Bracket?

Bracket? The word itself has been responsible for many decisions throughout my life. Usually where to eat or who I'd play in the first round of the foosball tourney. You know, life and death shit. Seriously though, I've definitely used a bracket to determine where I was going to go eat and where to go/what to do for an evening. So you would think that I'd be loving it at this time of the year considering they say "bracket" every five words on ESPN right now. But it's started to oversaturate my mind. It's not as bad as the two week build up to the Super Bowl or the debacle that is the BCS but it's bad.

Some random March Madness thoughts:

-I do not want to hear about your "unbeatable system" you use to select your bracket. This tournament is the living proof that shit happens. Pick most of the top seeds to win and flip a coin for the rest. How's that for a system? If I won't listen to the ESPN guys why am I gonna listen to some guy at the bar?

-Please make the regions make sense. Is there a home-court edge to the higher seeds or not? Is it really fair to make a team like Temple go from Philly to Denver for the first round? Make the trips as convenient as possible for the teams or make every team travel. These are supposed to be neutral court games and all teams should be equally fatigued and jet-lagged in the name of fairness.

-Please make some Final Four tickets available to the actual public. Less than 10% of the available tickets were made available for purchase by the public. And it's not like thousands of tickets are going to the students of the schools involved. This is worse than trying to get Super Bowl tickets.

-Keep the officiating teams intact. I don't know why some sports do this. Good teams are generally better than groups of all-stars who are not familiar with one another. For proof just look at Team USA Basketball since 2000.

-I don't like the play-in game. I wish there was some way to play the NIT first and give the NIT winner the 64th bid. I know it's not very practical but it would create the ultimate Cinderella storyline.

-Allow drinking at the tournament games. I went to the first round in Buffalo and half of the people with tickets were at the bars around the corner from the stadium. This is college correct?

-Televise all of the first round games. CBS has a good start on this, they are making all of the first round games available via the Internet.

-Start the championship game earlier. It starts after 9 PM ET. I'm OK with staying up later but it's kind of impractical. Even 8 PM ET would be a large improvement.

-Ban the word "Cinderella" from use during the month of march. Perhaps the only word more overused in the English language is the word "sale" during December.

-Let one pool reporter in the room with the selection committee. This isn't a fraternity initiation. Unless they're hiding something in that room. Or they just think they're that far above everybody else.

-No announcer is allowed to orally pleasure Duke or UNC on the air. C'mon, it's not like we're naming names here.

Tune in next time for our bracket picks. C'mon do it. We'll name names and everything.

Whurly.

Brett Favre will finally miss a start

The response to the retirement of Brett Favre has been all over the place. You've got your usual haters (Dr Z) and lovers (John Madden) and all of your Joe Sixpacks in between. I for one have a great deal of respect for Favre and what he has done for the game of football and he Green Bay Packers as a franchise. He is one of the greatest quarterbacks ever to play the game. He'll never quite get into my top five because he also holds the career INT record and lost two crucial playoff games (Eagles & Giants) with horrendous interceptions. That has to count for something. He made so many great plays that we want to ignore some of the horrible plays. But I'm willing to overlook some of that because he hasn't missed a start in 16 years as the Green Bay starting QB. Anyway, I'm done hatin.

But Brett Favre hasn't retired yet. When he files his retirement papers and has a press conference to announce his retirement I'll believe it. But until then I just don't buy it. It's almost as if Brett is just trying to make a point. I'm not sure what that point is but he must have one. This whole situation just strikes me as a knee-jerk reaction by Favre. Something happened to spook him. Now consider these comments made by his agent. He just doesn't seem like he's really ready to hang up his cleats.

For the record I would like Favre to come back for 1 more season. He's done enough for the game to deserve to have his final season appreciated as such during the season as opposed to just looking back on it. I guarantee you he gets a standing O in every opposing stadium he plays in. If he were to "unretire" and lead the Packers to a Super Bowl victory this season he would cement himself as a top-5 QB in history and really throw his hat in the argument for the best QB ever.

Favre Retires



Brett Favre to Greg Jennings saves my Fantasy Football season

The Saga Continues

Poor Donovan McNabb

I guess we'll start with a rundown of the situation. Click HERE for Pro Football Talk's article. Then check out HERE and HERE for Garry Cobb's (gcobb.com) articles about his crazy weekend and the Eagles pursuit of Randy Moss.

