Week 12

I held off on writing this week's football post until today (Tuesday) for the obvious reason of wanting to be able to include the Monday night game in my comments. I was hoping to be able to relate the fall of the Manning machine and the celebration around the country at the homes of the '72 Dolphins. More on this later.

First the Patriots.

A team can only come out playing flat uninspired football so many times before you have to start looking inwards at the coach. We are not at that point yet, probably only because Bill Belichick gets a pass from this community for just about everything, (and even more so on the week of his father's death) but the time is coming when the spotlight will shine on his failures this season as much as the failures of his formerly vaunted defesne.

I am not going to be the man standing on the mountain proclaiming the deficiencies of the Patriots coaching staff when they continue to lead the division, but the fact remains that the team was simply not ready to play in Kansas City on Sunday. You cannot coach talent, this is something we are all aware of after watching this season. You can however, have your team flying out of the gate looking as though they believe they can win, even if they cannot. The Patriots for whatever reason failed to even give the appearance of competition on Sunday and that is a frightening trend.

While I refuse to believe that Bill Belichick was underprepared for this contest it is possible that the people with whom he has surrounded himself, especially his coordinators, were not ready to put their players in a position to win. While the defense has looked lost all year this week they looked simply dead. Chiefs receivers were coming wide open across the middle of the field and while the pass rush was acceptable the same defensive line was completely unable to stop the run for the first 3 quarters of the game.

The highlight moment of this defense's recent struggles came with 4 minutes to play in the 4th quarter with the Patriots trailing by 10. The Chiefs had the ball on about their own 35 yard line and were facing a 3rd and 16 after two excellent stands by the Patriots defense. With a stop on this play the Tom Brady and the offense would have gotten the ball back with approximately 4 minutes to play needing 2 scores to tie. Instead the Chiefs easily picked up the first down with a completed pass over the middle to a WIDE open Eddie Kennison. It was a signature moment for an utterly ineffective defense. Conventional wisdom says that the Chiefs should not have even risked throwing the ball in that situation, but why would they not? The Patriots are so weak in the secondary that a pass in a late game situation is probably just as safe as a run and is almost surely more effective. In years past there is no chance that the Chiefs pick up that first down on 3rd and 16 and while in all likelihood the Patriots were not going to be able to come back to win anyway they did not even give themselves an opportunity. I think that's one of the main differences this year, this defense used to give the team a chance to win every week, now if they have a chance to win it is despite the defense.

Watching the game on Sunday you can tell that losing is starting to wear on the players who are not accustomed to struggling so mightily. Many of the regular starters (the half dozen or so who are left) have never suffered through a season like this in New England and you can see that some of the swagger and confidence has been taken out of the team as a result. There is very little of the traditional New England passion on this team right now, especially on the defense. In the recent past they would set the tone for the game with a big hit early or give the offense a chance to win with a crucial stand late. Now they are getting run over on the first possession of nearly every game and they are rolling over in the end.

The New England defesne was never statistically the best in terms of passing yardage allowed or rushing yardage allowed (regularly in the high teens) but they were always in the top 10 in points allowed. The bend but not break defense relies pretty heavily on the "don't break" part of that theory, this year they are snapping in half. The ability to lock down when it counts is gone and to win they now need 28 per game from the offense.

There is no debating that this game was an absolute disaster but has anything really changed? The Bills also lost on Sunday so the Pats' lead in the division is still 2 games with the lowly Jets coming to town this week. In reality they should finish 10-6 and could easily finish 11-5. Their remaining schedule has exactly 1 tough game on it and that is Tampa Bay at home. In franchise history the Bucs have won 1 game in temperatures under 40 degrees. At this time of year there are not too many games played in New England where the thermometer climbs over 40. Aside from that they have the 2-9 Jets twice, the Bills (in Buffalo which could be tough), and the Dolphins at home (another bad cold weather team).

I'm not asking anyone to climb on a bandwagon here, I'm just saying that although this game reeked of the Devener / San Diego debacles (fool me once shame on you, fool me twice...three times...) the position of this team is still the same. The 4 seed is in the bag and someone will have to come to Foxboro in January. We won't talk about the game after that...

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- Speaking of bandwagons... Colts 26 Steelers 7. Okay, so last week I said that admitting that the Colts might go undefeated was going to be the last nice thing I was going to say about them all year. Were I to break that promise I would have to point out that Indianapolis absolutely dominated the Steelers last night and looked unbeatable. If I were to continue to break my word I would then point out that the NFL Gods continue to shine upon them. Byron Leftwich's injury makes the Jaguars a non-issue for the Colts and after watching the lesser Manning beat the Seahawks on 3 different occasions (HA! I love to see him fail even if it isn't his fault LOVE IT) in Seattle I can't imagine that big brother is going to have any trouble doing so.

