, my boast fell completely flat. I only lucked out that the Steelers fan was in fact a nice person and declined to rub my brag in my face… even though I deserved it.

The Steelers continued to do what they do, rise to the occasion. The defense flummoxed Matt Schaub, stymied the ground game, and allowed Andre Johnson to rack up numbers without altering the course of the game. The offense churned up yards and did practically nothing but score at will until the game was out of hand.

While a Cardinals victory Sunday would be thrilling, almost necessarily so due to the considerable obstacles they face, a Pittsburgh win is the substance of what football should be. Not football how it’s drawn up on chalkboard. But football free of gimmicky schemes, predicated on solid truths like outhitting the opponent.

Back in summer, I outlined four big ideas what we the fans connect to in the sport beyond overblown storylines, storylines that can be manufactured for any purpose. What in the game inherently attracts our passion and loyalty. I called it the Practice Theory.

As a final walkthrough before the season’s biggest game, let’s revisit the four points of the Practice Theory and where can we can expect to see these four aspects in the game.

The four main parts of the Practice Theory are pure chaos, otherworldly talent, freedom from expectations, and the hopeless cause that soldiers on. With that, here's where the various points of the Practice Theory could play out on Sunday.

#1 Chaos: Troy Polamalu and Ryan Clark, Steelers safeties.

The entire Steelers defense is predicated on creating chaos even if their blitzes and shifts are carefully calculated. But the backcourt of Pittsburgh is given the most freedom to attack the field from several points. While Polamalu gets the accolades for his rangy play and bruising acrobatics, Clark patrols the deep, handing out second thoughts to receivers and backs who venture into his territory.

The two safeties will be tasked with punishing the Cardinals receiving corps, thereby, sending the Arizona offense into a tailspin. While it’s seems unlikely Polamalu, Clark, and the Pittsburgh corners can stop Larry Fitzgerald, they might make his contributions irrelevant if they knock out all the other horses in the race. Either way, all the carefully laid gameplans can go to hell in a hurry if Polamalu and Clark are on their game.

#2 Tecmo Talent: Larry Fitzgerald, Cardinals receiver.

Do I have to explain this one? We’ve all watched the playoffs. We all knew Larry was good before the playoffs. But rare is the player who owns the spotlight while making it all look so easy. Peyton Manning might be the best quarterback of his generation, but the Colts Super Bowl run was gritty, awkward, and downright ugly. Larry’s playoffs have been all grace and transcendence. And expect nothing to stop that… only perhaps to slow it down.

#3 The Drop: Steelers offensive line.

No one expects much from the Pittsburgh o-line. They’ve struggled all year in pass protection, they’ve been inconsistent drive blocking. But they acquitted themselves well against the physical Ravens. And the surging Arizona defense is getting a lot of notice for their improved attacking play.

If any unit has the Drop, the freedom from expectations, it’s the Steelers o-line. It’s not that they will stop Darnell Dockett, Karlos Dansby, Chike Okeafor, et al. It’s that no expects them to. If anything could put distance between these two teams, it’s the play along the Steelers’ front.

#4 Lost Cause: Edgerrin James and the Cardinals ground game.

James is running better in these playoffs. And back-up Tim Hightower has done well shifted back to the complimentary role. But the notion that the run game has undergone a resurgence (perhaps just “surgence”?) is patently false. They face the best run defense in the league, one too disciplined to allow much in the way of cutback lanes.

But if the Cardinals are to have any chance at victory, they’ll need the running game to live up to its recent reputation. Edge was halfway out the door earlier this season. Now, he’ll need to recall himself from five years ago to give his team a shot. Edge missed out on the Colts Super Bowl run. This will likely be his last best shot. Unlikely, however, is his success against that fearsome Steelers front.

Ante Up

2009-01-30T11:55:00.003-05:00

The coming Super Bowl isn’t short on storylines.

(Storylines real or manufactured, will a Super Bowl ever be?)

