Am I Ready For Some FOOTBALL?

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Sure, it might be 90 degrees at night. Sure, Montana might be on fire. But August means the start of PRE-SEASON FOOTBALL – the second happiest time of year*

Right man, wrong uniformWillis McGahee has fit right in at Baltimore:

Break out the verbal trash with the Baltimore Ravens, though, and, well, you’re just one of the guys. For this talented and talkative team, shrinking violets need not apply. Led by mouthy, filibustering veterans like middle linebacker Ray Lewis, the Ravens aren’t shy about taking on players who unabashedly love to talk the talk.

The article’s surprisingly sparse on actual examples of trash talking, which leads me to believe that it’s unprintably filthy. Which is just how I like it.

Meanwhile, Mike Holmgren has apparently gotten over Seattle’s OT loss, though it took some time:

Here was his Pro Bowl quarterback, Matt Hasselbeck, scrambling unnecessarily, overlooking an open receiver and throwing incomplete to the wrong guy with the season on the line.The third-and-2 mishap doomed Seattle in overtime of the NFC playoffs, helping Chicago continue its Super Bowl march.

There were plenty of pivotal moments for the Seahawks to agonize over, but this one would linger. It was Seattle’s final offensive play in a season checkered with regrettable ones.

The sequence so exasperated Holmgren that he brought his wife into the office to check out the tape. Can you believe this, honey?

A winning combinationHis wife! What a story! What a scoop! A professional football coach demanding analysis – or at least sympathetic aggrievement – of his spouse?!? What’s next?

(And I wonder what Kathy said. Probably something along the lines of, “Well, Matt never had a damn’s worth of protection in the pocket and it almost cost him his fingers, so I can forgive him a little skittishness”)

Up Boston way, Belichick has worked to integrate Adalius Thomas and Randy Moss into his Byzantine strategies:

The irony is that people should be paying more attention to Thomas because he’ll have a bigger impact on the Patriots’ fortunes. Although Moss is supposed to make life easier for Pro Bowl quarterback Tom Brady, Thomas is the guy who is going to improve a defense that really didn’t receive as much blame as it deserved for last season’s finish. After all, it wasn’t the offense that fell apart in that AFC Championship Game loss to Indianapolis. It was a defense that surrendered 38 points and blew a 21-3 second-quarter lead.

Allow meAdalius Thomas should join the long and storied ranks of players who left the Ravens franchise to become hugely famous contributors elsewhere: Priest Holmes, Sam Adams, Chester Taylor, Brandon Stokley, etc, etc, ad infinitum.

I’m excited. Get those baseball players off the field! Quit talking about Bonds and A-Rod and all of them. I want the brutal hard hitting of pre-season second string football!

* The happiest being the playoffs race.