The No Kool Aid Zone » Rants about Sports

Archive for the ‘Rants about Sports’ Category

Norv or Rich?

when old coots should be in bed

I haven’t written about sports in ages, but I’ve got to ask any NFL-fan readers: I’ve long considered Rich Kotite to be the most inept head coach of my lifetime, but I’ve got to tell you, the job Norv Turner is doing in San Diego has really put him in the running. To recap, the Chargers went 14-2 just two years ago, but because the general manager couldn’t stand Coach Marty Schottenheimer, he fired him…to hire Norv, who’d already proven himself a failure in two head coaching jobs. That was the genius move of all time, in my opinion, and I said so. Now the Chargers, having entered this season as favorites to represent the AFC in the Super Bowl, are four games worse than the Atlanta Falcons, who just spanked ‘em in a game that wasn’t nearly as close as the final score. The Chargers are now 4-8, one of the league’s worst teams. Yes, I know that they lost their season opener on a bad call, and yes, I know that they lost Shawne Merriman early in the season. Still…4-8? Sorry, but Norv Turner may have surpassed Rich Kotite as the worst NFL coach of my lifetime.

Enough Already! The Nutso Brett Favre Saga

when old coots should be in bed

This show was old 3-4 years ago, and it’s really, really annoying now:

Favre Still Has “Itch” to Play

I think I posted a similar post last year at this time; Favre and Roger Clemens (are we finally through with him? Let’s hope.) are two guys who really don’t know when to say “goodbye”. Barry Sanders might have retired before his time, but at least when he retired, he retired.

The Real Story About Vick’s Prison Football

when old coots should be in bed

Apparently, according to this ESPN story, Mike Vick is the popular pick to play QB in prison football:

Vick Plays QB in Prison

But there’s more to the story. According to sources, Vick’s passer rating in prison is only 76.3, he has yet to throw a 4th-quarter TD pass, and there is increasing unrest among the inmates that Vick be benched in favor of Algernon “Bubba” Maroni, who last quarterbacked his high school team in Glendale, Arizona before getting sent up on armed robbery charges.

“We think he’d make a great running back”, said offensive tackle Vern Thomas, doing life for cocaine distribution, “but he’s having a difficult time picking up the blitzing schemes, and he’s consistently overthrowing our receivers.”

Brett Favre: A Great Quarterback, But…

when old coots should be in bed

But the ongoing deification of Brett Favre is ridiculous. As I’ve said before, Brett Favre is one of the more overrated QBs of all time–a first-ballot Hall of Famer, to be sure, and one of the toughest guys ever to play the position, sure, but way, way overrated. Brett Favre, as the following piece by Sal Paolantonio demonstrates, isn’t even the best Packer QB of all time, and it’s not even all that close.

Overhyped

He retired as the 15th-rated active quarterback. Now, I agree that the stats can be misleading, but he also retired with exactly as many Super Bowl victories as Ben Roethlisberger (who’ll get at least one more), Jim McMahon, and Trent Dilfer. But Paolantonio makes the point that for the final decade of his career, Brett Favre was, on average, average, and in the postseason, he was, arguably, sub-average.

But don’t argue with me; just read the article for yourself.

A Brief Word on the Super Bowl

when old coots should be in bed

Dawned on me this AM that I hadn’t yet posted anything on the Super Bowl, so here goes: I found myself at the start of the game really ambivalent about who won, and fully expecting a Pats blowout. Now, I wasn’t all that surprised that the Giants got there; I had them even money to upset the Pack. But the Patriots? Another story, I thought. And while I’m not at all a Patriots fan, I’d found myself sort of rooting for them recently, only because of the history that was about (so we thought) to be made. Then again, I love underdogs, and the Giants were one, and I like Eli Manning, and all of that together put me in a frame of mind for over half the game of “well, whatever happens, happens”, which isn’t the way I normally look at sports (nor want to normally look at sports).

But about halfway through the third quarter, the sheer guts of the Giants won me over, as well as the fact that I really, really don’t like Bill Belicheat and the Patriots. And thus I began to pull for the Giants, when they were down 7-3, and thus I was pleased by the outcome. Couple things, and I’m done: one, what was Belicheat thinking, going for it on 4th-and-13, eschewing a 49-yard field goal attempt? This is the greatest team in football, and they can’t trust their kicker indoors to kick a less-than-50-yard field goal? A sports guy yesterday said that he’d looked up the stats, and the odds of making it on 4th-and-13 were 7 percent. Did Belicheat get cocky, believing his Pats and Tom Terrific couldn’t be stopped? At any rate, those three points were the margin of victory…

Two, as usual, we can look at a couple plays and tell the story. The obvious one was the scrambling-Eli-to-David-Tyree circus catch (I predict that catch will become the new standard in postseason receiving lore) that kept the drive alive for the Giants. Brandon Jacobs getting the yardage on 4th-and-1 is obvious as well. But the play that sticks in my mind is Asante Samuel having an interception in his mitts and letting it get away. He makes that catch, and it’s game-over, Patriots go 19-0, “nice try, Eli”. But he doesn’t.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