We could talk Ken Whisenhunt versus his old team. We could talk the Cardinals offense versus the Steelers defense. We could talk Rooneys versus Bidwells, football royalty versus perennial paupers.

We could talk Kurt Warner versus life. Ben Roethlisberger versus pavement. Larry Fitzgerald versus expectations. Anquan Boldin versus Todd Haley. Troy Polamalu’s ferocious hits versus Ryan Clark’s ferocious hits.

Essentially, the major storylines – and the game itself – boil down to a tension between the familiar and the unknown.

Even in the supposed familiar there are considerable unknowns. Take Whisenhunt the former Steelers offensive coordinator running his offense versus Dick LeBeau, the defensive coordinator he coached against in practice every day for years. The Pittsburgh Whisenhunt offense was a run-first, three yards and a cloud of dust emobdiment of smashmouth offense. The best players on those Pittsburgh offenses were interior linemen and crackback blocking receivers.

LeBeau’s defenses haven’t changed much during his time in Pittsburgh. The brilliantly executed zone blitz scheme still relies on penetrating linemen, freakish linebackers, and turf churning safeties. The Steelers have always plugged in new backers into their scheme and netted the same results.

Whisenhunt at the Cardinals, though, has an offense with a similar set of plays, but an entirely different ethos. Arizona still sets up the trick play like Pittsburgh did under Whisenhunt, like a magician sets up his audience.

But the Cardinals wisely rely on their best players, receivers Fitzgerald and Boldin and quarterback Warner, to attack the field vertically, to put a defense on its heels early, then scale the game down with delays and draws, slants and flares.

Despite the familiarity of LeBeau and Whisenhunt with each other, there’s many departures, and even a clash of opposing styles… the only substantive similarity between the two? They both attack and attack hard.

A tendency when forecasting is to match up strengths against weaknesses. The Pittsburgh’s shaky pass protection versus the surging Arizona defensive front, for instance.

But in victory often the much derided weakness of a team steps up, even if its to mere competence. That in turn allows a team’s strengths to overwhelm its opponents.

Take the Cardinals running game throughout these playoffs. Clearly, the weak link in the explosive offense, the Arizona running game has posted solid numbers in this playoff run. Some have called it a revival. While I think that’s an exaggeration – a majority of yards coming off draw and delays rather than smashmouth dives and counters – the ground game has given just enough to balance with the aerial attack. Essentially allowing a point of strength to overwhelm opponents.

The playoffs are not about weaknesses against strengths, its about imposing strengths, its about a team playing its game and forcing the opponent to react.

So where do these two teams’ games interact? Where will strength collide against strength?

Warner versus the zone blitz pass rush. Can the Steelers confuse the veteran quarterback and force him to one of his occassional fumble fests? Or will Warner zip passes past the heads of James Harrison and Lamar Woodley on the way to touchdown after touchdown? I can imagine Polamalu will key Boldin on the underneath routes and Clark will key Fitzgerald down field, still it will be all for not if the pass rush doesn’t fluster Warner.

The physical Cardinals secondary versus the physical Steelers receivers. Essentially safeties Adrian Wilson and Antrel Rolle will try to set an aggressive tone that shouldn’t rattle a tough Pittsburgh receiving corps led by Hines Ward and tight end Heath Miller. Ward might be banged up, but they’ll use him in decoy and let him set some blocks to keep the Cardinals alert. I expect a lot of penalties in the secondary when the Steelers are on offense. But I’m guessing either coach will take the penalties if their squad is the one to outhit the other and own the second level and deep field.

Ben Roethlisberger on the scramble versus the Arizona linebackers. Roethlisberger will stumble and rumble until the play downfield opens up as he desires. The Cardinals linebackers have finally – finally! – played to potential in these playoffs, rattling Matt Ryan, Jack Delhomme, and Donovan McNabb. It’s as simple as this, if the linebackers can sack Roethlisberger on their blitzes or take him down while playing contain, they kill the only dangerous dimension of the Pittsburgh offense. Honestly, that’s much easier said than done.

