It’s a Lone Star State Showdown!

Password: new england clam chowder

That’s right kids, I am back from my weeklong backwoods retreat. I must admit it is quite liberating to get away from your cell phone and laptop for a few days. Life is much simpler when your biggest concerns are the weather on the horizon, avoiding jet skis in your kayak and identifying the right lure color or fly pattern.

Of course, it figures that I am gone when the national crisis also known as the Brett Favre situation is resolved. The Jets huh? Maybe the Jets figure the only way to beat New England and their AARP-card carrying defense is to have a quarterback that is even older.

At least in New York, Brett’s every move won’t be scrutinized by the press. We should put the over/under on the number of weeks into the season the New York Post makes some horrible pun about the Favre era being a disappointment on its back page. I set it at week 4 right now.

Oh and for all you idiots that set a single day record for buying Favre Jets jerseys on NFL.com? I have a Joe Namath - Rams jersey, O.J. Simpson – 49ers jersey, Tony Dorsett – Broncos jersey, Jerry Rice - Seahawks jersey, Joe Montana – Chiefs jersey, and Emmitt Smith – Cardinals jersey for you. All for the low-low price of $299 each.

Anyway, no reason to beat a dead Favre, that is old news. Last night we had our first live action of your Denver Broncos, in a riveting pre-season game against the Houston Texans (and our old friend head coach Gary Kubiak – or Koobs to some of us). So what did we learn? I’m glad you asked.

• While it is hard to learn much from the two short series by the offense there were a couple things that jumped out at me.
  • Where was the running game? Selvin Young’s 3 yards on 4 carries didn’t exactly inspire confidence that the Broncos running game has returned to its former glory.
  • As if by admission that they couldn’t run, there were a lot of short passes into the flats, especially to running backs out of the backfield. I’ve send this offense before. It is the ‘running game’ that FSU used to run. No, not the offense in those 14 straight years of top-five finishes. That would be the offense in those two straight years of 6 losses. Not that I am saying that is what could happen to the Broncos. There is little chance they have only 6 losses this year.
  • Now that the suspension has been handed down by the Commish it is interesting to see the Broncos make the conscious effort to not throw to Brandon Marshall. Young and Eddie Royal (promoted to starter with Darrell Jackson moving over to Marshall’s position) just jumped about 2 rounds in fantasy drafts this coming week.
• How about poor Matt Prater? Misses his first field goal attempt – a thirty yarder – causing roughly 437,896 Bronco fans mutter ‘I knew we never should’ve let Elam go’. Should we just nickname him Brian Griese right now? Ok, done.
• Speaking of former Bronco quarterbacks, I am reading Stefan Fatsis’s book ‘A Few Seconds of Panic’ right now. A fascinating look at the 2006 Broncos by a Wall Street Journal writer who spent training camp as a kicker with the team. Highly recommended reading, but I just read a chapter focusing on Jake Plummer (this was the year they had just drafted Cutler to replace Jake after he guided the team to the AFC Title game). It was nice to see that my long held feelings about Plummer (here and here) were validated. As were my feelings about Mark Kiszla, the second worst sports writer in Denver (congratulations Bernie Lincicome!).
• I haven’t spoken to Turner yet but I am sure he was thrilled with former Sooner Larry Birdine making a nice defensive play in the last minute. Unfortunately Gary Miller, probably the worst play-by-play announcer in all of pre-season football screwed up his number so his moment of glory was short lived.
• Not to toot my horn but – toot, toot – my two early picks for sleepers of camp played well (and even got mentioned by Woody Paige today, the best sportswriter in Denver). Anthony Alridge accounted for 40 yards of offense and another 23 on a kick-off return, flashing that 4.3 speed for the home folks. The only blip was a fumble, but if he can keep it from becoming a habit he should be ok. My boy Christian Morton accounted for six tackles and a sack in a secondary that was depleted with injuries and resting starters. Next week when he shuts down T.O. you will see (ok, that probably isn’t happening).
• My final note is a shout out to Wesley Woodyard, the leading tackler for the Broncos, a rookie out of Kentucky. Why are we still surprised by productive college players who don’t have the ‘right’ measurables looking good in the pros? Woodyard was the defensive leader on last year’s resurgent Wildcat team and recorded over 100 tackles in each of his final 3 seasons in college in the SEC (as we are told 453 times each fall, the best conference in college football).
• So why did he go undrafted? Apparently he is considered small (6’0”, 230 lbs) and a little slow (4.5 40-yard dash). Hmm, let’s pick a random former Bronco linebacker for comparison.
  • There was one player that was close to his size (6’0”, 240 lbs) and speed (4.56 40-yard dash coming out of college) and was the defensive leader for a strong SEC team (ironically that also beat FSU in a bowl game in the player’s senior year).
  • But why would we want another player to have a career like Al Wilson? He was a total bust – only a 5 time Pro-Bowler and the heart and soul of an AFC championship game team. Nah, why would anyone want that type of guy on their team.

