Troll extraordinaire Skip Bayless gets some work done

Time is short this week so I can't do a full writeup of this tonight, but hoo doggy, is this one that Skip's  parents are going to want to stick to their fridge with a magnet.  This is him at the very tip top of his game.

The astonishingly missed point:

I'VE BEEN EXTREMELY OBJECTIVE ABOUT TIM TEBOW.

Classic USE OF ALL CAPS to try to PUT THE AUDIENCE ON THE DEFENSIVE and hope they don't notice your BALDFACED LIE.

It almost felt as if Elway/Fox were sabotaging Tebow, who after games kept turning back into Bruce Banner, the Hulk turned humble human, smiling and saying, heck, he just runs the plays called. Elway perhaps was hoping to lose his way into the No. 1 pick so he could draft fellow Stanford man Andrew Luck. Instead, Tebow's Broncos wound up playing a home playoff game.

Classic Tebow trolling: equating Denver's staff's reluctance to think of a guy who can't throw as a good long term QB option with them hoping Tebow would fail.  I hear they used to hire goons to club him in the knees outside the team training complex a la Tonya Harding!

What did shock me was that, the more Tebow won, the harder a gauntlet of ESPN opponents came at me, sometimes two or three at a time dismissing Tebow's 8-5 run as a nice little fluke. Twice during Tebow's starts I was pressed on air to predict Denver's final record. My cumulative prediction was 7-4, which prompted on-air guffaws. Tebow's regular-season record wound up 7-4. Yet no one would give me an inch of credit for the greatest prediction of my career. I was dismissed as lucky or crazy or both.

Some truly inspiring "I DESERVE MORE CREDIT!" whining, combined with Tebow trolling, combined with throwing your coworkers under a bus.

Our golden rule of barbershop debate -- no punches pulled, none thrown -- 

What?

was sometimes pushed to its limit. Yet in the heat of those on-air battles, I began to see deep inside my opponents. 

More trash talking of coworkers.

I hit subliminal hot buttons that were making Tim Tebow the biggest lightning rod in sports, more loved and hated than even LeBron James was at that point.

And this is why I love Skip--you thought you were reading a column about how no one gives Skip enough credit for being right about Tebow?  WRONG, YOU ARE ALSO NOW READING ABOUT LEBRON.  If you give him enough time he'll rope in Tiger Woods somehow.

(And wasn't it curious that LeBron, then infamous for his fourth-quarter failures, reached out to Tebow on Twitter, befriended him, even visited Tebow and stayed at his house in Denver, perhaps hoping some of Tebow's late-game intangibles would rub off.)

Curious?  No.  Relevant to this article?  No.  A way for skip to generate more angry comments and emails?  YOU BET.

My opponents began to make jokes about Tebow's Christianity, which outraged me on air. I'm a Christian, though (maybe to a fault) not as in-your-face as Tebow. 

I don't think any Christian could possibly be faulted for being less in-your-face about his or her religion than Tebow.  But watch Skip consider climbing up on his cross and trying it anyways.

I prefer actions to words. Yet I defended Tebow by saying, "He's simply doing what Jesus instructed his disciples to do in the New Testament -- be fishers of men."

Listen, all you people who hate how outwardly expressive Tebow is about his religion: have you ever considered reading the Bible?

Take it from the Lone Objective Tebow Defender: Never bet against him.

Skip fucking rules.  

Knowing me I won't post again until Sunday, so here are three posts in one, I hope all eight of you out there are happy

First of all: thanks, Chris Berman (and pretty much every other NFL announcer this weekend), but I truly could not give any less of a hairy, sputtering shit what these replacement refs do for a living when they're not refereeing.  I don't care if any of them are teachers, I don't care if any of them are in sales, I don't care if any of them are cocksucking nuclear physicists.  I flat out don't, and I think I'm probably in the majority.  1) Like I already said, NO ONE GIVES A SHIT, IT'S JUST NOT INTERESTING OR RELEVANT IN THE LEAST.  2) The regular unionized refs have other full time jobs, too, and there's a good reason we don't have to hear about those jobs twenty times a game (see #1).

Second of all: there are Bill Simmons fans out there.  Tens of thousands of them.  If you know one, link them to this (they'll already have read it, and possibly already linked YOU to it, but I'm presenting a "just in case" scenario).  Once you know they've read it, as calmly as you can (suggestion: assuming you do the asking via GChat or email, don't use all caps), ask them how they sleep at night.  That article is supposed to be about last Wednesday's Giants/Cowboys season opener.  It is 1261 words long.  The first 647 are a story about his dog.  There is no sports context, not even a hint of one.  Just a drawn out, snooze-inducing story about his dog pooping in his house that can be best summarized as GUH HURRR DOGS ARE A REAL HANDFUL DERP DERP DERP.  So that's just over 50% of the article, toast.  Then we get the following:

What does this have to do with tonight's Giants-Cowboys game? 

GODDAMN NOTHING. You just wanted to tell a story about your dog because you're a navel-gazing self-obsessed cuntswabber.

There's an exceedingly good chance that Jerry Jones, as an NFL owner, has turned into a post-ribs Rufus. Year after year, he ruins at least one rug as Cowboys fans shrug their shoulders and say the football equivalent of things like, "Well, we're stuck with him, it's not like we can just drop him off at the pound and start over, right?"

Your dog pooped on a rug.  Jerry Jones, like every owner in the history of modern professional sports, occasionally makes a dumb move.  I get that Jones is more hands on that pretty much any other owner, so it's easier to pin the Cowboys' failures on him than it is to blame the failures of the average team on that team's owner, but this is still incredibly pathetic.

The Cowboys do everything in the flashiest way possible, obscuring their staggering lack of success in recent years. 

Their lack of recent success is not obscured in any way.  EVERYONE knows they've only won one playoff game since their last Super Bowl victory and have had some very shitty seasons.  Everyone.  Only someone completely out of touch with the NFL would think the "the Cowboys actually haven't been that good for the last 15 years!" is some kind of insightful angle.

When a franchise worries about the perception of what it's doing instead of what it's actually doing, trouble usually ensues. We just watched this happen to the Red Sox. 

Oh good, finally, some Red Sox analysis!  That's what the readers came for!

When a franchise underestimates its fans and assumes they're not smart enough to value things like patience and planning, and that it needs to keep them interested with splashy moves the same way a parent would hand a screaming kid an ice cream cone, trouble usually ensues. Again, we just watched this happen to the Red Sox. 

/wanking motion

Which makes me think the Cowboys will be our next big-market flame-out. 

They already have flamed out, dumbass.  They're one of the biggest failures in the league since 1996 if you measure dollars per win or dollars per postseason win.  You pointed it out yourself like 150 words ago.  

Just ask Knicks fans and Redskins fans. When your fans fully expect you to crap on the carpet before it even happens, that's officially the point of no return. 

That sentence is meaningless.  It carries no meaning, it adds nothing to anything.  It is a waste of time, pixels, bandwidth, and anything else of which it could possibly be a waste.

Anyway, I'm laying 3.5 points with the Giants over Dallas tonight. 

Of course the Cowboys handled the Giants and cruised to victory.

Finally of all: managers don't do that much.  They just don't.  But some of them are media darlings, and that means that when those managers' teams succeed, the media is going to trip all over itself to find a way to give those managers as much credit as possible for success that is 95% due to the actions of players.  Here, some doofus gives Buck Showalter big time props for doing stuff that holy sweet Jesus, I certainly hope every single manager in the league does.  (This article contains another article.  Stay with me now, don't get confused.  INCEPTION.)  

What's his secret? As with any manager, it's putting his players in position to succeed. That can take the form of sniffing out the platoon advantage, keeping peace in the clubhouse, having a deft touch with the bullpen, balancing hunches with data-driven decisions, and so on. 

Like you just said, "as with any manager."

One of the ways managers can distinguish themselves is by juggling lineups and rotations based on non-traditional "platoon points" -- e.g., ground ball-fly ball tendencies, park effects, and strengths/weaknesses of the opposing defense.

