09:48 AM
11/05/24
11/05/24
December 09, 2002
NFL WEEK 14
It's playoff crunch time, and you either "win or go home".
Can the Patriots repeat last year's success? Michael Vick ain't Superman. Yet (proving once again that players need to shut the hell up the week before a big one). Philly's D gets prep to feast on the woeful Wuerffel-led Redskins. The Raiders flip the bird to the young'ns. The Titans surge back, while the Chiefs put the nail in the Rams hype coffin.
NEW POWERHOUSE: Houston Texans?
The rest of us sigh in pain as our teams once again play for draft picks.
Thoughts while sitting in front of football with my laptop on sunday(now if only we had Wi-Fi!) For all of those people who said around week 5 that the Bledsoe trade was a bad idea: Baloney! It was too early to tell. Bledsoe is an amazing athlete, but Brady gets it done. True, Drew doesn't have the same supporting cast or coaching. But he makes bad decisions, too. He doesn't have that intangible winner thing. Maybe he's kind of like Marino in that way: great guy, great athlete, great mechanics, can't win it. Some of that is circumstantial. But there are some guys who get it done - the Joe Montanas of the world. He wasn't the most gifted athlete ever. But he could win with the best of them. The Conventional Wisdom is that you shouldn't lose your starting position to injury. I don't think that's right. I think you go with the guy who is performing right now. I think Bill Belichek made the right call last year sticking with Brady (is this a theme?). Most overused phrase in football: guts. This stuff doesn't matter enough for it to be guts. If it does, there's a big lack of perspective. (Of course that begs the question: why do I give it so much time? Is it enough that it's fun?) Terrell Owens is one of the most amazing athletes playing football today. Every catch and run is a potential touchdown. His catch in the second half was totally singular. He's tougher and plays harder than Moss. But he's a punk, so I don't pull for him. I'd pull for effective, decent competitors, guys with class: Cris Carter, Jeff Garcia, Tom Brady, Emmitt Smith, Priest Holmes, and the like. The way to win in the NFL is to put together a solid offensive line as the core for reasonable money. If you hae that, you don't need world-beater backs and recievers. You want a good kicker, too. After that you can get good guys on defense without paying too much. You can get effective backs and recievers. But if you gamble and spend too much money on big free agent 'stars', your O-line will probably suck, and then your stars will get killed. New England has built a good budget team that way without having to go through salary cap hell. Sheesh, I'm talking myself into being a New England fan. Dallas has some young players like Woody Danzler and Roy Williams that they can build on. But they're O-line is terrible now. I'm also becoming a Philadelphia fan. They just keep winning, with whatever QB they stick in there.