I don't like to toot my own horn, but TOOT, TOOT!

From my blog entry from March 15th entitled, "Why the Skins were right to sign Larry Johnson"...

In essence I’d forgotten about the 2005 Clinton Portis; the guy who made the runs against the Giants and Eagles late in the season where he had defenders chasing him to the edge, and then kicked it up 2 gears. Don’t forget, CP came into the league at 204 pounds. He’s currently listed at 221. Of course, he added the muscle to avoid getting beat to smithereens after he came to DC and Joe Gibbs decided to run him like John Riggins. I’d like to see if Portis slimmed down and worked on his speed (and practiced regulary) what he could accomplish in the Shanahan offense. He was great in Denver. If he slims down and still can’t run away from anyone, we have our answer folks.

From Today's Redskins Insider by the Washington Post's Jason Reid, entry entitled, "Shanahan expects Portis to 'be in great shape' and at a lower weight"

Of course, perfect attendance is not enough for Shanahan. He expects Portis to be in top shape for the season.

"He was 205 or 210 pounds and averaged [nearly] six yards a carry for two years [with the Broncos]. That's what I expect him to be - in great shape and doing the things he's always done with me. He knows he's got to be lighter, sure.

"I think we'll know as time goes on [what Portis's playing weight should be]. ... I haven't talked to him about it, but I would say that he'll probably be shooting at 210, 212, 214 range. I think Clinton knows what's best for him and his body, what type of offense we run with the zone blocking scheme that gives him the best chance to be successful."

Should I do this now or later?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0F11rXOUF5o

The stakes just got a whole lot higher...

January 9th, 1988. It's a date that Washington sports fans should never forget; but it’s one almost no one remembers. On that winter Saturday, one of the bigger NFL playoff upsets took place as the Wild Card Minnesota Vikings (who barely made the playoffs that year at 8-7 in the strike shortened season) knocked off the 13-2 San Francisco 49ers, the odds on favorite to win the Super Bowl that year. And it really wasn't that close as Minnesota put up huge yardage totals on the way to the 12 point win. Now the reason this one had significance in DC was that it switched homefield advantage from the Niners to the winner of the next day's game between the Redskins and the homestanding Chicago Bears. Of course you probably know what happened, Doug Williams throws a few TD's, Darrell Green returns a punt and Joe Gibbs squad went from looking at playing 2 playoff games on the road to hosting the NFC Championship game - and winning it to go to the Super Bowl where they beat Denver. Suffice to say, the Skins caught a huge break that year and the turned it into a Lombardi Trophy.

Fast forward to this year's NCAA Tournament. Kansas, pretty much the slight favorite over Kentucky to win it all, goes out in a Saturday 2nd round game, to "traditional power" (sarcasm intended) Northern Iowa. You know who the Panthers face next? The winner of Sunday's Maryland - Michigan State game. Now while Northern Iowa can play some ball, facing them isn't the daunting task of playing Kansas. So it’s very possible, that if the Terps can navigate their way through the Spartans (no gimmie considering MSU's propensity to dominate in rebounding) they could be looking at a relative breather to the regional final...or at least not having to play Kansas.

Why the Skins were right to sign Larry Johnson

To start this off, if you;re anti-Johnson because of his comments on twitter (not going to defend them) I’m not going to change your mind, so stop reading.

All week long I’ve listened to the outrage on sports talk radio and read the anger in print about the Redskins signing free agent running back Larry Johnson last weekend. And while the argument that he’s a bad person (the gay slurs used on twitter, being violent towards women, generally a dick) is a valid one, it’s not the only one I’ve heard. Johnson is done! He’s the same running back Portis is! It just amazes me that people – in a football sense – could be so dumb.

I see three main reasons for bringing this guy in…

1 - Cheap and available – The old Spurrier argument when he picked up every Florida Gator that was in the NFL at the time. While all of those guys had proven (repeatedly) that they sucked, LJ isn’t to that point, yet. On the surface his 3 year, 12 million dollar deal looks expensive, but its supposedly pretty backloaded and if he doesn’t produce, Washington should be able to get out of it pretty easily without being hamstrung.