They can only distinguish themselves by paying attention to these things if other managers around the league don't pay attention to them, and the odds of that being the case are like nothing percent.

Additionally, as Jonathan Pitts of the Baltimore Sun explains in an outstanding piece on the peculiar phenomenon of the strike zone, Showalter also lets the umpiring drive his tactical decisions. Pitts writes:

The skipper, now in his 14th big league season, points to a spreadsheet on a wall in his office. It ranks all big league umpires by how greatly they favor pitchers or hitters.

The top name on the list is Brian Runge, an ump known for calling a big zone; lower down is veteran Joe West, whose zone is seen as smaller, his ball-strike distribution more even.

When Runge's behind the plate, Showalter says, he might tell hitters to "go up there swinging." When West is back there, "we know we'll have to throw the ball over the plate."

Holy.  Shit.  It's like he's Rain Man or something.  What a savant.

Showalter is known to tweak his pitching rotation when he sees the umpiring schedule for the week.

I live within the TV broadcasting area of the Orioles and watch a couple games a week.  I have not once heard my main man Gary Thorne or any of his revolving cast of color commentators mention that a starter was moved up or back a day to correspond to the umpiring schedule.  If it's true, that's actually a somewhat unorthodox thing for a manager to do, but I kind of doubt it's true.  Now back to the original CBSSports article.

It stands to reason, right? 

Wrong?  Teams are definitely not going to go out of their way to start pitchers on three days' rest because they might get some kind of nebulous benefit from the plate umpire that night.  I just looked through the game logs of all eight Orioles pitchers who have started at least ten games this season.  Not one of them has made a start on three days's rest, something they'd pretty much have to do by definition if Buck was fucking around with the rotation to get favorable umpire matchups.  Granted, because they've started so many different guys, it's possible that Buck has moved some of them in and out of the rotation at times advantageous to those matchups.  But it's certainly not a primary strategy of his; the most I'll allows is the possibility that at times he's had to say "Shit, Arrieta can't fucking get anyone out anymore.  I guess we'll bring up Tillman to take his spot in the rotation next Thursday, and hey, whaddaya know, that's also an umpire whose tendencies will help Tillman!"  Again, I sincerely doubt that even this much has happened, but I'll grant that it's possible.

After all, the discrepancies among umpires have a bearing on the game itself, so it only follows that those discrepancies also have a bearing on how managers approach the game. 

If you're desperately trying to give Showalter the credit that should go to Baltimore's bullpen and timely hitting, then yeah, you might make that argument.

Maybe Showalter's ahead of the curve in this approach, 

If by "this approach" you mean telling hitters to swing more often when an ump with a big zone is calling the game, there's not a fucking chance.  If by "this approach" you mean juggling your rotation to somehow generate umpire/SP matchups favorable to your team, there's almost no fucking chance he's actually doing this.

or maybe he's the only one talking about it. In either case, it's interesting to know he's thinking about the umpires as he fills out his lineup card.

Buck Showalter is an MLB manager.  There are 29 other guys who have more or less his exact same skillset out there.  His has a career managing record that is mildly successful at best.  He's not made out of magic and candy and lollipops.  Can the baseball media please just get the fuck over the guy?  That's rhetorical, I know the answer is no.  I'm hoping the O's make the playoffs because their fans deserve it. But if and when they do, holy fried shitballs, it's going to be an insufferable week of hearing about how Buck himself made 50 starts on the mound and hit cleanup and 7th every day to propel them there.  

FireJay lurches its way through the summer

Sorry about the lack of posts.  I've been trying to, like, go outside and shit.  Play some baseball.  (Well, softball.)  Do stuff besides write a blog.  Feel the infield dirt between my fingers.  Listen to the sound the bat makes when it hits the ball.  Move runners over.  Lay down bunts.  Steal bases, even though that's not legal in softball.  Play the game the right way.  Talk to a woman without having to give her my credit card number.  And let me promise you: I have been extremely uncomfortable doing those things.  Back to the basement for me.  What's that, Bill?  You're using your sphincter as a mouth again?

Now that we're a mere 53 days away from the start of the 2012 Patriots 19-0 victory party NFL season, 

2011: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XP0Q5I0vgS4

2010: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJshw2Axsqc

2009: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-3dGiilJjM

2008: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuClWeD9ouI

2007: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAO0AwlH9KA

Etc., etc., I'm just as petty and pathetic as Bill is, etc.

I have some good news for you ... Drew Brees signed a five-year, $100 million extension with the Saints!!!!!! Why did that deserve six exclamation points? Well ...

1. One of the dumbest ongoing sports stories is finally over. 

At last, we finally know what LeBron thinks about Tim Tebow's first training camp as a Jet!  Oh, sorry, just had Sportscenter on in the background and starting typing what I was hearing.

I hate any sports story that doesn't lend itself to an argument or at least two fairly interesting opinions. 

Yeah, talking about what happened during a game?  BORING.  Guessing point spreads, and telling everyone who will listen how the billion dollar gaming industry has incorrectly set certain of those spreads?  RIVETING.  

Why wouldn't the Saints take care of Brees? 

They feel like he's getting old and they didn't necessarily want to spend a jillion dollars on him?  I'm not saying that's necessarily the right perspective, but he's 33.  With Sean Payton suspended for the upcoming season, maybe they felt like they were on the verge of entering a rebuilding phase.

What took them so long? What were they doing? They couldn't say, "Well, they never won a Super Bowl with him," because they did. They couldn't say, "Well, he doesn't really mean that much to our franchise or our city," because he does. They couldn't say, "He stopped throwing up monster fantasy seasons," because he never stopped. 

Bill is a perfect example of a fan who thinks real players and teams give a shit about fantasy sports.  I'd never fully realized it until now because of the fifty other obnoxious traits he has, but that comment kind of drives it home.  I can almost hear him complaining about a coach who uses a committee of running backs right now.

They couldn't say, "Well, the Mannings and Brady didn't get taken care of, either," because they did. They couldn't say, "We don't really need the good publicity or the good will with our fans," because post-Bountygate, they clearly did. They couldn't say, "If only his ESPY speeches could be a little longer," because they always are. 

THERE ARE SIX AND ONLY SIX REASONS TO NOT GIVE A GIANT CONTRACT TO YOUR FRANCHISE QUARTERBACK.  NONE OF THEM APPLIED TO BREES SO HE GOT PAID.  WHO SAYS NO?

So what was happening here? Shit, the Bensons BOUGHT AN NBA TEAM during the time they could have been taking care of Brees. I remain confused.

It's almost like an NBA team is a business that, with sports as popular as they are these days, is virtually guaranteed to generate a ton of cash for its owners.  And at the same time, it's also almost like Drew Brees is a super talented player who can help his team generate cash, but can also get injured or start playing poorly and immediately become a money pit.  It's almost like that's the world we live in.  MY NEIGHBOR INVESTED A BUNCH OF MONEY IN MUTUAL FUNDS INSTEAD OF BUYING A LUXURY CAR.  I REMAIN CONFUSED.

2. Brees was headed for the first defensible contract holdout in the recent history of team sports. 

Except for all the guys in the last thirty plus years whose abilities greatly exceeded the contracts they were signed to, and thus were able to get a new contract that more accurately paid them what they were worth in light of the fact that in most sports you are always literally a single play away from being forced into retirement.  Except for all those guys, who were able to get the market to pay them what they were worth, this would have been the first defensible holdout.

When does that ever happen? Did you really want to sit around with your friends saying, "Yeah, I don't blame Brees at all, playing for $16 million this season would have been totally insulting."