These are the things we know, or think we know. But the unknowns, well, those are the reasons why we watch.

It's Not Easy Being Blue

2009-01-29T13:35:00.002-05:00

Perhaps odd because I truly look forward to the Arizona-Pittsburgh match-up in the coming Super Bowl, I can’t help but ruminate on what might have been.

One year after New York won it all with their young quarterback finally maturing into the signal caller they hoped, we nearly witnessed the two veteran quarterback castoffs who preceded Eli Manning on the Giants roster face each in this Super Bowl.

I’m of course talking Kurt Warner and Kerry Collins, whose one-and-done performance shouldn’t overshadow an impressive season.

Both quarterbacks were considered washed up a long time ago. Both compiled impressive numbers in the seasons around the dawn of this decade. Both bounced back on teams that played to their strengths: Warner’s deep downfield accuracy, Collins’s decision making and play action.

The names of both Warner and Collins were floated in MVP contention on the season, Warner perhaps deservedly so (once again, giving argument to delay the trophy’s awarding long enough to include postseason performance) Collins perhaps less so.

I wonder what this says about the Giants offense.

The Counselor is a big proponent of New York’s ball control style. An offense that compliments the defense, takes aim at the clock as much as the endzone.

When it works, it’s ruthless, it’s efficient.

But as the Giants fell apart toward the season’s end, the final collapse against the upstart Eagles, and as I consider the fates of these two castoff quarterbacks who found success in different offenses, I wonder if New York’s offense is simply incredibly difficult to run consistently with ruthless efficiency.

Collins was set loose by Tom Coughlin shortly after taking the job, deemed unfit to run his offense. Warner performed tepidly enough in his 10 games to rush Manning, then a rookie, into the starting line up to gain valuable experience (read: giving up on the season at hand).

Concerning the late season struggles of the Giants' offense, a lot of factors are in the mix, no doubt. The loss of Plaxico Burress finally ended New York’s streak of plug-and-play for assumed key cogs in their starting line-up. What started with Michael Strahan and Osi Umenyiora ended with Plax.

Without an elite receiver, Manning couldn’t divert focus from the ground game in key late regular season match-ups against NFC East opponents Philly and Dallas. And while the Giants ran fairly well against the same Philly squad in the playoffs, New York couldn’t gain the endzone lacking a true receiving scoring threat to key the Eagles defense on and open up the running lanes in the redzone.

The current Giants offense shares similarities with the Giants offense of the 80s under Bill Parcells. Consistently good teams, they were on the cusp of greatness but never truly great. Certainly, their defense was unimpeachable. But that great defense only grasped two Lombardi trophies, one a few feet – wide right! – from being in the hands of their Buffalo opponents.

Again, the Giants sport the defense to dominate. But in looking at the success of Warner and Collins this year, can the offense bring them to the promise land again and again. We all know Eli is capable of running it, we've all witnessed it, a little surprised at the time, but witnessed it nonetheless. If Collins wasn't even in consideration to run it and Warner couldn't do it, what of Eli?

When the Giants' offense does work it accomplishes the seeming impossible (see: 42, Super Bowl). And perhaps that's more important, the greater victory against the nearly immortal foe. But this ride-and-die-by philosophy might not net a cabinet full of championships, as such were the hopes of Giants fans through much of this season. For a team, defense may win a championship... but how often do they win championships?

Edit: Let me make it clear, I have no aesthetic qualms with the Giants offense. I love strong brutal running games and despite the idea floating out there that pro football is more about passing than running, it's interesting how the top rushing teams are often deep in the playoffs every year. In this examination, I'm merely looking at results and thinking back inductively...

The Notebook, NFC Championship

2009-01-27T11:12:00.001-05:00

I’m wary of clichés.

It’s not that there’s not truth in the well-worn phrase. Rather, once tossed out, a cliché will cause all further critical thinking to grind to a halt.

