FMTMQR: Watch out for post-Thanksgiving Christmas Creep!

Oh, the football gods would so chortle at some of the shit in this week's TMQ column if they existed.

In other NFL news, Forget the Titans! Three weeks ago, Tennessee was 5-3 with a 13-5 streak stretching back to last season. Now, the Flaming Thumbtacks have lost three straight; they're playing a befuddled third-string quarterback;

Right, Kerry Collins and Vince Young are both hurt. I know what you're thinking: this is Randy Moss's fault.

coach Jeff Fisher and star Vince Young are openly arguing;

Gotta be Moss!

corner Cortland Finnegan looks like a horse's behind;

Probably from spending too much time around Moss.

and, on Sunday, the Titans were shut out by the league's 31st-ranked defense.

Prime suspect: one of the league's top 20ish WRs.

This can't possibly have anything to do with the arrival of Randy Moss, can it?

UM HELLO EXACTLY.

On Sunday, Moss didn't bother to chase a deep pass that might have been a touchdown.

Every deep pass "might have been a touchdown." Every WR in the league gives up on them from time to time, because they can tell from having chased thousands of passes during their lifetimes that they won't be able to catch this one. I didn't see the one he's talking about, of course. It's possible that Moss was being a bum and gave up on a catchable ball. But I'm pretty comfortable guessing Gregg is being a doofus as usual and blaming Moss for nothing.

In the games in which Moss started for them, the Patriots, Vikings and Titans are a combined 4-7.

No elite receiver can ever be on a sub-.500 team. It's unpossible. I said it in the comments last week: Broncos fans should just be happy their team's biggest offseason move involved trading away that selfish diva Brandon Marshall. Look where it's gotten them, and look where the Dolphins are! Those suckers.

Also- remember that time Moss was an integral part of a team that scored like 60 points a game and was 3 minutes away from finishing 19-0? Career loser that guy.

Fisher said a month ago, when Tennessee was 5-3, "there is absolutely no risk" in bringing Moss aboard. Tennessee is now 5-6, and it's time to forget the Titans.

Because they have an overrated defense and no QB. Not because they took a flier on a super talented WR who hasn't been able to drag them through their own shitstorm to any wins.

Christmas Creep Veers Into the Absurd:

This is probably my favorite creep segment ever. Read on and be ready to lol.

Since childhood, TMQ has loved the stop-motion animation special "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer," which was first broadcast in 1964. One of the things that first brought my future wife and I together was the discovery that, though we had super-serious careers, we both loved this delightfully cheesy show.

Thanks for the wife story, Simmons.

When our kids were little, they watched "Rudolph" on VCR over and over again in December, memorizing most of the lines. When my youngest was perhaps 8,

Tl;dr. Don't care about your family. Get to the damn point.

It brought a tear to my eye to learn, two months ago, that Billie Mae Richards, the actress who voiced Rudolph, died at age 88 in Canada.

Is there anything less tragic than a voice actor who probably made millions in royalties from her work living to the age of 88?

On Tuesday night, CBS takes Christmas Creep into absurdity

Note the word choice- what follows is patently ABSURD.

by airing "Rudolph" in November!

Oh my. OH MY. GET THE NATIONAL GUARD ON THE PHONE- A FAMOUS AND POPULAR CHRISTMAS TV SPECIAL AIRED 26 DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS. There's no way that's true, it's just too absurd. Maybe TV Guide misprinted it.

That's no misprint:

GAH

The 2010 broadcast of the show happens on Nov. 30.

Gregg, you are a sad, sad, sad man with an astonishingly strange complaint agenda. You make Larry David sound well-balanced and rational. HAS ANYONE EVER NOTICED THAT THE MACY'S THANKSGIVING DAY PARADE HAS ALL KINDS OF CHRISTMAS-THEMED STUFF IN IT, BUT IT AIRS ON THANKSGIVING? STOP THE MADNESS AMERICA

Will "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" air next September?

Probably not, since no one really cares about Halloween until mid October. As opposed to Christmas, which they care about in late November. Which is the point of him complaining about "creep," I suppose, except that it's perfectly rational to get excited about Christmas a month in advance. It's the biggest or second biggest family holiday of the year for most of America, and what the fuck else are you going to be excited about during December? January and February are the worst months of the year because it's cold and shitty outside and there's nothing to look forward to except spring.

My family will not watch on Tuesday; we will DVR the show and watch it next week,

You rebels! Do the advertisers know about this? You'd think they'd put a stop to this DVR nonsense.

fast-forwarding through the commercials.

Commie!

Rudolph lovers: Tape the show, save it 'til December and fast-forward through the commercials!

Make a completely inconsequential statement!

Make CBS pay for this absurdity!

Best line Easterbrook has ever written, ever.

Now Jax, trailing 24-20, has first-and-10 on the home team 29 just inside the two-minute warning. The Giants run a choreographed blitz on which Osi Umenyiora, the right end, sprints straight up the field and allows the Jacksonville left tackle to drive him behind Jax quarterback David Garrard -- an action that opens a lane for safety Antrel Rolle to come through unblocked for the sack.

Wait- on a blitz? No fucking way. The correct defense for all downs and distances is to play base coverage and rush four.

Normally, a left tackle who drives the right end behind the quarterback has won the down; in this case, Umenyiora was cooperating to leave a lane for Rolle. Garrard was sacked on each of the next two snaps, closing out the contest. So blitzes themselves aren't bad -- but there's smart blitzing and dumb blitzing.

He's learning, people. He's learning. Now we just have to make him understand that it's OK to punt and kick field goals sometimes. Teams have even won the Super Bowl using those ultra-conservative tactics!

Stop Me Before I Blitz Again! No. 2: With Oakland leading 14-10 late in the first half, the South Florida Dolphins faced third-and-10, beyond field goal range. The Raiders blitzed seven, and an easy completion to the Oakland 20 set up a field goal, helping spark the visitors' comeback win. Why mega-blitz when the opponent isn't in field goal range? Just play coverages and get an incompletion.

Just like that. As if it's equivalent to going to the grocery store and buying a gallon of milk, or picking up your remote control and turning the TV on. Just play coverage, and make sure that one of the (ostensibly) 32 best QBs in the world doesn't pick up 10 yards.

The Minnesota win came against the NFL's worst defense. Still, the Vikings looked more like a team, and less like a jeans promotion organization, than so far this season.

Gregg seems to struggle with the idea that just because they employ Favre as their QB, they don't necessarily spend their time on the field during games promoting all the products he promotes.

Comic-Book Characters, Having Ruined Hollywood, Are Now About to Ruin Broadway: The Spider-Man musical, complete with music by U2, began previews Sunday. Eight years and $65 million in the making, it sounds like the dumbest idea ever for a Broadway show

Here the one time this week when TMQ and I are on the exact same page. That does sound like just about the worst idea ever.

In the latest X-Men movie, about Wolverine, Logan became immortal -- If he's immortal, why is he scared of flying?

Come on, Hollywood writers. YOU'RE DROPPING THE REALISM BALL.

and acquired Superman-class strength, plus the ability to jump tremendous distances. In that movie, Wade Wilson and Agent Zero, who were normal people in the comics, become superpowered mutants. Dozens of men fire machine guns at Wilson at close range, and he uses his mutant super senses to locate the bullets and deflect them away with his fancy swords. Bullets move at 1,500 to 2,000 mph, so Wilson's arms would need to move at several thousand mph to reposition the swords fast enough to deflect every shot. That's flexing your biceps pretty fast. You'd think his skin would melt, and there should be constant sonic booms caused by his arms and the swords.

There are... no words to describe this man's idiocy.