Let me try to parse this.  Bill thinks Brees would have been justified in holding out.  He then says that CLEARLY, it would have been no fun to have Brees hold out because then everyone would have noted that it was OK for Brees to hold out, and for some reason, apparently no one wants that.  Huh.  Also, remember when he said he hates stories that don't allow for two interesting opinions?  I guess "GRRRR HONOR THE CONTRACT YOU SIGNED OR IN THIS CASE THE FRANCHISE TAG CONTRACT THAT YOUR UNION APPROVED DURING THE COLLECTIVE BARGAINING PROCESS" vs. "THEY SHOULD TAKE CARE OF HIM BECAUSE HE IS REALLY GOOD AND LIKES THE CITY AND STUFF" doesn't count?  Even though that's, like, a pretty interesting argument?  Especially if the person pushing the first opinion is a loud idiot?  Why am I ending every sentence with a question mark oh God I am turning into Simmons? 

(nodding)

3. Did you really want to read fantasy football previews that had an asterisk next to Brees? Did you really want to do Chase Daniel research? Did you really want some asshole in your league to take a fourth-round flier on Brees, then luck out five days later when Brees signed? Or conversely, did you really want to pick Brees, then have him torture you for the first weeks of the season?

I mean, sure, a holdout would have made playing fantasy football in 2012 1% more stressful than it usually is, making it still extremely fun and a great distraction from all the stuff in life that actually sucks ass.

4. The bad news: They announced the contract on Friday the 13th. That's a terrible idea. I wouldn't even buy one of those 27-inch LCD TVs from those weird companies that you've never heard of at Best Buy on Friday the 13th.

CURSES AHHHHHHHH REAL!  MAHHHHHHK MY WARDS!  GRADY SHOULD NEVAH HAVE LET LET PEDRO STAHHHHT THE EIGHTH IN THE FARST PLACE!  FIE-AH GRADY!  FIE-AH BAWBY V!

5. The good news: Brees's contract guarantees him $60 million ... a million less than the Nets guaranteed Brook Lopez this week. I think this cancels out the Friday the 13th thing — when you're paying your franchise QB a million less than the "good" Lopez, you have to feel good about that.

Nice job shoehorning in some irrelevant bullshit about NBA salaries, probably the only substantive area of sports he actually knows anything about.

6. What's worse than reading about someone's contract holdout every day? 

Having NFL analysis crammed down your throat in March or June?  Having to watch WNBA highlights ever?  "Who's Now?"

Even the hideous Dwight Howard trade quagmire is more fun — at least there, you can enjoy derisive Internet nicknames like "Dwight Coward" 

BURNSAUCE: BROUGHT

or derisive headlines like "Dwightmare"; 

!!!!!

you can make up fake trades for hours on end; you can watch Daryl Morey keep adding assets and doing everything but open a www.dwightorbust.com website; 

And that is certainly a last ditch bottom of the barrel plan a GM who is trying to trade for a superstar player would enact!  I mean, it would never happen, but you know that at some point, Morley has said to himself "I should open that website I've been thinking about, maybe that will get Dwight's attention.  NO WAY, NEVERMIND, WHAT AM I, CRAZY?  THAT'S TOO FAR!"

you can make jokes like "any time you can give up every asset you have AND take on multiple bad contracts for a wishy-washy guy coming off back surgery who doesn't want to play for you and can easily leave in 11 months, you have to do it"; 

Seeing as how Bill's basketball opinions are infallible, I have to conclude that there is no other interesting opinion on Houston's pursuit of Howard.  Therefore: BORING STORY.

and you get to hear Chris Broussard and Stephen A. Smith drag out the word "Daaaaaah-wight" for five or six seconds at a time. 

Racist.

Contract holdouts aren't nearly as much fun.

And if it's not fun and it doesn't lead to obnoxious, blithering PTI-style banter and it doesn't involve Greg Steimsma, BILL DOESN'T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT IT.  MOVE ALONG, NON-STEIMSMA STORIES. 

In conclusion, here is Drew Brees doing Drew Brees things.

Larry B finally posts about Tim Tebow finally tweeting to Philip Humber

Big thanks to the anonymous/Anonymous who left this link in the comments to the last post.  That's a more or less foolproof way to make sure I'm aware of any sportswriting dumbfuckery you seven readers stumble across.  I check the firejaymariotti@gmail.com account about once every three months (give or take), but I check the comments to my most recent post about once every 15 minutes because I'm an insecure, self-centered twat.  So cheers to you, a/Anonymous.

Chicago White Sox pitcher Philip Humber finally received a tweet from New York Jets quarterbackTim Tebow on Saturday.

I love the editorialist insertion of "finally" by this ESPNChicago.com writer.  "Tim Tebow uses the internet to get in touch with Philip Humber" is a completely and utterly worthless story based on facts.  "Tim Tebow uses the internet to get in touch with Philip Humber AND IT'S ABOUT FUCKING TIME" is a completely and utterly worthless opinion piece based on facts.  Way more infuriating.

All Humber had to do was throw a perfect game.

Finally!  A plan to get Tebow's attention that really works!  /stops picketing abortion clinic, walks home with chin on chest as sad Charlie Brown music plays

"Congrats @Philip_Humber on accomplishing one of the greatest feats in all of sports! #PerfectGame," Tebow tweeted.

TELL ME MORE!  

"Tim Tebow tweeted me," Humber said Monday on "The Waddle & Silvy Show" on ESPN 1000. "The funny thing about that is I tweeted him this offseason, and of course he's Tim Tebow and I'm Philip Humber ... compared to him I'm a nobody, but I didn't get a response. I was like, 'Aw man,' I was kind of hoping he'd tweet me back or something.'"

HOLY SHIT IT'S LIKE A COPPOLA SCREENPLAY!

Tebow was soliciting a $1 donation toward the Tebow Foundation children's hospital in the Philippines. Humber retweeted it on Nov. 29 and replied: "I'm heading to Philippines next week with a group of baseball guys... Making a stop in Mindanao! God bless."

And really, I shit you not, this goes on for like another ten sentences.  They talk about a different time that Humber tweeted Tebow, and then surprise, bitch!  Justin Verlander and Mark Buehrle make cameo appearances.  All in all I'd say this is the most worthless article in the history of sportswriting except that I hesitate to call it an article.  It's really more like a half page featurette that belongs in a gossip magazine, accompanied by big shiny photos and flashy graphics.  

Real post covering Simmons's mailbag coming tomorrow.  In the meantime, keep in mind that to win in the NHL playoffs, you need more Ryan Clowes and fewer Dustin Penners.

PS as I'm writing this Sportscenter is doing a slow motion/freeze frame analysis of Mark Sanchez trying (unsuccessfully) to dunk during Knicks/Clippers warmups at Madison Square Garden.  The Worldwide Leader in Sports, people.  Savor it while it lasts.

ThMTMQR: Just when I was ready to leave him alone

Holy squashed bear balls, this is one of Gregg's worst (or best?) performances ever. He outdoes himself several times on several familiar topics. Man. Whew. (Larry B slowly runs hand over top of head while puffing cheeks out) This reads like a "best of" clip column. I almost don't know where to begin.

What are the Packers' secrets? First, the personnel:

Note his use of the word "secrets."

• Great players:

WHOA! TED THOMPSON, YOU'VE BEEN EXPOSED! BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD, THE CAT IS OUT OF THE BAG!

All championship teams must have a few. Rodgers and Charles Woodson will be Hall of Famers. If they continue to perform at their current levels, Clay Matthews and B.J. Raji could be, too. Donald Driver and Chad Clifton have had great careers, and Greg Jennings is getting into that territory.

• Undrafted players:

The only surprise is that he didn't list this ahead of "Great players."

The Packers have 16 on their roster --

I'm not going to look it up, but I'm going to guess that's just about par for the course for most teams.

Jarrett Bush, Tom Crabtree, Evan Dietrich-Smith, Ray Dominguez, Rob Francois, Brett Goode, Ryan Grant, John Kuhn, Jamari Lattimore, Tim Masthay, Brandon Saine, Sam Shields, Shaky Smithson, Vic So'oto, Tramon Williams and Frank Zombo. Football is a team sport,

And most of those guys contribute to the team by making four special teams tackles a year while high-drafted megabucks glory boys Rodgers, Jennings, Raji, and Woodson (all first rounders besides Jennings) make all the plays.

and for team sports, little-known role players are as important as great players.