The Eagles made a major move for Randy Moss and failed. The only other time I can remember (in the Andy Reid era) that the Eagles failed to acquire a player they targeted was when they tried to pry KGB away from the Packers as a restricted free agent. This means that the Eagles have realized that they need the genuine article at WR if they really want to win a Lombardi Trophy next February.

But their options are now slim and none. They consist of: Larry Fitzgerald (possible, but very unlikely) Roy Williams (supposedly not available) Javon Walker (Already 29 with a bum knee) Chad Johnson (Andy Reid won't go that far) and DJ Hackett (he's not a #1 WR but he's the best of what's left).

So what do the Eagles do? Stay tuned because the blood's in the water now. The Eagles have acknowledged their most glaring weakness and there's no way the fans and the media will let up now. If the Eagles go into the season starting Kevin Curtis and Reggie Brown again their will be a riot in Philly. Make that riots, you know, plural.

Yeah I know that Brett Favre just retired and Randy Moss may have had something to do with that but if I put that all in one post I'd actually have to come up with more material today.

Poor Donovan

What did Donovan McNabb do to deserve this? He's been shitted on since he was booed when he was selected by Philly over Ricky Williams in the NFL Draft. Now who would you rather have? Ricky would be fun if you wanted to smoke spliffs and meditate but if you actually wanted to win football games you take McNabb. In the 1999 draft 5 QB's were selected with the top 12 picks. Tim Couch (1st) Donovan McNabb (2nd) Akili Smith (3rd) Daunte Culpepper (11th) and Cade McNown (12th). That Donovan McNabb selected looks pretty good now, correct?

McNabb is a very good QB. He owns a career QB Rating of 85.8. He has thrown 171 touchdowns compared to 79 interceptions. (All regular season stats) His career touchdown-to-interception ratio is 2.16 which is very good. But there are some interesting story lines within these stats.

We're going to remove a small sample from his career statistics. Let's say about 21 games. All are regular season games starting with the first game of the 2004 NFL season.

21 Games
467-754 (61.9%) 5873 yards, 45 TD's, 15 INT's

That's 279.6 yards, 2.1 TD's and .7 INT's per game

Career (including these 21 games, not including playoffs)
2189-3732 (58.7%) 25404 yards, 171 TD's, 79 INT's in 118 games

That's 215.3 yards, 1.4 TD's and .7 INT's per game

Career (not including these 21 games)
1722-2978 (57.8%) 19531 yards, 126 TD's, 64 INT's in 97 games

That's 201.3 yards, 1.3 TD's and .7 INT's per game

Have you figured out which 21 games these are yet? It should be obvious.

Within that 21 game sample Donovan McNabb was, without a doubt one of the top 5 QB's in the league. He wasn't even totally healthy (sports hernia) for 7 of the 21 games in the sample. Although a sample size of 21 games out of 118 is less 18% of the total those 21 games actually have a very positive effect on McNabb's career numbers.

It should be pretty obvious that those 21 games are the 21 regular season games that Donovan McNabb played with one Terrell Owens. We all no that T.O. is a beast and all that but McNabb was just so much better with him. Even when T.O. got hurt at the end of the 2004 regular season McNabb carried the Eagles to the Super Bowl without missing a beat. Kid had his swagger ya know? That's really what's missing for Donovan right now.

Sure David Tyree made an incredible catch in the Super Bowl. But are the Giants even in the playoffs without Plaxico Burress? Not a chance. They never would've beaten Green Bay without Burress. Who actually caught the game winning TD in the Super Bowl? Burress. We all know Tom Brady is good right? What happened when he was given a genuine #1 WR? He shattered records and led the Patriots to an undefeated season. The Colts have taken 3 WR's in the first round of the draft for Peyton Manning to play with. The Bengals run 3 deep at WR as good as any team in the league and Carson Palmer loves it.

Get the picture? The top QB's are good, no doubt, but they have help. I don't know why Andy Reid is so against a legitimate stud WR but it's killing Donovan. I can't believe that he doesn't go public with demands for some kind of WR. I know that he doesn't want to diss the guys he has now but let's be real about the situation. Reggie Brown could be an excellent #2 WR and Kevin Curtis would be one of the best #3/slot WR's in the league. But they are miscast as #1 & #2 WR's. The Eagles just don't have a weapon that scares anybody outside of Brian Westbrook.