2 – Johnson is no shrinking violet – Because he was arguably the best running back in college and the NFL at one point, he’s got an ego. Probably bigger than it should be, but its there. Unlike Ladell Betts and Rock Cartwright who silently grumbled while they carried the load in practice while Clinton Portis “rested up” for games I can’t see Johnson being a caddy for CP this year. Johnson is going to make sure he plays and if he doesn’t, it will be because Portis had a resurgence unseen before in running backs his age (he turns 29 in September). Betts and Cartwright likely didn’t say anything because they knew it wouldn’t be good for their careers, considering Clinton’s chummy relationship with Daniel Snyder. You get the feeling Johnson’s the type of guy who will just be a general nuisance to Mike Shanahan if he feels like he’s being shortchanged…or he’ll go up to CP, bitch about him not practicing, and then punch him in the face. Either way, I get the feeling Portis will be challenged in camp for the first time in ages.

3 – a Portis/Johnson backfield is a perfect fit – LJ a 230 pound bruiser and CP the one cut, home run threat. But Jeremy, you’ve told anyone who would listen for the last 3 years that Portis is done! True, but I watched this a few weeks ago…

http://www.hulu.com/watch/124239/team-highlights-2005-washington-redskins

In essence I’d forgotten about the 2005 Clinton Portis; the guy who made the runs against the Giants and Eagles late in the season where he had defenders chasing him to the edge, and then kicked it up 2 gears. Don’t forget, CP came into the league at 204 pounds. He’s currently listed at 221. Of course, he added the muscle to avoid getting beat to smithereens after he came to DC and Joe Gibbs decided to run him like John Riggins. I’d like to see if Portis slimmed down and worked on his speed (and practiced regulary) what he could accomplish in the Shanahan offense. He was great in Denver. If he slims down and still can’t run away from anyone, we have our answer folks.

ZOOperstars

Disclaimer – this blog entry was written under the influence of drugs…though they were just antibiotics so that shouldn’t be a problem.

Do you ever have one of those moments where you laugh hysterically at something that is quite stupid, fully realizing you’d crush people for doing the same? Happened to me when I saw this…

http://www.zooperstars.com/Characters/ZOO_Characters.asp

Inflatable characters, based on real athletes (or pop culture icons), that are here for your enjoyment! Good Grief. Just look at some of these guys, say the names out loud, and try not to laugh. Clammy Sosa! Cow Ripken, Jr! Dick Flytale! Mackerel Jordan! And my personal favorite…Snail Earnhardt, Jr.

On second thought, I’d better check that prescription again.

Bonus Action – a compilation of mascots eating people. Brilliant!

http://deadspin.com/5485997/a-childrens-treasury-of-mascots-eating-people/gallery/

What a Game!

Not much else you can say about the Olympic Hockey matchup between the US and Canada. Just edge of your seat television (just like playoff hockey – if you have a dog in the fight)! Couple things I took from the game;

1) If you’re a fan of any team in the Eastern Conference, you should be really worried if your squad draws Buffalo in the first round. Sabres (and team USA starter) goalie Ryan Miller is REALLY good. If you can make some of the stops he made against Canada (and their Murder’s Row of scorers) you can do it against anyone in the league.

2) If you’re a Caps fan, don’t let your Pittsburgh hatred blind you to the talent of Sidney Crosby. Yeah he’s a twerpy little prick, but damn if he doesn’t know how to put the puck in the net. The goal that made it 4-3 wasn’t spectacular, but knowing when to get to the net and then scoring when you’re there is a huge talent.

3) Chris Drury may go down as one of our greatest American sports heroes. The Rangers captain not only was part of a Stanley Cup winner (Colorado), he also won the NCAA’s player of the year award, and he already has a silver medal from the 2002 Olympics. If he and the rest of Team USA can pull off a gold in Vancouver, he’ll be a major part of 2 world champion teams in 2 sports. Drury was the winning pitcher in the US team’s win over Taiwan in the 1989 Little League World Series (and this was back when Taiwan was putting 6 foot 14 year olds with mustaches out on the field).