In the sense that you need some on your roster to make special teams tackles so your star players don't get hurt covering punts, yes.

Unlike highly drafted crybabies who think the rules don't apply to them -- Exhibit A, the Detroit Lions --

How predictable. How fucking predictable, you know? Didn't hear a lot about the Lions and their highly-drafted crybabies when they were tearing shit up earlier this season. Now that they've hit a rough patch he's right there to tell us all about it. Gregg Easterbrook : the Lions :: Jay Mariotti : every team in Chicago and everywhere else.

undrafted players listen to the coaches and give you what they've got.

Shoot me in the fucking eyeballs.

• Home-grown:

Largely irrelevant. Good players are good players are good players. Building through the draft is sometimes cheaper than using free agency, and always a source of pride for the fans (especially mouth-breathing bulldozers like Packer fans) but no more a secret to fielding a championship team than "having a historic stadium" is.

Many Green Bay players were late choices, selected by a point in the draft where many teams were just winging it.

No need to justify your point with examples! That takes lots of work.

• Green Bay won the Brett Favre mess: Had the Packers not shown Favre the door, Rodgers would have departed. Offloading the franchise's most accomplished player was wrenching.

Sure. Still not a secret. "Hey, they traded away a legend because he was getting old and there was a capable replacement waiting in the wings. Maybe if the Rams could figure that out for themselves they wouldn't be so terrible!"

Leaders make decisions for the future rather than the present -- if only those in Washington, D.C., thought this way --

Look at those clowns in Washington, clowning everything up with their clowniness LOL

and Green Bay made a smart decision for the future regarding Favre.

• The only NFL roster with five tight ends, as TMQ has noted before: Green Bay has five tight ends, and has won 18 straight games. Why don't other NFL teams notice this rudimentary fact?

Because simply signing more tight ends won't make your team better unless those tight ends are actually good? The Lakers won titles in 2009 and 2010 while starting two 7 footers- WHY CAN'T OTHER TEAMS NOTICE HOW SIMPLE IT IS?!??! Just sign two tall guys, sit back, and collect your ringzzzz

Multiple tight ends allow for multiple offensive sets that confuse defensive game plans. All contemporary defensive coordinators have some experience dealing with multiple wide receiver sets. Most don't have experience dealing with multiple tight end sets.

If by "multiple" you mean two, you're patently wrong. If you mean three or more, you're still wrong.

• Aaron Rodgers:

Already listed, and the opposite of a secret.

Plus Rodgers is handsome. Just as the football gods are propitiated by cheerleaders with sex appeal, the gods also smile on handsome quarterbacks. Rodgers, Tom Brady, Cam Newton, Drew Brees -- it may not be fair, but this seems to be the way it is.

Explain John Elway then.

There are two other big factors:

• Mystique: The Packers have won four Super Bowls, 13 conference and/or league titles. Green Bay has the oldest consistent winner in football. The place is Titletown. Vince Lombardi is looking down. The Packers exist in a college-town atmosphere -- they are even the sole NFL franchise with college cheerleaders, not professional cheerleaders, on the sidelines. The aura around the Packers is unmatched by any other NFL organization.

The Saints just won a Super Bowl. The Cardinals were two minutes from winning one. Who gives a shit?

• Bicycles: Packers players ride bicycles to the opening of camp, an annual summer ritual attended by thousands of children. Cheesy? Well, it is Wisconsin. Corny? Gets the season off on a fun note.

My God.

In his seven weeks of starting, Tebow has committed just three turnovers. Eagles quarterbacks Michael Vick and Vince Young have 13 turnovers in the same period; Ryan Fitzpatrick has 12 turnovers in same period.

That's undrafted all effort no glamour Harvard alum (chip chip cheerio I have a cleft asshole!) Ryan Fitzpatrick to you, buster.

Sour Play of the Week: Godfrey Daniel, what happened at the end of regulation in Arizona? Game tied, Dallas completed a pass to the Cardinals' 31 with 26 seconds remaining, holding two timeouts. Then Garrett appeared to ice his own kicker by calling timeout just before his team's kick was launched -- good, but wiped out by the coach's timeout. Dallas kicked again and this time missed; Arizona prevailed in overtime. Godfrey Daniel!

Any clue as to who or what Godfrey Daniel is? Me neither. So I Googled. Topical.

Several times during the contest, Newton ran the zone-read option play. Considering Newton and Tebow, this action is advancing from gimmick to standard NFL strategy.

Two out of thirty two teams (the only two with big QBs who ran as much as they passed in college) are using it? Sounds commonplace to me!

So when big-college sports programs hire coaches, appeal to the TV audience may mean a lot more than technicalities such as having players in class and getting their degrees. Ohio State just hired Urban Meyer, who has proven TV marketing appeal. According to the News-Suns of Springfield, Ohio, Meyer's contract includes maximum annual bonuses of $550,000 for victories and $150,000 for players' academic achievements. This suggests that football is 3.7 times more important than education at Ohio State.

Are you kidding me? Only 3.7 times? If I were dean of students at tOSU and the university officially announced that figure I'd pop some champagne. I wouldn't be surprised if they shut down their entire academic arm (except student athlete support services) within the next ten years and just focused on sports. How much money does the chemistry department bring to the university? Thought so.

Stop Me Before I Blitz Again! St. Louis blitzed seven; San Francisco threw a 56-yard touchdown pass to Kyle Williams for the icing score. Arizona blitzed seven; Dallas threw a 5-yard touchdown pass to Dez Bryant.

There's your weekly anecdotal evidence that blitzing never works and should be discarded.

Sure, the blitz sometimes produces a big play for the defense -- New Orleans got a sack against Detroit by rushing seven.

Whoa! From out of nowhere! What's with this new fair and balanced approach?

But on the big blitz, a big play for the offense is as likely.

It's a 50/50 proposition, folks. Close the book on that one. No further research need be done. Well, maybe one anecdote just to really get the point home.

The 36-yard late third-quarter catch by Tony Scheffler that put Detroit back into its game at New Orleans came against a mega-blitz.

Yyyyyyyup. 50/50.

Washington has not only put the younger generation on the hook for at least $14 trillion in debt -- now young Americans may end up on the hook for money squandered in Europe. TMQ asks again: Why aren't voters under age 30 outraged about this?

They're too busy being enraged about minor changes to Facebook?

/shakes fist at damn neighborhood kids playing on his lawn

Manly-Man Play of the Day: Tennessee led Buffalo 17-10 midway through third quarter, Flaming Thumbtacks facing fourth-and-1 on the Bills' 18. Tennessee went for it and converted. The result of the drive was still a field goal, but Titans coach Mike Munchak sent his players a message that he was challenging them to win, as they did.

And there's your weekly anecdote that going for it on 4th down is a great idea no matter what every time. Even when you do it from your own 29 in overtime and fail. If the Falcons make the playoffs, you can bet your house, dog, and savings that Gregg will attribute it to that loss against the Saints. If they don't make the playoffs, you can bet those same items that Gregg will fail to mention it but will also continue to point out that cheer-babes are mega hott (especially when they don't wear much clothing!).

Arkansas finished sixth in the BCS, ahead of Boise State, is a megabucks insider school, yet didn't reach the BCS either. In the Razorbacks' case, because LSU and Alabama made the title tilt, by BCS rules no other SEC school could enter. But that shows the BCS isn't entirely rigged -- Arkansas, an insider, is out.

I cannot think of a stupider conclusion to draw from those facts. Not one. You could use them to conclude that it was actually space aliens who assassinated JFK and you'd still be closer to right than Gregg.