It’s Confirmed: Vick’s a Phony

when old coots should be in bed

I was willing, as I said on this blog a few months ago, to give Michael Vick the benefit of the doubt when it came to his “apology”; I really was. But as I said at the time, real repentance demands fruit, and one of the best ways he could demonstrate the truthfulness of his repentance would be to voluntarily give back the bonus that he received from the Falcons, which he has morally forfeited. Now, a judge has overturned an initial ruling, and Vick will apparently get to keep his money:

Federal Judge Rules that Vick’s Roster Bonus Can’t be Recouped

If he were serious, he wouldn’t have fought to keep money from the franchise that he harmed so greatly. I’ll retract this if he changes his mind and voluntarily gives it back, but until that happens (and don’t hold your breath), I think we can safely say it: Michael Vick is a phony, and should never be hired to play NFL football again.

Ranking the Quarterbacks: What Others Say

when old coots should be in bed

Since I embarked upon a study to decide, as objectively as possible, who the greatest quarterback of all time is, and finding the answer to be, pretty easily, Joe Montana, I decided to see what others thought.

Here’s a guy who says that the top five all time are, in this order, Dan Marino, Joe Montana, John Elway, Johnny Unitas, and Fran Tarkenton. One wonders if he realizes that the NFL was in existence prior to 1955.

Someone named “WiseGeek” doesn’t reach a conclusion, but mentions in his article Starr, Marino, Montana, Young, Unitas, Tarkenton, Favre, Brady, and Manning. Again, we are left to wonder if he believes football was invented in the late ’50s. Since his page allows for comments, he subjects himself to ridicule from the Favriacs, who conveniently overlook their hero’s flaws (seen last evening, incidentally) in pressing his candidacy. One guy says, “no one has ever played with as much heart and tenacity as he has.” Really? We’re able to measure “heart” and “tenacity”, and then to use them to gauge greatness? Shoot, for all we know, Joe Pisarcik played with even more “heart” and “tenacity” than did Brett Favre, but too sad for him, he just utterly stunk as an athlete. Rubbish.

Some guy named Allen Barra at Salon Magazine says it was Bart Starr. Now, I confess that Starr ranked higher in my ratings than I’d expected, but #1 all time? Streeettcchh.

Troy Aikman generally agrees with the Sporting News’ analysis that the top three all-time were Otto Graham, Joe Montana, and Johnny Unitas, in some order (he likes Montana, but admits that that’s because he’s the only one he actually saw play). The article is three-and-a-half years old, and one wonders how he’d place Manning and Brady in this equation, but what I find interesting here is that the Sporting News analysis pretty much bears mine out: these men were three (along with Sammy Baugh, and maybe one or two others) that I’d put in the equation for “best of all time”.

Here’s an idiotic poll that’ll make you laugh when you consider who this person (8-year-old?) decided to put in—and to leave out of—his poll.

Here’s a guy who votes for Joe Namath, because “he played with a rough and tumble mentality.” Ah, well, that settles it! The fact that on a sheer performance level, Joe Namath ranks somewhere in the area of Steve McNair or Marc Bulger doesn’t really matter to this guy…

And here’s a guy who actually manages to mention the name “Neil O’Donnell” in a post entitled “The Best Quarterback of All Time”. Which is interesting, since Neil O’Donnell also is far and away the worst Pittsburgh Steelers’ starting Super Bowl quarterback of all time, not to mention not even the best quarterback of all time to graduate from the University of Maryland, or the best starting quarterback in his one Super Bowl start, or the best quarterback in the division most of his NFL years, or the…you get the picture. I will give the guy credit, though, for quoting George Will at the top of his blog: “Football combines two of the worst things in American life. It is violence punctuated by committee meetings.”

All of the above, I should mention, comes from the first page of Googling “greatest quarterbacks”.

After that start, I’m expecting the second page to contain references to Rudy Bukich, Eric Hipple, and Dieter Brock…

UPDATE: Here’s a guy who did a different statistical analysis than mine, and who came up with a reasonable amount of similarity to mine: “The 100 Greatest Quarterbacks of the Modern Era”.

He rates both Marino and Elway higher than do I, and he leaves out some guys that are not “modern-era” types (Otto Graham, Sid Luckman, and Sammy Baugh, all of which made my top ten). His rankings must be a tad dated (he puts Tom Brady 54th, but this is after Brady already has three Super Bowl rings, which is testament, I think, to the fact that Brady’s off-the-charts season this year is really his first unusually-great statistical season), but the thing I noticed was that he put Ken Anderson 7th—so maybe I’m not nuts, huh? This dude’s got funky stats galore, so I can’t write him off, although I don’t know that Roman Gabriel belongs in the top twenty of any QB list, and he’s got Sonny Jurgensen awfully high as well. But it’s an interesting analysis (that I’ll someday take a little more time and read). Oh, and sentimentally, I like the fact that he’s got Elway fifth. I prefer that analysis to mine that puts him in the mid-teens.