So it goes with the football cliché that a game comes down to a handful of plays. Yeah… sorta.

Certainly, the intensity of the game and its myriad situations, varying in degree of importance, present moments we can point to as pivotal. But so much of the game unfolds in repeated battles, little victories meshing together and culminating in the ultimate victory.

As for the prior Sunday’s NFC Championship game, there are plenty of plays singled out as pivotal. Larry Fitzgerald’s twisting catch from Kurt Warner on the flea flicker. Or DeSean Jackson's desperate weave through the interception return melee to force the fumble and recover possession for Philly. Or Kevin Curtis's late crossing route and dash only halted from going the distance by Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie's ridiculous speed.

To think of football as a game that reduces down to a play or two is to dismiss all the whirling parts flying around the field, whether haphazard or meticulously plotted.

It is to mistake the game's intensity with its brevity.

Still, as I was watching the Arizona-Philadelphia tilt over a Sunday ago, I found plenty of moments where a single play stood in for many, or at the very least, one play was fundamental to a drive.

So here's a rundown of the Cardinals victory over the Eagles last week, not play by play, but not necessarily the big plays either. Rather, the little or big plays that best encapsulated the storm and stress in the biggest game of both teams' seasons, at least up to that point.

First Quarter

2-1-PHI 43 (12:19) 32-E.James up the middle to PHI 40 for 3 yards.

On 3rd and 2, fullback Terrelle Smith sets block for Edgerrin James to convert. Not just any block, a crushing block which flattens the linebacker and sets the tone for the drive. Though Larry Fitzgerald scores the first points, the Cardinals do most of their damage in the ground game.

3-6-ARI 35 (7:24) (Shotgun) 5-D.McNabb pass short left to 36-B.Westbrook to ARI 28 for 7 yards.

The Eagles pass protection affords Donovan McNabb plenty of time to check off his reads. Brian Westbrook sits patiently in the flat. When McNabb looks his way, Westbrook makes one knifing cut, setting safety Adrian Wilson nearly on his face. While the play gains a confident first down, the ominous waiting for McNabb is indicative of how the drive, and the team's first half, stumbles. Too much put on McNabb's shoulders as he faces the challenge with inconsistent at best play.

Second Quarter

1-10-ARI 38 (13:30) 13-K.Warner pass deep middle to 11-L.Fitzgerald for 62 yards, TOUCHDOWN [97-B.Bunkley]. PENALTY on PHI-97-B.Bunkley, Roughing the Passer, 15 yards, enforced between downs. Warner lateral to Arrington, backward pass to Warner.

In case you had any doubt, yes, Virginia, Larry Fitzgerald is Santa Claus... and the Easter Bunny... and the Jabberwocky's athletic, cool cousin...

1-10-PHI 34 (11:06) (Shotgun) 5-D.McNabb pass short left to 80-K.Curtis pushed ob at ARI 19 for 47 yards.

A rare moment of offensive grace for the Eagles. Strangely enough, the Cardinals do the predictable thing and drop their defenders back in coverage. The time afforded McNabb nets Curtis on a late crossing route which flips the field and threatens the endzone. While Arizona holds, it's a harbinger that the game is closer than the lopsided score.

2-5-PHI 46 (7:31) 13-K.Warner pass short left to 28-J.Arrington to PHI 30 for 16 yards.

Arizona's control over the first half is driven home by their clock eating fourth drive. Arrington's catch and run is solid but more importantly it showcases Philly playing on their heels, allowing a dump off to chew yards and clock against a defense wary, and rightfully so, of the big play.

1-10-PHI 40 (2:04) (No Huddle, Shotgun) 5-D.McNabb pass incomplete short right. PENALTY on PHI-5-D.McNabb, Intentional Grounding, 12 yards, enforced at PHI 40.

Linebacker Chike Okeafor executes a brilliant delay blitz that, in tandem with the intentional grounding call, kills any Eagles momentum before the half. It also sets up the Cardinals with enough time to kick a field goal before the half.