Skins-Jets note: Pass rush specialist Aaron Maybin, who had zero sacks in two seasons at Buffalo, has six sacks in his first nine games with Jersey/B, leading Rex Ryan's pressure-obsessed defense in the category. Maybin hit Rex Grossman to force the fumble that turned the game in the Jets' favor.

Buffalo used the 11th overall selection of the 2009 draft on Maybin, then rarely let him on the field, criticized him relentlessly in public, then waived him early this season. Nonsensical? Not if Buffalo's new front office, which took over shortly after the Maybin choice, is more concerned with protecting its high-paid jobs than with winning.

1) And there's your weekly reminder that Gregg actually thinks coaches do things besides try to win.

2) I love when he has to grapple with the resume of a player like Maybin, who was a mega-bucks first round pick but was also waived.

The Bills are 5-7 and last in the NFL in sacks. If everything about their season was the same except they'd simply kept Maybin, the Bills might be in the playoff hunt.

No.

But to the coach and general manager, lining up excuses for losing was the first priority.

Also no.

Undrafted Quarterback Plays of the Day: Undrafted Miami quarterback Matt Moore threw a touchdown pass

Undrafted because he transferred, got hurt a lot, and only had one quality college season.

to undrafted Miami receiver Davon Bess

Undrafted because he's tiny and not that fast. Although I admit that that shouldn't have been the case.

versus Oakland. Undrafted Tyler Palko threw a touchdown pass against Chicago.

And what an artful touchdown pass it was! I'm sure he planned to throw it off Brian Urlacher's hands and into the waiting stomach of Dexter McCluster. Just a few paragraphs later, in his "Hell's sports bar" bit:

They endlessly re-saw Kansas City getting its sole touchdown on a fluke Hail Mary on the final snap before the first half.

YOU CAN'T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS GRRRRRRRR

In the Carolina-City of Tampa game, undrafted quarterback Rudy Carpenter, called up from the practice squad just hours before the contest,

And now we're congratulating undrafted QBs for successfully handling snaps.

handed off to undrafted tailback LeGarrette Blount.

Who went undrafted because everyone thought he was too small and untalented to make it in the NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE. Or perhaps everyone realized that he was incredibly talented but was also a loose cannon asshole who punched an opponent in the face on the field after a loss. (Not that that Boise State guy didn't deserve it. I'm sure he did.) One or the other.

Class of 1983, Meet Class of 2012: Sports touts, and Indianapolis Colts faithful, are focused on the destiny of Andrew Luck in the 2012 draft. Landry Jones will be available too.

Landry Jones is fucking terrible. I'm pretty sure Oklahoma State's good-not-great defense made that clear on Saturday.

Matt Barkley may come out of college, and this season he's looked like he was expected to look when he was the most sought-after prep player in the country. Don't forget Case Keenum,

Probably not NFL material

Russell Wilson

Probably not NFL material

and Robert Griffin,

OK, he rules

all of whom have spectacular touchdown-to-interception ratios.

That's six quarterbacks with a legit shot of going in Round 1, plus a realistic shot of at least one Hall of Famer among them.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA. That's great. There are 23 QBs in the HOF from the modern era, only 11 of whom entered the league during the Super Bowl era and only 9 of whom took a snap after 1980. Luck seems pretty awesome. Those other guys could be anywhere from pretty great to Alex Smith to Matt Leinart. Happy hunting, teams with a QB vacancy next spring. Gregg realistically likes your chances.

Mike Florio: Unable to comprehend the thoughts of a guy who scored 15 on the Wonderlic

Everyone pile on Jay Cutler! Quick! Tell the world what a huge pussy he is, because that shows that 1) you are not a pussy; you are super tough and would never do what he did; and 2) you are smart and know a lot about FOOTBALL players and how they should act on the FOOTBALL field. Or, you can just read this, which is an excellent explanation of why most of the people knocking Cutler are a bunch of chuckleheaded thundertwats. Anyways, I'm not a Bears fan (admittedly I am a Cutler fan since I'm a Broncos fan and never wanted to see him get traded- fuck you in the face, McDaniels), but the last 3 days have been pretty surreal.

Are there really this many former players who themselves succumbed to non-crippling injuries that feel the need to call Cutler out? Maurice Jones-Drew: you are a fucking pair of clown shoes right now. You have zero credibility. You have negative credibility. YOU MISSED YOUR TEAM'S LAST TWO GAMES, WHEN A PLAYOFF SPOT WAS ON THE LINE, BECAUSE YOU HAD A KNEE INJURY JUST LIKE CUTLER'S. SHUT YOUR FUCKING FACE.

And are there really this many sportswriters who know everything about how Cutler's leg felt during the game and need to share their conjecture and fucktarded analysis with the world? OH MY GOSH HE STOOD UP WHILE HE WAS ON THE SIDELINES. HE DIDN'T LOOK HURT. HE USED A SET OF STAIRS AFTER THE GAME. Therefore: he must have been capable of playing quarterback, right? He was just too much of a bitch to come back into the biggest game of his life after spending a college career and most of the last two seasons getting destroyed every game because of a terrible offensive line! Reasonable conclusion? ABSOLUTELY! Holy Christ, sportswriters are the worst group of people on earth. Seriously. They're worse than serial killers. Enter Mike Florio, a man incapable of following the logic of one Chris Harris.

Now, Chris Harris might be a smart dude. His quotes below show that he takes pride in his education. But there's no way his thoughts exist on a level that is so much higher than Florio's that Florio could have an excuse for not being able to understand them. (According to the internets, Florio is a lawyer.) So maybe someone out there can explain to me how this happened:

Harris then seemed to provide the explanation that justifies the conclusion by some, inaccurate as it may have been, that Cutler wasn’t really injured.

“Jay’s not perceived in the media as a good guy. He doesn’t give you the quotes that you want. He doesn’t show you the emotion that you want to see,” Harris said.

Yyyyyyyyup. If he had the exact same injury in the exact same kind of game, Favre would have been on the sidelines grimacing and contorting his face. And the story after the game would have been "Dagnabbit if that boy didn't want to be out there having fun and throwing the pigskin around, but you could tell from his face that it just wasn't in him. Too bad! What a competitor he is." And then after the game Favre would have awww shucks-ed his was through a few interviews talking about how sad he was to have let his team down, sent pictures of his cock to a few team employees, and called it a night. And his legacy would be intact, if not stronger. Because sportswriters and football fans are fucking morons who are to so pathetically susceptible to groupthink and soap opera non-analysis (no seriously, go click that first link and read the SBNation piece on that subect) that it boggles the imagination.

“But we know what type of guy he is, he fought with us all season long. So he doesn’t give the media what they want and so perception is real. And that’s one thing I learned in sociology class in college. Perception is real. If people perceive you one way, that’s what they think it is. They might not have a effing clue as to how you really are, but perception is real.”

Right. So if your IQ is above 55, you know what Harris is saying here. In a nutshell: people believe what they perceive because their brains tell them that what they perceive has to be real, even when there's no good evidence that it actually is real. It's often a very long ways from real. And Harris is pissed off because that phenomenon is causing everyone to think Cutler is soft when that's not the case.

Thus, while “perception is real,” perception in this case, according to Harris, is simply wrong.

The grade for your analytical thinking skills just came in, Mike. You got an F minus.

Holy Toledo. That is so dumb I'm going to paste it again.

Thus, while “perception is real,” perception in this case, according to Harris, is simply wrong.

Thus, while “perception is real,” perception in this case, according to Harris, is simply wrong.

F minus.

Given that he seems to understand why some people have an incorrect perception about Cutler, Harris arguably shouldn’t be pissed about it.

Possibly even worse than the preceding sentence. Saying that someone should be able to not be upset about something upsetting because they understand why it's happening might be an even bigger indictment of Florio's intellect than his inability to understand what Harris meant by "perception is real." Given that they understand how much China doesn't want to grant them independence, Tibetans arguably shouldn't be all upset that they don't have their own country. Given that they understand how badly the economy has been doing, investors arguably shouldn't be upset when corporate insiders steal their cash.