Yeah defense wins championships but don't you think part of Donovan was steaming inside when the Eagles gave Asante Samuel $60 million? I mean what would Randy Moss cost? Probably something slightly above T.O.'s deal so lets say 3 years $36 million with about a $12 million signing bonus and $5 million roster bonus paid out at the beginning of every season. Wouldn't that leave plenty of money to go get a corner and a pass-rusher? The upcoming draft is as deep at the CB position as any in recent memory. How do you think the Pats plan to replace Samuel?

To make a long story short:

Dear Andy,

Please get Donovan a real honest-to-God Pro Bowl WR. You might even get to the Super Bowl and look like a genius.

Until that day, poor Donovan.

Tony Soprano

I've definitely been going through Sopranos withdrawal. This guy does the best Tony Soprano I've ever heard. It's Sunday so here it is.

Randy

Is Randy Moss the new Carmen Sandiego?

Maybe this should be called 'The Legend of Randy Moss' because it's not a given that he exists anymore. Let's be clear about one thing. The Patriots, rarely, if ever, fuck up. They almost always do great with their free agent signings and draft picks. Almost never to they give up a player who goes on to have great success elsewhere. Their system enhances the players in it. But if they lose Randy Moss, they fucked up. Big time. Franchise history changing fucked up. He wasn't their best player but he probably was their second best. He and Tom Brady need each other.

The Patriots always cover their asses.The word is that they didn't hit Moss with the franchise tag because they didn't want to piss him off. When have the Patriots ever worried about pissing anybody off? Deion Branch got the tag and he was pissed. As was Tom Brady who lobbied for the Patriots to pay Branch. Didn't happen. Asante Samuel said he'd hold out if hit with the tag. Guess what happened? The moral of the story is the the Patriots do what's good for the Patriots. So I'll bet there is some underlying reason that they didn't tag Moss. I figured they had a deal worked out. Something that paid him about $1 million more than T.O. gets. But that isn't the Patriot way. They expect their players to work with them a bit on contract numbers. It's part of the New England package. Best guess says that Moss isn't willing to give them a discount and the Patriots aren't ready to pay top dollar. This could get ugly. So let's examine where I think Moss could land.

NEW ENGLAND - I'm pretty sure that both parties will wake up and make a deal. They can't really afford not to. Who can the Patriots replace Moss with? If the Patriots lose mos they might be forced to make an effort to trade for a Chad Johnson or someone of his ilk.

DALLAS - Because Jerry Jones is an asshole. But he's not afraid to spend big and/or make a big splash. T.O. has never shown the ability to humble himself to be a second option at times so I'm not sure how this would work. Jones swings for the fences though so there's a chance. The Cowboys do have a good enough team and QB situation to appease Moss.

DENVER - They could use Moss couldn't they? They could probably pony up the money. But could Moss be convinced that Jay Cutler is good enough for him. A couple of early season losses could destroy this experiment shortly after it begins.

CHICAGO - I don't think Moss would go and catch balls from Rex Grossman but the Bears sure do need Moss. Their current #1 WR is Devin Hester. In an ideal world for Chicago they trade for McNabb and use that momentum to sign Moss but I am a realist and that just ain't gonna happen.

NEW YORK JETS - I don't think Moss would go for this situation but couldn't you just see Mangini trying to pull this off just to stick it to the Pats once again?

WASHINGTON - Daniel Snyder has money. Randy Moss likes money. I doubt that the Redskins are any good next year but Moss would be the big splash the Skins love so much.

PHILADELPHIA - I can't believe that Andy Reid would do it. But they have the money, the QB, the winning tradition this decade and they're ready to win now. Moss would go for it I think. McNabb would make Chunky Soup in his pants if they pulled it off. Moss would instantly become the Savior of Philadelphia, just like T.O. but, wake up. Andy Reid won't walk down this road again.

GREEN BAY - They pretty much have the same situation as Philly but they're in the middle of nowhere geographically and they're pretty deep at WR already. But Moss would instantly make them that much tougher and Favre might stick around into his forties.

TAMPA BAY - They have the cap room and Gruden. But would Moss go for catching balls from Jeff Garcia? For the right price he probably could live with it.

CAROLINA - Again they have QB questions. But Moss and Steve Smith would fit better than Moss and T.O. on several levels.

NEW YORK GIANTS - Why not?

Look for this to get settled in the next 48 hours. There is no way that Moss sits on the market for much longer. Something has to give? I don't think we'll see or hear from Moss until a deal is done. Until then.....

Where in the world is Randy Moss?