Third Quarter

2-6-PHI 39 (11:19) (Shotgun) PENALTY on ARI-69-M.Gandy, False Start, 5 yards, enforced at PHI 39 - No Play.

The Philly comeback was under way. But a patient answer like the two Arizona drives at the end of the half would go a long way to sewing up the game. Instead, Gandy’s false start kills the drive. I don’t want to pile on Gandy, the entire team looked nervous and failed to execute… understandable for a franchise unaccustomed to the glare of the spotlight

Fourth Quarter

1-10-PHI 38 (10:56) 5-D.McNabb pass deep right to 10-D.Jackson for 62 yards, TOUCHDOWN.

While the momentum swung back Philly’s way by a dominate third quarter, Jackson bobbling catch for the touchdown behind Rodgers-Cromartie could have driven the comeback knife home. The confidence of McNabb to toss deep, the concentration of Jackson to make the catch, the balls in calling the play, all mirrored, and inverted, the Cardinals dominate first half.

4-1-PHI 49 (7:57) 34-T.Hightower right end pushed ob at PHI 43 for 6 yards.

Going for it on fourth down was making a statement. Going for it with a counter stretch play was just smart. The 3rd and short attempt was stuffed in the middle. The Philly defense bottled up the middle of the line the entire second half. Sometimes, a team can make a point by trying to win the point of attack. Sometimes, it’s better to just try and win the game. Hightower around the edge proved the better option.

1-10-PHI 34 (2:17) (No Huddle, Shotgun) 5-D.McNabb pass short left to 36-B.Westbrook pushed ob at ARI 47 for 19 yards .

Westbrook makes an astounding catch to move the chains and threaten field position. But in that great play is the truth that McNabb’s passes are once again splaying all over the field. Hank Baskett and Kevin Curtis wouldn’t be able to make the kind of play Westbrook made, and the Eagles would turn it over on downs.

1-10-ARI 47 (1:51) 34-T.Hightower left end to PHI 47 for 6 yards.

On the Cardinals first play, needing basically a single first down to nearly assure the game, Hightower busts through the line for six yards. The celebration begins because even though Hightower didn’t make the first down, the entire team believed that they could do with ease. They were able to bleed the clock enough before punting away with just seconds left.

1-10-PHI 7 (:09) (Shotgun) 5-D.McNabb pass short left to 10-D.Jackson to PHI 5 for -2 yards. Lateral to 36-B.Westbrook to PHI 5 for no gain. FUMBLES, recovered by PHI-10-D.Jackson at PHI 3. 10-D.Jackson to PHI 15 for 12 yards. FUMBLES, RECOVERED by ARI-90-D.Dockett at PHI 12. 90-D.Dockett to PHI 8 for 4 yards.

Attempt at a hook-and-ladder Stanford band type play is ended when Darnell Dockett nabs one of the laterals. Instead of going down, Dockett tries to make the endzone. Half the sideline and the stadium was probably screaming for Dockett to fall down to end the game. But the palpable excitement made Dockett’s inexpert scramble a thing of joy manifest.

While I have no idea what will happen in the Super Bowl this Sunday, I think there’s much to be mined from both the Steelers and Cardinals playoff runs. Fuhbaw will start looking ahead tomorrow with a walk-through, breaking down some of the major ideas behind both these teams.

Conference Championships Pity Party

2009-01-20T11:35:00.000-05:00

Losing ain't easy. I know. I spent the balance of my varsity career on a losing football team. We lost early in the season. We lost late. We lost close ones. We lost blowouts.

And when we finally won a game, we still lost. The school district, tired of the losing ways, canned our head coach. While likely the best decision, that meant the remainder of my career would be spent on the early stages of a top-to-bottom rebuilding project.

What does rebuilding mean? That's right, losing.

So I know losing. But even after piling up wins, losing still ain't easy.

I can only think of two losses in football terms that hit me harder than last year's NFC Championship game. So this edition of the Fuhbaw Pity Party, while doesn't hit close to home, definitely has a dose or two more pity to it.