The best part is his inclusion of "arguably," which is one of the best cop out words of all time. The sun arguably rotates the earth. Santa Claus arguably exists. Mike Florio is arguably a more important historical figure than George Washington.

The best part about this Cutler bullshit? We get to hear about it for the next 6 months, maybe 7 or 8 if it has enough life to still be talked about during the beginning of the regular season. Fuck it. At this point I'm actually hoping for a lockout. It might (maybe, I hope, although probably not) mean I don't have to hear anything come out of Trent Dilfer or Mark Schlereth's mouths for a whole 18 months. Man that'd be awesome.

Ugh. This whole situation makes me want to barf.

Ridiculous Moral Indignation: ur doin it rong

By now you've probably heard the "story" (sarcastic quotation marks used because as the main subject of the story herself says, this is not actually a story) of Jan Cavanaugh. She's the Packers fan/cancer patient/autograph seeker allegedly snubbed by Aaron Rodgers as he walked to the team's Atlanta-bound plane last Friday. Now, all of the following are rational responses to the viral video that shows Rodgers walking past Cavanaugh without acknowledging her:

1) This is one 3 second video, we don't really know the context. Hard to judge Rodgers' entire character on this alone. Maybe he does other charity work and/or has given this woman an autograph before. (Both possibilities true)
2) Rodgers is wearing headphones, who knows what he was and was not aware of at that moment. (If you're Mike Florio, you speculate that Rodgers wore the headphones to make it easier to ignore cancer patients looking for autographs)
3) Players are not obligated to sign autographs for anyone and everyone at all times even if the autograph seek does have cancer and is a die hard fans of the player's employer. (Cavanaugh's own reaction, see below)

Of course, none of those angles appeal to sportswriters. #1 involves looking at all sides of an issue/situation, something 95% of sportswriters are too fucking stupid to do. #2 is too practical. #3 is too blindingly obvious and prevents sportswriters from being morally indignant about something that calls for no such perspective. So of course ProFootballTalk's Mike Florio (a breathtakingly useless writer employed by a breathtakingly useless site that we should write about far more often) took the easy way out.

Aaron Rodgers has a lot to learn about where his money comes from

Alternate title: Mike Florio has a lot to learn about how the business of professional sports works.

We realize that only two days ago we defended largely unlikable Bears quarterback Jay Cutler from a mailed-in attack by ESPN’s Rick Reilly.

The Rickster? Mailing in a column? Never. Also: anyone using the first person plural to talk about themselves deserves a square and vicious kick in the balls.

But since Reilly has yet to attack Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, we feel no need to defend him. (Yet.)

In fact, we feel the need to crucify him using shitty logic and pointless moral outrage.

Rodgers makes a lot of money because people are willing to pay to watch him do what he does, and because they’re willing to sit and watch him do it on television, while being bombarded with advertisements and networks promos.

True. Keep in mind that Rodgers does not make money because people think he's a swell guy. At least, not primarily. Of course being a non-asshole is good for a player's career, but before they can benefit from that kind of thing they have to be, uh, good at sports.

Without fans, football would be lacrosse. Or indoor soccer. Or postseason baseball.

Boom. Roasted. Take that, baseball. Your TV ratings for divisional round playoff games that start on weekday afternoons are not very good. That proves once and for all that football is better than you.

So football players need to be willing to pause and sign an autograph or two from time to time. Especially when the person seeking the autograph is female, is wearing copious amounts of NFL-licensed pink apparel, and has very short gray hair.

If players are going to stop and sign for anyone, I agree that cancer patients should be at the top of the list. Unfortunately, as previously stated (and as known by anyone with a brain since it's a really basic and obvious fact), athletes who are really awesome don't need to be willing to stop and sign for anyone. They don't. They don't owe it to anyone, they don't "need" to do it for anyone, and I think it's a stretch to say they "should" do it for anyone. The best way to put it is that they "can do so if they want." But you already knew that, because you have a brain.

Look- like any other fan, I want athletes to be nice. Especially the ones I cheer for. I can appreciate the occasional puff piece about one of them doing something really cool and charitable. But I'm not so much of an entitled prong as to think that any athlete owes fans anything. They owe their teammates, coaches, and management something. But they don't owe me shit. They don't work with me or for me. End of discussion. If you think otherwise I suggest you get your head out of your retum. When an athlete signs autographs, I say "Awesome! That guy rules!" When they refuse to, I shrug and feel neutral about it.

Hey, it’s a free country. Rodgers has an inalienable right to choose to behave like an ass.

Fuck the charity work the guy does, and all the other autographs he's ever signed in his life-including one for this very fan-this incident proves that Rodgers should be skewered by the media.

And the rest of us have an inalienable right to tell anyone who’ll listen that he’s behaving like an ass.

ExACTly. Good for you, Florio. This is a much easier way of generating pageviews than your normal method of making up trade/transaction rumors. Way to be the watchdog who makes sure no athlete gets away with snubbing an autograph seeker. AMERICA NEEDS TO KNOW WHEN THIS KIND OF THING HAPPENS. HOW ELSE WILL WE KNOW WHO TO HATE FOR NO GOOD REASON?

Rodgers needs to realize that without people like Jan Cavanaugh, whose passion for pro football prompted her to go to the airport after a radiation treatment in the hopes of getting Rodgers to sign the pink hat with the Packers logo that she always wears, make his entire lifestyle possible. Otherwise, he’d be no different than a guy who’s really good at throwing darts or horseshoes or cornhole bags. He’d derive personal satisfaction from the use of his God-given skills, but not much if any money.

And Florio needs to realize that people like Cavanaugh might be slightly disappointed if they don't get an autograph, but they will continue to watch NFL games on TV, attend them when possible, buy NFL merchandise, and generally structure their entire lives around the NFL. Like most others in the world, our country is sports-obsessed. Our star athletes can more or less do whatever they want off the field as long as they don't kill anyone.

Do I hope that every person who wants an autograph gets one, especially when the person is a cancer patient? Of course. I've also heard of a man named Barry Bonds, who was a shameless user of illegal drugs (and eventual cheater once baseball got around to officially banning those drugs) and a world class asshole who treated 90% of the people he ever met like complete trash. Barry made a kajillion dollars throughout the course of his career and to this day remains wildly popular with a large number of fans. Why? Because he was good at what he did. And throughout the course of the modern history of sports, there have been hundreds and hundreds of Bondses. Rodgers isn't the Bonds of quarterbacking in terms of skill level, of course, but he's not a long ways off. And that's why is doesn't fucking matter whether he signs autographs or not.

We hope this strikes a chord with all pro athletes. The fans are the reason you get paid the big bucks. And it would be wise to show some gratitude, especially when it’s obvious that one of those fans isn’t blessed with good health.

Now I'm starting to think Florio himself was snubbed by a player at some point and is still carrying a grudge about it.

We also hope that Rodgers and/or the Packers track down Jan Cavanaugh and make it up to her. The fact that Rodgers would crap on a rare moment of happiness for someone whose entire life in consumed by fighting the disease and contending with the physical, mental, and emotional effects of it should make the stomach churn of anyone who has cancer, or who has seen a loved one stricken by it.

Jan Cavanaugh, what say you about this whole deal? (From the news link at the top of the post)

"I am very unhappy with people making so much out of this, because this really isn't that big of a deal. It's up to the players to decide who they want to give an autograph to, and that's their prerogative."

Three cheers for you, lady. You just made me hate the Packers a little less.

FMTMQR: Now with Youtube links so you can actually see what an asshole Gregg is

Is he capable of complaining about Christmas creep less than a week before Christmas? Read on to find out.

Ho ho ho! Here's what TMQ has asked Santa to leave each NFL team under its tree for Christmas morning:

Ho ho ho! Here's a series of lame jokes:

Atlanta -- An identity. The Falcons are on a blazing 15-2 run, yet are known for what, exactly?

