Tag: Football

Achy Breaky Fibula

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Is it just me, or do the catalog of injuries in the NFL seem more brutal this year than usual?

The conquering heroMiami QB Trent Green took a knee to the head after blocking low on the 315-pound Texans tackle Travis Johnson. He’s out for a bit with a “grade three” concussion (did you know concussions come in grades?). On one hand I have little sympathy for anyone, even a QB, who blocks below the knees; on the other hand, taunting a man whose skull you’ve just altered (as Johnson did, netting 15 yards) is particularly classless. Then again, you don’t go to a Dolphins / Texans game looking for heroes, except wunderkind Matt Schaub.

Speaking of Texans quarterbacks, David Carr is going to have to suit up in Carolina. Panthers QB Jake Delhomme is out for the rest of the season following elbow surgery. David Carr, already on pace to become the most sacked man in football, has already begun cringing.

‘Cause this is THRILLER!The running backs are not getting off any easier. Jamal Lewis is getting his foot MRI’ed. Tampa Bay, having already lost their Cadillac (which they’d insured through Allstott, of course), may have driven their loaner car into the lake. Joseph Addai’s bruised chest kept him from starting on Week 5, and Brian Westbrook still doesn’t like his uniform.

Help me out, NerdsOnSports readers. Is this an unusual number of starters to be out by Week 5, or do I just lack perspective?

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Fantasy Football Woes

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Let’s talk for a moment about how terrible my fantasy football team is.

Not Phil RiversFirst, these are some ancient quarterbacks, and I starteth one of three: Elisha Manning (New York Football Giants), Philip Rivers (San Diego Superchargers) or Jeff Garcia (Tampa Bay Bwa-ha-ha, no please, stop laughing). Of these, Eli has consistently been the best, bringing me 12 points this week and a ridiculous 48 in week 1 (the only week I’ve won so far). Of course, the week I bench Phil Rivers, he throws for 300 yards and 3 TDs against the Packers (to lose!), so I clearly don’t know what I’m doing.

My running game: Maurice “The Champagne of Running Backs” Jones-Drew (Jacksonville Jagoffs), Deuce “And a Quarter” McAllister (New Orleans Ain’ts), Ladell Betts (Washington Deadskins) and Musa Smith (Baltimore Ravens). MJD has gone from being the most potent RB on my roster to the least. Musa Smith – a guy who’ll only get the ball when Willis McGahee has both his hands bound to his sides with duct tape and can’t tuck the ball under his chin to run it for an easy 3.8 yards – puts more points on the board than MJD. I have no running game. I couldn’t even ask a running game to the prom. I couldn’t even have my mom call up a running game’s mom, spend five minutes making small talk about the condo board, and then oh so casually drop the hint that, gee, does running game have a date to the spring formal yet, because Perich doesn’t have one either, etc, all of which I overhear to my deepening mortification while I play my Nintendo DS in the living room, paralyzed between the alternatives of entangling my mom in my dating life and going without a date, even if it’s some pimply, awkward, third-string date from UCLA with chronic knee trouble.

Oh God, It HurtsIn light of my epic misfortunes, I started a WR in the RB/WR option slot and it paid off big. Not big enough to overturn my opponent (Brian Westbrook burned his body in a holy fire this week, rushing for 110 yards and 2 TDs before the Eagles’ repulsive uniform corroded his very flesh and returned him to Questionable status), but better than I expected. Derrick Mason (Baltimore Ravens) is Steve McNair’s favorite, Jerricho Cotchery (New York Jetropolitans) alternates between spectacular and sub-par weeks and Mike Furrey (Detroit) is just no good.

Only my defense and my kicker keep me competitive at this point, and anyone who knows fantasy football should laugh out loud and stop reading. For the rest of you: the Vikings D contributed 10% of last week’s points, and Adam Vinateri another 18%. So that’s more than a quarter of my team’s score riding on draft picks #15 and #16. Somebody hang me.

The available RBs are only marginally better (Jesse Chatman from Miami; Justin Griffith out of Oakland; etc). My best hope at this point is for someone to lose all of their QBs in a freak bus accident and be so desperate that they’ll offer up Joseph “Ad-do or” Addai in exchange for Jeff Garcia. I’m not counting on it.

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[Business Day One] An All Day Event

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The Titans and Saints have yet to play their Rose Bowl II: The Reckoning tonight, but Week 3 is more or less on the books.  And the season is shaping up as all NFL seasons do after three weeks – a hearty mix of expected starts, both good and bad, and surprising over- and under- performers.  The one guarantee in professional football is that there are no guarantees.  That’s why they play the games and that’s why we spend our Sundays watching them.  On that note, I offer today’s Business Day One column.