Sticking with the Monday night game, how if you are the Steelers can you spot the Colts 7 points on the first play of the game by not covering Marvin Harrison? You didn't think that the Colts were going to try to make a statement at the beginning and take the momentum? You didn't think that Manning could throw it that far or that he would look to Harrison first? What the hell happened? From that moment onward it was not a game. They took the Steelers hearts on that play and never gave them back.

I hope like hell that they lose a game (because if they don't they will unfairly be labeled as THE team of this era of the NFL which they are not - see the quote below) but I can't see how they will at this point. Of course 95% of my predictions turn out wrong so there is some hope.

"At this point, how can you NOT be rooting for the Colts to go 16-0?It would be the greatest single season achievement by any NFL team ever, and arguably by any team in sports." - ESPN's Dan Shanoff.

- Giants fans welcome to Red Sox nation. Just wanted to give you a little advice on what to do in situations like these. Back in our tortured days we would usually insert an expletive between the first and last name of the player who caused us the overwhelming misery we are are currently feeling. For example, Bucky "Bleeping" Dent, Aaron "Bleeping" Boone, Larry "Bleeping" Lucchino. You see? It's easy! Now you try, Jay "Bleeping" Feely... If this doesn't work for you there is always the Pittsburgh option, throw trash in his yard and torture his kids at school.

Sidenote: My best fantasy move of the year bar none was picking up Jeff Wilkins and playing him instead of Feely this week...more on my bad fantasy moves later.

- Note to Jeremy Shockey: Make sure the ball goes THROUGH the uprights before you start dancing, through...before... got it?

- This year's award for "Throwing an Innocent Guy Under the Bus 2 Months Early" goes to the Detroit Lions. I find it hard to blame Steve Mariucchi for this team's failures. You could give the Lions Chuck Knoll, Bill Belichick, Bill Parcells, and Tom Landry and that team wins exactly the same amount of games. The real reason? They suck like a Hoover. Dre Bly hit the nail on the head when he blamed "the quarterback" for the firing. Now if we could just figure out which quarterback he was talking about...

- An appeal to Ryan Fitzpatrick: Please, please, if you are half as smart as you must be to have graduated from Harvard, please retire today. You played one amazing, perfect game but this is the NFL, phonies are exposed quicker than Tara Reid's nipple and believe me my friend you will be exposed as an Ivy League quarterback. Ask Kurt Warner how quickly things can turn against you in St. Louis.

- I watched the entire Saints v. Jets game on Sunday night. I have called the NFL and demanded 3 hours of my life back. They have yet to respond. Watching two downtrodden teams try to give the game away to each other is soul crushing, I wept watching the post game handshakes. What were they saying to each other? Were Aaron Brooks and Brooks Bollinger discussing the irony of their names or is everyone involved too embarassed to even make eye contact after a game like that? "Hey nice game, good luck...you know...with umm well with ah..."

- The Vikings' record: 6-5, the Patriots record: 6-5. And lo' there was misery throughout the land. Brad Johnson 4-0? Further proof that Brad Johnson has more than one soul since he must have already sold one to win a Super Bowl in Tampa.

- On Sunday morning my fantasy football starting lineup contained Joe Jurevicious, by 4:00 PM Sunday afternoon it did not. I lost by 10. I made sure I got Brady into the lineup though...

- When Tim Dwight is not resigned by the Pats he will ebark on a wildly unsucccesful career as a juggler.

- The Rolling Stones will play the halftime show at the Super Bowl. The only thing better than the Stones playing the halftime show is NO HALFTIME SHOW AT ALL! At least we're pretty sure we won't see any nipple (oh God did I really just make that joke?) unless one of them goes into cardiac arrest on stage and has to be defibrulated.

- The NFL notified the Seahawks that two of the Giants' touchdowns in their overtime win on Sunday should not have counted. Do you think the response to that call would have been slightly different had Jay Feely made 1 of his 3 kicks to win the game?

"Hi Mr. Holmgren, this is Joe Whipping Boy from the NFL officals office, we just wanted to let you know that you were right about Jeremy Shockey and Amani Toomer's touchdowns, they shouldn't have counted... So ah, I guess you should have been up by 2 touchdowns and had 2 more timeouts... and you ah probably would have won pretty easily...just FYI."

"Growl..."

"So to make it up to you guys we're going to give you the 9 home games and next year like we gave the Giants and you get to play the 49ers 3 times... Please don't kill me..."

- What is going on with the Mets? Is Steinbrenner running their organization through the pseudonym Omar Minaya? Wagner, Delgado, and maybe Manny Ramirez? Wow, now they're really going to be the best team to ever finish 8 games out of the Wild Card.

Sidenote: Since when do closers get 10 million per year for 4 years? Isn't this kind of like putting it all on black? So risky, not as risky as trotting Keith Foulke out of the bullpen, but risky nonetheless.

- It's all over for Pete Rose, he was left off the ballot in his final year of eligibility. Get used to that idea Raphy.

- Now for my traditional early week appeal to the Red Sox: DON'T UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES TRADE MANNY RAMIREZ!