The only reason other teams are known for something, like Pittsburgh for its NASTY (steroid-fueled) DEFENSE and New England for its gritty white receivers, is because those teams have large national fan bases. Atlanta is a horrible sports town and no one gives a shit about the Falcons. If they had bandwagoners from coast to coast hooked on their success, you'd hear a ton about their #5 scoring offense and how Matt Ryan is the next Roethlisberger.

Buffalo -- A complete set of jerseys from the 1990s Super Bowl run. It's no coincidence the Bills have not made the playoffs since switching to the league's ugliest uniforms.

Their new uniforms are essentially the same as their old ones. The title for league's ugliest uniforms resides safely with the Seahawks.

Chicago -- A game in Florida.

Because they lost one game to the league's best team when it was snowing.

Cleveland -- A dawg who can play football: "Fetch the pass!" Ideal marketing gimmick.

Fail.

Detroit -- A Rand McNally road atlas with all NFL cities except Detroit missing. If the Lions can't find the road games, they won't have to play them.

This was written about 24 hours after the Lions won on the road against a non-horrible team.

Green Bay -- A water slide so Aaron Rodgers can practice sliding.

Unfunny.

Jersey/B -- A recording of Ronald Reagan saying, "Tear down this wall!"

Maybe it makes me an idiot, but I'm lost here.

Minnesota -- Brett Favre plays until eligible for membership in AARP.

Douchechills.

Philadelphia -- DeSean Jackson cast as the lead in a revival of the musical "Show Boat."

More on this later.

Seattle -- No restrictions on phone calls, official visits and scholarships when Pete Carroll goes recruiting in the upcoming free-agency period.

OK, see that's actually funny.

In other football news, if it has come to pass that Favre will tape his ankles no more, consider how his final seasons concluded. Last play of 2007 season for the Packers: interception. Second-to-last play of 2008 season for the Jets: interception. Last play of 2009 season for the Vikings: interception. Last play of 2010 season for the Vikings: sack. All's well that ends well!

Agreed, although his last play in 2008 wasn't an interception. He completed a pass, then received a lateral from the receiver (desperation time), then was absolutely CRUSHED while trying to throw another lateral and drew a penalty for illegal forward pass in the process. So really it's better to think of it as: 2007 interception, 2008 penalty + JACKED UP, 2009 interception, 2010 sack + JACKED UP.

In other news, Tuesday Morning Quarterback sends holiday good wishes to all space aliens, mega-babes and football enthusiasts. Bells are ringing all across the local star cluster!

What. The fuck. Are you talking about? /insert Chris W's jpeg from last post here

Sweet Quarter of the Season After being down 31-10 on the road at Jersey/A with 8:17 remaining, the Eagles won. This comeback ranks with Buffalo's comeback from 35-3 against the old Houston Oilers in 1993. That comeback took an entire half; Philadelphia's warp-speed comeback happened in eight minutes.

Buffalo's was in the playoffs, with Frank Reich at QB. Point: 1992 Bills. Not that what Philly did wasn't amazing.

Jackson is electrifying. But when he broke into the clear for the touchdown that would make this the first NFL game won by a punt return on the final play, he began waving the ball in the air at the G-Men 30-yard line even though he had already lost a fumble earlier in the quarter. Stop showboating! Dance after you score, not before. If Jackson

Tl;dr. As we've known for years, TMQ hates flashy players. Especially if they were drafted in the first round like Jackson was. But yeah, let's make sure to spend a whole paragraph complaining about Jackson celebrating that incredible moment.

As for the Giants' coaching: Has any coaching staff ever had a worse quarter? Ahead 31-10 with eight minutes remaining against the top big-play combination the NFL -- Michael Vick and Jackson -- if the Giants had gone to backed-off shell coverage and forced the Nesharim to nickel-and-dime their way down the field, the clock would have run out on any comeback.

The Giants are on national TV often enough (after all, they play in the most important and exciting division ever, a division which has produced a whole one Super Bowl winner and three NFC champs in the last 15 years; a division that surely deserves to be on national fucking TV every single fucking time any two of its fucking teams play a fucking meaningless game against one another, fuck you very much FOX) that I've seen them quite a bit this year. My roommate is also a diehard Giants fan. As such, I know for a fact that blitzing is one thing their defense does well. They often succeed when they get pressure on the QB and often fail when they don't. I'm not sure whether or not the Eagles could have scored 3 TDs in 8 minutes against base coverage, but I guarantee they would have moved the ball very quickly and effectively against it.

With the Eagles trailing 31-10, first-and-10 on their 35 with 7:43 remaining, Fewell called a safety blitz, resulting in a 65-yard touchdown pass to Brent Celek. On the play, deep safety Kenny Phillips whiffed so badly that he air tackled. The morning of the game, The New York Times ran an article lavishly praising the Giants' secondary -- guess those players read the article. "We're never out of position," Phillips was quoted as boasting.

Ah, welcome to the wonderful world of TMQ, where everything is nice and simple and can be explained by a single convenient little rule. When a play turns out poorly for a team, it's because several of its players were standing around doing nothing. Going for it on 4th down always leads to victory, no matter the result of the 4th down play; punting always leads to losing. Undrafted players are hardworking success stories, high drafted players are lazy assholes who expect the game to come to them with no effort. (I'm surprised TMQ didn't mention here that Phillips was a 1st round pick.) And of course, teams that say anything good about themselves and then subsequently lose must have lost because they have big egos. Guess what? Phillips was probably asked by a reporter to explain why the Giants have the 2nd best passing defense in the league, and he answered with something fairly innocuous (in terms of how braggy it was). It's not like he said "We're the best secondary in the history of organized football, take that to the bank, and fuck orphans and people with terminal diseases because they suck." Christ. Why do we need to crucify him because he gave an interview and then made a bad play? I hate TMQ more than anything in the world, including baseball writers.

Why safety blitz with a three-touchdown lead and less than eight minutes? Unless the plan was to humiliate the Eagles and then boast to the New York media.

Which it wasn't. Probably the most preposterous assumption/accusation I've ever seen TMQ make, which is saying something. Let's go to our old friend Occam's Razor and assume the plan was to, uh, WIN.

Humiliating an opponent is totally irrelevant; keep your focus on winning.

/Larry B frustratedly holds head in hands

Sweet Stat of the Week: The Flying Elvii have gone an NFL-record six games without a turnover -- very sweet -- and lead the league with a plus-20 turnover margin. In a league in which megabucks stars wave the rock around asking for turnovers, the Patriots protect the football. This must have something to do with their no-name, egoless offense. Big-ego players with big contracts, such as Roy Williams of Dallas, commit careless fumbles because they figure they will never be benched no matter what.

Roy Williams fumbles all the time for exactly three reasons: 1) he sucks 2) he's got a relatively weak and lanky upper body and 3) NFL DBs are really good at stripping the ball. Would he like to fumble less frequently (or preferably not at all)? Of course. Has there ever been a single moment at which he said to himself "Hey, I might as well keep fumbling- they're not going to cut me?" FUCKING N FUCKING O.

The undrafted free agents of the New England offense know they must perform to stay on the field. So they protect the football.

I like how the GREATRIOTS are being lauded for employing hardworking, egoless WRs. Meanwhile their coach and QB have two of the largest egos in football. Why does Roy Williams's ego drag him down, but Belichick's and Brady's egos result in only success? See my point 1) above as to why Williams fumbles, and also understand that Belichick and Brady definitely do not suck. Christ. I hate Gregg Easterbrook more than anything on this earth, including jewelry commercials.

Now let's enter the segment of the column where Gregg makes up facts to fit the explanations he wants to use. I'll provide video and other info where appropriate, so that you can see what actually happened rather than accepting Gregg's made up version of what happened.

Sour Pair of Plays: Pittsburgh and Denver both surrendered safeties in close fourth-quarter situations. The Steelers were attempting a slow-developing sweep from their end zone. Don't sweep from your end zone!

