FMTMQR: You Can't Be Fucking Serious

(For anyone new who is confused by the above acronym: if Gregg Easterbrook, aka the Tuesday Morning Quarterback, writes something stupid in his column (Ha! If!), I usually complain about it the next day in what I call the Wednesday Morning Tuesday Morning Quarterback Review. If you can't figure out why this one is titled FMTMQR instead of WMTMQR, please navigate away from this site. Go to Google and search for "GED programs.")

Let's just get right to the action; it'll be brief, because I want to watch the Djokovic/Federer match. What? Tennis is for sissies, you say? Well, that may be true. But at least I'm not pulling a total nerd move like you and reading a blog. Go practice kissing the robot you built some more. Nerd.

Norv Turner's decision to punt in New England territory in the fourth quarter when trailing by two scores might go down as the single worst coaching decision of all time. Let us count the ways in which the decision was ludicrous. First, the Patriots have the best offense in football history, so the odds of getting the ball back quickly without New England scoring were very low. Second, you need a touchdown and a field goal and are in field goal range. Why aren't you at least attempting a field goal? Sure a long field goal try might not work, but punting is guaranteed not to work!

OK. I'll buy that. That punt was a bad decision (more on it later), and since the Chargers were down 9 points, a field goal would have drawn them within one score. That's fair analysis.

But then... IN THE VERY NEXT PANDAFUCKING PARAGRAPH:

Giants coaches, please note -- two straight playoff games have featured opponents playing the Patriots close through three quarters, then folding in the fourth quarter after going passive. (Trailing New England by 11 points late in the divisionals, Jacksonville passively kicked a field goal on fourth-and-goal.)

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

If you are not wholly and completely insulted by those two paragraphs when read together, I don't know what to tell you. I don't care where the Jaguars were on the field. THEY KICKED THE FIELD GOAL TO GET WITHIN ONE SCORE. YOU JUST CRITICIZED THE CHARGERS FOR NOT DOING THE EXACT SAME THING. Fucking.... fuck. No. This is not happening.

Stat of the Week No. 10: Three days after appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated, Favre threw a killer overtime interception that cost the Packers the NFC Championship Game at home.

If he's referring to the always talked-about cover jinx, I guess I can't blame a guy who bases most of his analysis on "the football Gods" for also believing said jinx. Still, this isn't even a stat. It's a description of a play. That happened in a game. And is not "cleverly noteworthy" in any way, like the rest of the stats of the week are intended to be. So Favre threw a horrible interception. And? Why not just make the stats of the week a rundown of the most significant plays of the week? I vote yes. Everyone else who votes yes, raise your hand. OK, now raise your hand if you just don't give a shit. OK, put them down, I get it.

By sending in the punt team, Turner quit on the game. At that point, he no longer was trying to win -- rather, he appeared to be attempting to hold down the margin of defeat so people would hire him to do banquet-circuit speeches in the offseason and introduce him as a coach who gave the Patriots a good game.

Allegedly, this is the exact same thing Jack Del Rio of Jacksonville did two weekends ago. Actually, it is completely false, fabricated, made up, and many other things that synonymous with those words. I'll concede that coaches might do stuff like this during meaningless regular season games. But you're really telling me that in the playoffs, with all of the following on the line: a Super Bowl trip... a shot at eternal glory... a shot at extra eternal glory for knocking off a 17-0 team... a shot at a ring bigger than your head... a shot at silencing all the critics that continuously mock you for being a shitty coach and looking totally confused most of the time... all the hookers and cocaine you can buy (should you win the SB and decide to spend your bonus that way, hey, whatever, I mean it's your bonus, spend it however you want, if you just want to buy a house or something, that's fine too)... with all of that, a coach is going to stop trying to win? No, no, no, no, and no.

OK, sorry, that's all I've got for now. I'm off to pansyland to dance in a field full of lollipops and watch some tennis!