A Random Walk Down Ball Street

Some random thoughts, observations and comments around the world of sports (and other stuff).

o       On a scale of 1 to 10 - how big of a geek am I that I used an unintentionally homoerotic parody of a book about the stock market for the title of this post? I put the over/under at 8.5.

o       Interesting week for the Broncos backfield. This week, All American dad (in the literal definition of him being the father of much of America) Travis Henry is cut, thanks to his not really being much interested in the whole working out thing, combined with an abundance of drugs and lack of prophylactics. If there is one area that Mike Shanahan is more comfortable with quantity over quality it is at running back. With the addition of Michael Pittman, Shanahan has plenty of opportunities to find his next thousand-yard, one-year wonder.

o       Last week, did you hear that Selvin Young wants to run for 2,000 yards this year? An admirable goal but is it realistic? Let’s take a look. As a rookie he had 729 yards on 140 carries. That’s an average of 5.2 yards per carry. At that rate he would need 385 carries to get 2,000 yards. That also assumes his average doesn’t go down as defenses learn his tendencies. Only once in the last decade has a Bronco running back had that many carries (the Great One’s 1998 campaign in which he did get 2,000 yards – he had 392 carries) and it was a much better runner with a much better line on a much better team (hence more carries to run clock with the game on ice). Hey Selvin, how about we concentrate on touchdowns instead. Now that Mr. Automatic is in the ATL, the Broncos need to get a little better about actually putting the ball in the endzone.

o       Anyone else notice that that the new character Wall-E from Disney is a blatant rip-off of #5 from Short Circuit? Not sure if this is intentional, but if I am Steve Guttenberg I am on the phone right now asking my agent why he wasn’t able to turn that Dancing With the Stars gig into a voice-over.

o       Speaking of Dancing With the Stars, I am a little depressed that one of the better football players in the world would rather be a reality show star. Sure, Jason Taylor is now the sweetheart of 50-year old housewives everywhere which is a marginal improvement over being the sweetheart of 50-year New York and Havana transplants infesting Dade County, but is that really worth sacrificing his dignity?

o       Well, it is a joyous day at the ABC and NBA offices, now that they have a dream NBA Finals match-up. Forget the boring old whiny Spurs and rough-house Pistons, we get Showtime versus the Boston Three Party. Kobe versus KG. Obnoxious northeasterners versus arrogant southern Californians. Thankfully having grown up in the 80’s I can look past the native supporters of these teams and reminisce about the good old days of Laker/Celtic match-ups. Maybe the teams aren’t quite as good top to bottom (how many Hall of Famers were on those 80’s teams), but at least they are wearing longer shorts.

o        This match-up is so special in fact, we might need to have a special offseason Hierarchy of Hate to figure out who to root for.

o       In college football news, we have the SEC considering an early signing period for their football recruits. Obviously, having been burned one too many times by a recruit re-neging on a verbal commitment the coaches are hoping to lock players in before they can change their minds. I’m not really with the coaches on this one. Given the female populations of most SEC schools, I can see some kid from a small town being overwhelmed on his official visit and committing on the spot before really taking his time to make the right decision (and see the female populations of other schools). I know it must be torture for these control freak coaches to be dependent on the whims of a 17-year old kid - left holding their breath for a month until that overblown day in February - but if the coaches can leave at a moment’s notice to take a better job (<cough> Saban <cough>), it is only fair that the players are given adequate time to make sure they pick the right school.

o       It is funny how things have changed. There used to not even be official off-season workouts in the NFL. Now it is big news that Brian Urlacher showed up to the mandatory workouts but skipped the voluntary workouts due to some unhappiness with his contract. As if he was sitting on some beach in Mexico rather than working out on his own making sure he is in top shape for the punishing season coming up. Oh wait sorry, that is Tony Romo before a playoff game.

o        Speaking of the Cowboys, they will be the team profiled on Hard Knocks this year, though for those of us who enjoyed their first turn on Hard Knocks during the Dave Campo era, it just won’t be the same without the musical stylings of Chad Hutchinson and Richmond Flowers.

o       It can’t be a good sign when your fantasy team closer is featured on the front page of his home town paper (the front page – not the sports section) under the caption ‘What is wrong with J.J. Putz?’

o       Moving on to hockey, I actually sat down and watched Overtime of game 5 of the Stanley Cup Finals. That is a 45 full minutes of hockey, which by my calculation makes me one of the twenty most ardent hockey fans south of the Canadian border.

o        I admit I pretty much gave up on hockey a few years ago when the combination of the lock-out, the TV contract moving to OLN and the Avalanche shedding most of the players I had followed combined within a two year period. But watching the Red Wings, it was amazing how little had changed about their game from when they and Avs annually fought for the Western title. The one thing that Detriot always had was great passing which to me is the most underrated aspect of the game. 

o        I’m clearly no hockey genius but it was pretty clear that the only way the Penguins were winning was on a powerplay or via some fluke.

o        It also dawned on me at some point that Game Five was the perfect storm for the NHL. If you want a true gauge of the NHL’s popularity, check the ratings for Game Five. This game was (1) played in prime-time against a slate of re-runs (2) featured a traditional American hockey power on the verge of winning the Cup (3) on a Network TV channel (4) timed against absolutely no other sporting events. Forget all of the excuses for hockey’s poor ratings. If a great game like this couldn’t bring fans, hockey is dead in this country.