BONUS THOUGHT!

I managed to catch some of the Czech Republic vs. Russia game, including Ovie’s big check that laid Jaromir Jagr out; like I said on Facebook, Ted Leonsis probably got a boner when he saw that.

Who Da...(no I'm not doing that crap)

I rooted for the Saints yesterday.

Not because of Katrina (a truly devastating situation, but like Pittsburgh in the 70’s, did Terry Bradshaw touchdown passes help the steel industry; no, not really).

Not because the Saints had been putrid for years.

No, I rooted for the Saints on Super Sunday, because the Colts had offended my sensibilities.

When Indianapolis coach Jim Caldwell, pulled Peyton Manning and the rest of the Colts key starters at halftime in his team’s second to last game of the year (a game that THEY HAD THE LEAD IN by the way), it, for the lack of a better term, pissed me off. To paraphrase someone else, when the Colts removed Peyton Manning against the Jets and put in Curtis Painter (Who? Exactly!) they spit in the face of perfection. Indy was 14 and 0 going into that game, and considering the way they beat New York in the AFC Championship game, they probably would have run their record to 15 and 0. While I despise Bill Belichik, I respect the fact that he figured out a basic premise; there are now 44 Super Bowl winners (42 when the 2007 Patriots were playing the Giants), there’s only one NFL team with a perfect season in their back pocket (’72 Miami). If you can do both why not shoot for it? That’s why America still remembers those geezers that played for the Dolphins. If not for the fact they all start getting interviewed the minute someone makes a run at perfection, no one would know most of those players.

But when I think more about it, it wasn’t just the decision to pull everyone and give up a game; my anger came as much from the faulty logic that resulted in the decision. Reportedly the decision to pull starters at the half came from the Colts Team President, Bill Polian. This guy is a genius at picking players; he’s built three franchises from the bottom up (early 90’s Bills, expansion Carolina and the Colts). But he never was the coach of a football team at any type of high level, so I can’t understand how he was qualified to make a day to day decision about a squad that was contending for a Super Bowl. It’s comparable to Boston Red Sox GM Theo Epstein telling his manager Terry Francona, “I want you to go to a 7 man pitching rotation down the stretch”. Francona (the guy who actually deals with the players day to day) would probably not like that since he wants his pitchers to stay in their normal rhythm in a 5 man rotation. If Epstein made him do it, he’d likely be pilloried in the press. Polian should be too.

The main point behind the Colts pulling nearly half of their team and virtually guaranteeing themselves the first loss of the year was so that they would be fresh and not suffer any injuries – of course this didn’t matter the next week when Manning, Dallas Clark and Reggie Wayne all played on a treacherous snowy field in Buffalo to pass individual milestones. I find two things wrong with that hypothesis. One, guys get hurt all the time, randomly; Dwight Freeney getting hurt for the Colts was huge, and oh yeah, it happened late in the AFC Championship when Indy already had the game in hand. Two, I still don’t think giving football players more than one week off from their regular schedule has any benefit. This year’s win by the Saints was the first time a top seed in conference has won the Super Bowl since 2004 when the Patriots took home the title. It doesn’t seem to be a coincidence that teams who have clinched the top spot (and who have gone on to rest players during their “meaningless” end of season games) have all not managed to make it to the big game. When you get out of rhythm in this league you lose, and to me, there’s not a better way to get out of rhythm, than to go three or four weeks without playing hard for an entire game.

So that brings me back to my original point. The Colts were wrong for basically tanking a game, and giving up their undefeated season. And if they had won yesterday, the Indy “braintrust” (and I use that term loosely in this situation) would have claimed their approach was right. Peyton Manning would have had to sit there and be happy about having the Lombardi Trophy, all the while knowing that he and his teammates would have been immortal if they had gone 19 and 0. Instead, the Saints, a team that also made a run at perfection, gave their best shot but lost, ended up winning the title. Karma or Katrina they took home the win. Hopefully, other teams that have a chance at going for an undefeated season will follow their lead, and not the team from Indiana, that might have just outsmarted themselves.