Football is best enjoyed in groups.  The hard hits, impossible passes and exhaustive analysis crI will make a suit out of these.eate a perfect storm of manly, chest-bumping, “great to be alive” camaraderie.  Fans gather across the country in stadium parking lots, lucky bars and packed living rooms and celebrate the day that, for many, is the highlight of their week.  And darn it, it should be.  Sundays during football season are a party and must be treated like one.  Actually throw a party!  If you, the readers, have never thrown a Regular Season Football Watching Party, then you better get to it.  Appease the Gods of Sport and impress your friends by inviting a bunch of them over for food and festivities.  If you get six buddies at your house for Week 4, maybe one of them will volunteer his or her place for Week 5.  It’s like Pay It Forward, only less terrible.

You may be thinking that you are ill-equipped to throw a Regular Season Football Watching Party.  Without necessarily knowing you, I can already say that you are wrong.  Here at Nerds on Sports, we’re in the business of education.  So let me do my part destroy some of the misconceptions that are no doubt keeping you from having this shindig. Read More

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Blitz’s Week 2 Rankings

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Matty IceMost sites’ rankings follow a reader’s logical expectations. I’ve started this whole ranking thing, so every week I would come back and update the rankings. Well, that’s not what I’m going to do. If you want to see who I generally think are the best teams in the league, look at my previous rankings. Today, I’m going to go through the bottom of the league.

(If you want to know my thoughts about the top teams, its Pats 1, Colts 2, I leave 3 empty to show the gap between those two and the rest of the league, Dallas cracks my top 5)

The Matt “Matt-y Ice” Ryan Sweepstakes

1. Atlanta Falcons – Remember when they were the doormat of the league, then the player-who-we-can’t-name took over the team, cured all of their woes and made them into an NFC contender. Well, that guy’s gone and the doormat is back. If you are Bobby Petrino, you have to be disappointed with the situation you now face, but also happy that you weren’t the guy that let Kentucky beat The ‘Ville last week. I’ve lived in Louisville and that rivalry is very fierce inside the state. Back to the Falcons, how messed up a team are you that you give Byron Leftwich a try-out the week after his old team beats you? If you had any desire to sign him in the near future, you have to sign him the week before you play the Jags. Maybe you get information from him, maybe you don’t but at least it gives Jack Del Rio something to think about other than his next killer suit. Read More

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[Business Day One] Priorities

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Bottom of the ninth inning and David Ortiz stood in against Mariano Rivera.  The bases were loaded, there were two outs and the Red Sox were down by 1 against the Yankees.  Fenway was shaking with energy, with waves of noise cascading down from the Faithful on to the field as their Hero cocked his bat against the fireballer.  Could Papi do it again?  Or would the Best Closer In Baseball notch another save in the most enemy of enemy territories?  A Sox win would extend out their lead in the East to five and a half.  A Yankees win would keep the pressue on Boston down a grueling final stretch.  Ramifications of a single at bat, a singular moment in time as watched by millions of fans.  If a scientist were to distill an entire season to get the extract of pure Sport, he would get this.  Mariano winds and delivers…

But alas, I wasn’t watching it.  A diehard Yankee fan in front of a television on a Sunday night five miles from Fenway, and I wasn’t watching it.  In fact, I wasn’t even thinking about it.  I was awake, and in my right mind, but had no interest in the outcome of the game at that moment.  It was only this morning that I realized I don’t know how the game ended.  I turned it off when Pedroia was batting, and so had to check the final score on my cell phone at 8:30 this morning.  It was a stark realization on this windy day.  The team I grew up rooting for was not my biggest sports priority.

It was a pretty jarring thought, and one that I wanted to make my peace with as soon as possible.  Thank goodness I write for a sports blog, eh?  On my commute to my office, I counted all of the sports-related concerns that were on my mind last night that took precedence over my Sox/Yankees interest.  I shuddered when I realized that this relatively important baseball game barely cracked the Top Five.  For sake of healing, I am putting my Top Five here:

1.  Patriots/Chargers Sunday Night Football – Read More

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Blitz’s Week 1 Rankings

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The Blitz’s Top Teams:

  1. The New England Patriots. Hello, they cheat! I will always pick the team willing to cheat to win over the guys who play fair. .
  2. San Diego Super Chargers. They played the Bears game for 60 minutes and still looked dominant. The Norv Turner honeymoon will last at least until Sunday night.
  3. Indianapolis Colts. Let’s wait until they beat a team that wasn’t a perennial doormat until last year before we crown ’em.
  4. Denver Broncos. If Cutler can get his feet under him quickly and play to his potential, that defense will let him win a lot of games this year.
  5. Cincinnati Bengals. They didn’t play well on Monday but I like this team.
  6. Pittsburgh Steelers. This is the most over-hyped team this week. Cleveland was so bad they traded their Week 1 starting quarterback before Week 2. That’s historically bad.
  7. Tennessee Titans. Say Hello to the new Atlanta Falcons. Playing Michael Vick will be V. Young, playing Warrick Dunn will be Chris Brown, and playing T.J. Duckett will be LenDale White. Scary running attack.
  8. Baltimore Ravens. They’ve got offensive issues. If they’re not 4-4 or better by Week 9, watch for this defense to get tired of keeping this team at championship level and give up.
  9. Any NFC contender. Yeah, that’s how good the AFC is right now. I’ll take the Ravens over the Bears, Saints, Panthers, or any NFC East team.

Blitz’s Lock of the Week (which may not run every week)

New Orleans (-3) over TAMPA BAY. New Orleans will have had ten days to think about their Hoosier State whooping. Plus, the Bucos are bad offensively and they play the same Cover-2/Tampa-2 defense that Indy played against New Orleans last week. Think Payton and Co. will be able to figure out their offensive issues and adjust to whatever worked for Indy defensively? I sure do.

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The New Oakland Raiders – At Best

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I’m going to ask you all to close your eyes right now.  Go ahead, close them.

Well, OK, you can’t do that and read my post, but imagine an NFL team with the following characteristics:

– A Coach with a losing record every where he has been in the NFL takes over a team and suddenly he is a genius.

– A reputation for taking average to sub-par players and making them superstars.

– A reputation for taking “bad apples” on other teams and suddenly getting them to “toe the company line” but does so in a secret fashion.

– Revels in deception and trickery.

At this point, the team sounds like one that would strike fear in the hearts of its opponents and ultimately have success on the field.  The team would carry with it an aura of intimidation based on fear and on-the-fields results.  Now for the moment where Matthew McConaughey tells you to imagine that the girl is white.  Here are two more aspects of the team: Read More

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The Game in Game Theory

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Two children have a slice of ice cream cake to share between them. The longer they debate over what a “fair share” would constitute for each of them, the more the cake melts. It is, in fact, entirely possible that the cake will have melted by the time they reach a consensus.

Keep that image in mind while I talk about the most exciting part of preseason football: contract holdouts!

Rookie QB Brady Quinn made headlines by holding out for weeks after signing. Larry Johnson (KC Chefs) held out until last week before signing a 5-year, $43.2M extension. Asante Samuel (NE Patsies) just announced his return yesterday, though he’s still ducking efforts to wear the “franchise” tag. And Michael Strahan (NY Football Giants) is, as of this writing (Tuesday, August 28th, 9:00ish AM), still undecided. The man might very well hang up his cleats (sources say).

So what goes on during a contract holdout? What are the costs and benefits of avoiding training camp? Is the risk worth the reward? To find out, we turn to one of the classics of game theory, Thinking Strategically, by Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff.

Reputation

For decades, the nation of Israel had a policy of never negotiating with terrorists. The government declared this to discourage hostage-taking: if capturing a civilian, or a politician, will never pay off, why bother? Israel did this to build a reputation of not being someone to screw with. The downside to having this sort of reputation, of course, is that it turns potential hostages into instant victims. There’s always a cost to talking tough.

No GM wants to cave if one of his players pouts and refuses to show up for training camp. To do so would immediately send a signal that this sort of behavior works and would open the floodgates next summer. It’s in every owner’s interest to stay firm.

Asante Samuel knows his game theoryAt the same time, however, the players aren’t chess pawns. There’s a world of difference between an Asante Samuel and a Randall Gay (2 tackles in 3 games last year). Coach Belichick may play it off like Samuel’s return is no big deal, but the defense he spent the entire offseason crafting in his Fortress of Solitude probably hinged more on a guy who caught 10 picks last season than a guy who sat for 12 games.

Samuel knew he was valuable to the Patriots. The question was: how valuable? That’s the kind of question that a holdout is meant to uncover – by watching the management’s change in behavior as the clock ticks and the options narrow.
Read More

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