While the rest of the world moves onto a Pittsburgh-Arizona Super Bowl in Tampa, let's take a moment and pause to give place for the losers to sound off before quitting the stage.

Eagles 25 Cardinals 32. Enrico at the 700 Level says:

Denied again. This game summed up the Eagles season pretty well. Really bad for stretches before fighting back and looking really good only to come up short -- kind of like Donovan McNabb's accuracy. The fault for this one can be spread all around. The defense that played so well down the stretch came up small today and Larry Fitzgerald was just too much.

Was that P.I. on Curtis? Probably. But one play doesn't change it.

I'm bummed. If the Eagles would have just shown up in the first half we could be partying right now and making travel arrangements to Tampa. Instead, we have to listen to some troll of a "Cardinals fan" in the comments act like he cared about that team before two weeks ago.

The Iggles Blog says:

Unfortunately, if the beginning of the game fit into one kind of classic template, the ending was even more according to type. The Eagles had 14 chances on the Cards' last scoring drive to make the One Play that would have ended that game. Such a play was not made.

I guess having some more playmakers around wouldn't be such a bad thing.

Big picture, it was a nice season. When your 5-5-1 squad rips off a huge hot streak and makes the conference championship game, yeah, that's some good stuff.

Ravens 14 Steelers 23. B-More Birds' Nest says:

Remember in the Adam Sandler movie “The Waterboy,” when the coach played by the Fonz is scared to death of the rival team’s coach? To help him conquer this fear, the Waterboy teaches him about the visualization techniques he uses - the Fonz visualizes the other coach as a puppy or a baby, and his fear is gone.

Cam Cameron needs to visualize Dick LeBeau as a puppy. His game plans against Pittsburgh this year have all been ridiculously vanilla, timid, and, dare we say, Billick-esque. The one time the Ravens tried a bit of trickery, Mark Clayton picked up a good gain on a double reverse. Besides that play though, Cameron’s game plan was pretty shoddy. At no point was this more evident than when the Ravens failed to pick up a single yard on 3rd or 4th down after Ray Lewis forced a Slow Bill fumble.

You’ve got 8 months, Cam. Figure it out.

Rexx at Baltimore Beat Down says:

The game was still up for grabs deep into the fourth quarter, until the Steelers Troy Polamalu took a pick to the house to drive the final nail in the coffin. The emotional end came a few plays later when RB Willis McGahee was "de-cleated" by safety Ryan Clark on a pass over the middle that not only resulted in a fumble recovery for Pittsburgh, but sent McGahee to the hospital strapped to a stretcher. Willis should be fine and deserves a rest from what might have been his most impressive physical performance of the season, running for two short TD's, but playing all the while when he was obviously injured and in pain. He sure earned some props from me on this game, even though he had a rough season and is questionable to return as a Raven in 2009.

I honestly thought we were going to win this game, before, during and right up until the Polamalu interception. I had posted threads saying I didn't care that the Steelers were dominating the stats sheet, as I just wanted to kick a game winning FG to get out of town with a 17-16 victory. I actually thought we were on our way to do that after the first down pass from Joe Flacco to Todd Heap on that ill fated drive. I didn't care that Flacco was having a pretty horrible day, but don't lay it all on Joe, as you have to remember he was up against the #1 defense in football, and yesterday they played like it. Looking at the game overall, the defense didn't give up a ton of points, but they constantly were broken down and picked apart for the key third down or big plays by Ben Roethlisberger. Despite the loss of Hines Ward early in the game, the Steelers did what they had done all season to the entire league, but expecially the Ravens in the three games against us, and that was to make the play when they needed it.

This game could easily be blamed on the defense as much as you'd like to put it on Flacco's rookie shoulders. I'm not buying that. Sometimes you just have to admit that another team has your number and is a better team than yours is. The Pittsburgh Steelers proved that yesterday and to me are by far the best team in the NFL.