Absolutely Favre-u-lous

So I realize that I haven’t written anything in a month and a half…but only one thing could get me back to writing; Brett Lorenzo Favre. Yes the “heroic” quarterback of your Minnesota Vikings (after his one year detour in New York, and..ahem…his career in Green Bay). As you can tell by my tone, I’m not much of a Favre fan. His act of blaming everyone else for the Packers bad play – even though he had let his mechanics go to pot and was about half the quarterback he was in the Holmgren glory days – got old with me pretty quickly. The sad end to his Green Bay tenure and his tour around the NFL after the fact was the straw that broke the camel’s back. In other words, you can probably call me a “hater”. So in the interest of fairness, I want to lay out the positives from the Vikings overtime loss to the Saints on Sunday.

1) Favre played great; he threw for over 300 yards and for most of the game was the smart, ageless QB he’s been all year long. Some of his throws were just amazing for any quarterback, much less a 40 year old

2) His offensive teammates let him down big time. The Vikes were credited with 6 fumbles with Adrian Peterson leading the way with 2 (the fumbled exchange was credited to Favre, even though AP clamped down on the ball with his hands, instead of letting Brett put it in his breadbasket – where I come from, that’s on the running back)

But with all that said, I have to talk about the point I’ve stressed with Brett Favre for years now; he has a funny habit of throwing away the biggest games at crunch time. Happened 2 years ago against the Giants in overtime…happened in 2003 against the Eagles when he threw that moon ball that Brian Dawkins picked off to set up the game winning TD…happened with his 6 interception game against the Rams in 2001…and it happened again on Sunday.

Now some folks, whose opinions on football I respect, have had all kinds of rebuttals on the final interception against the Saints, mostly ranging from his team let him down, to no one play lost the game, to he was in the heat of the moment. Can’t say I agree with any of those, but people are entitled to them. Here is what I saw…

After the Vikings got that horrible 12 men in the huddle penalty, they had a 55 yard field goal in their pocket, with a pretty good kicker on the sidelines, and this is key, the ability to run the clock all the way down to hardly any time left before using their time out. Not to say a 55 yarder is a chip shot by any means but it’s worth a shot if a miss leads to overtime. The 3rd down play, which according to Favre was called before the penalty and the time out that preceded it and was unchanged, was a roll out (quarterback moves toward the sideline – usually makes for an easier throw and he has the ability to run for yardage if there is some there). At this point I’m sure the coaches said the following; “make a safe throw, run it if you’ve got open space (because they still had a timeout to stop the clock) or throw it away”. At first Favre followed number one (as he didn’t force the intended throw), he didn’t do number 2 (because he wasn’t sure if he could get enough yardage to matter) but he sure has hell didn’t do number 3 as he threw across his body, back into the middle of the field (the cardinal sin for a quarterback). Anyway the ball gets picked, no field goal try for the Vikings, and the Saints get the ball first in overtime and never give it back. In this case, even a short run wasn’t death for Minnesota as remember, they still had a timeout, good field position and a chance to let Favre sling it to get another first down.

In my 4 most recent years of coaching youth football (ages 8-11) we’ve run a variation of the same roll out that Favre did on Sunday. We always tell the kids, if the guy isn’t open, run it. Most of the time (I’d say 80%) the kid either hits the open guy or takes off running. You’d think that a future Hall of Famer, who’s had almost 20 years of NFL football under his belt would be able to make the decision 100% of the time, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case for Viking fans on Sunday.

I told pretty much everyone I knew, that for reasons I outlined earlier, I wished that Favre’s 2009 season would end like it did in 2007…throwing the game losing interception. While there was a lot of hope in that, there was also some insight to the dream/prediction; after all, I’d seen the movie before.

Brett Lorenzo Favre – leader in Career playoff interceptions: 30 (2 on Sunday broke his tie with Jim Kelly); His playoff record since losing to the Broncos in Super Bowl XXXII at the end of the 1997 season…4-7

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHbh-kt-PFA