If you think the play call here was a sweep, you know nothing about football. (To be fair, the play definitely was slow-developing. But still.)

Sour Play of the Week: TMQ notes the distressing number of downs on which highly paid NFL performers simply stand around doing nothing or simply brush their men and then stand watching. New England leading 31-27, Green Bay had possession at the Patriots' 15 with five seconds remaining -- with one play to win or lose. The Flying Elvii rushed three; Packers right tackle Bryan Bulaga, a first-round pick this year who recently cashed a huge bonus check, brushed his man, then, doing nothing, turned around to see what was happening on the play.

If I were Bryan Bulaga, I would literally take a dump in a FedEx box and mail it to Easterbrook for that ridiculously inaccurate description of what happened on the play. This (start at the 3:30 mark), apparently, is what brushing your man and then standing around doing nothing looks like. Weird. There doesn't seem to be much brushing, just a regular block that was beaten thanks to some good DE play and bad luck as to where the QB moved in the pocket. And I certainly don't see any standing around or doing of nothing. But then again, what do I know? I'm someone who stands up for high drafted players who are obviously lazy shitheads who don't know how to play football. That's why they were all such failures at the college level.

Were those the Baltimore Ravens or the Wisconsin Badgers? Ravens coaches called 39 rushing plays and 23 passes, outrushing the defending champions by 181 yards. Vince Lombardi would have felt right at home at that contest. Let's hope his ghost wasn't watching the Packers-Patriots game, in which the Packers, yet again, went five-wide on first-and-goal at point-blank range.

OK, we get it, you don't have to bring it up every fucking week (which he does). Back in Lombardi's day teams ran a lot. Now they throw a lot (pass wacky!), sometimes when they only need a single yard. Will the wonders of the universe ever cease?

As for the Ming Ding Xiong ("Bears whose outcomes are decided by fate" in Chinese),

Probably the most annoying/least funny of all Easterbrook's team nicknames. It's a dead heat between this and Squared Sevens.

Devin Hester is back in business, which means the Bears are back in business. In 2006, Hester had five kick return touchdowns and Chicago reached the Super Bowl. In 2007, Hester had six kick return touchdowns but the Bears didn't make the postseason.

Well that leads us to conclude... uh...

In 2008 and 2009, no return touchdowns for Hester, no playoffs for Chicago. This year, Hester has three kick return touchdowns and the Bears are division champs. So when Hester doesn't run back a kick for six, the Bears do not make the playoffs; when he does, they are 2-for-3 in reaching the postseason.

Such valuable insight can only be gained by reading the musings of a man who knows absolutely nothing about football.

Pregame, viewers saw that Ron Jaworski was wearing an elaborate zoot-suit-inspired heavy coat with gloves and Mike Tirico wore a sportcoat, sweater vest and no gloves. Immediately I knew that Tirico would have a better game, which he did. Cold Broadcaster = Victory.

Worst bit ever.

TMQ's Law of the Obvious Holds: Sometimes All a Team Needs to Do is Run Up the Middle: Was that really the Pittsburgh Steelers in a shotgun spread on third-and-2 at home in bad weather? Jersey/B snapped out of its funk and won on the strength of two terrific special-teams plays in the fourth quarter -- punts downed on the Hypocycloids' 1 and 8. But even in victory, the Jets' offense seemed fouled up. Thrice in the final three minutes, holding the lead in a kill-the-clock situation, Brian Schottenheimer called a passing play. Thrice the result was an incompletion that stopped the clock. Had the Jets simply run up the middle for no gain, there would not have been enough time left for the home team's almost-comeback.

I did a Youtube search for "wrong," hoping to find a clip of Charlie Murphy on Chapelle's show yelling "WRONG. WRONG." during the Rick James sketch. It wasn't there. There was a kind of funny clip of Dr. Cox from Scrubs singing "wrong" over and over but it wouldn't quite create the effect I wanted so I decided to link to nothing. Instead I will just say that as usual, Gregg is 100% wrong.

Check this out: presumably the three plays he's referring to are the two pass plays on 2nd and 5 and 3rd and 5 that ended the Jets' drive that started at 7:09, and the pass on 3rd and 3 that ended their final drive of the game. As of the first of those plays, the Steelers had all three timeouts. That means that even if we switch the 2nd and 5 and 3rd and 5 plays from the 7:09 mark to runs of 0 yards, the Steelers still get the ball back for their 2:45 drive (the one play drive that ended with a safety) at the same time but with just one timeout. Then, after the safety, when the Jets get the ball back at 2:38, assume they ran for zero yards three times in a row before punting. After the first, the Steelers call a timeout. After the second, the clock runs down to the two minute warning. And after the third, the Jets punt with about 1:20 left. Sure, the Steelers' last drive becomes a lot more difficult; they have about 50 fewer seconds, no timeouts, and no two minute warning. But Gregg isn't capable of that level of thought (which took me about 30 seconds to research and 2 minutes to write out). To him it's DERP DERP THREE RUNS UP THE MIDDLE EQUALS TWO MINUTES OFF THE CLOCK, STEELERS GOT THE BALL FOR THEIR FINAL DRIVE WITH 2:08 LEFT, BORK BORK BORK. I hate Gregg Easterbrook more than People and Us Weekly.

As Tuesday Morning Quarterback noted of Shanahan this past summer, "His big seasons all came with John Elway: in his non-Elway years, Shanahan's results are pedestrian." Left on his own without Elway, Shanahan is somewhere between average and a bumbler.

Left on his own without Elway, Shanahan made four playoff appearances in ten years with Denver. His record from 1999 until his firing was 91-69. Sure, he only won one game during those four playoff appearances and made a number of shitty personnel decisions. But he also won 57% of his regular season games. If that's average at best, who qualifies as a "good" NFL coach? Sure, the Redskins blow this year. Even TMQ has to admit that has a lot more to do with their ownership than with Shanahan.

The Curse of the Holiday Letter: Don't you hate boastful holidays letters about other people's fascinating lives and perfect children? Below is one Nan and I received last week.

Dear Friends,

What a lucky break the CEO sent his personal jet to pick me up from Istanbul; there's plenty of room, since I have the entire aircraft to myself, to take out the laptop and write our annual holiday letter. Just let me ask the attendant for a better vintage of champagne, and I'll begin.

It's been another utterly hectic year for Chad and I and our remarkable children, yet nurturing and horizon-expanding. It's hard to know

Tl;dr. Where is this going? It's obviously not a real letter but doesn't relate to anything else in the column and the only setup he provided is copied and pasted above. The fuck is going on here?

in Maine, and before we know it, we will be packing two cars to drive Rachel's things to college. And of course I don't count Davos or Sundance or all the routine excursions.

I hope your year has been as interesting as ours.

Love,
Jennifer, Chad, Rachel, Nicholas & Emily

(The above is inspired by a satirical Christmas letter I did for The New Republic a decade ago. I figure it's OK to recycle a joke once every 10 years.)

It is, as long as the joke is funny and you provide some context for it. Neither of those requirements were met here.

NFL teams might invest $20 million to $50 million in the starting quarterback -- you don't want a $50 million investment going off tackle. Colleges, by contrast, invest almost no money in their quarterbacks -- Newton got the same amount of scholarship funds as Auburn's third-stringers.

Or did he? *rimshot* TOPICAL!

With the Bolts leading 7-0, the Squared Sevens

Ugh. Yeah, definitely worse than Ming Ding Xiong.

kicked a field goal. San Diego was called for "leveraging," the second time in three weeks this unusual call has been made. Accepting the penalty took points off the board but gave San Francisco first-and-goal at the 10. Three snaps later, Alex Smith ran for what officials signaled was a touchdown, but San Diego challenged and the six points came off the board, too. Mike Singletary went for it on fourth-and-goal from the 1. High first-round draft choice guard Mike Iupati air-blocked -- he made contact with no one -- as undrafted Bolts defensive tackle Ogemdi Nwagbuo shot into the backfield to drop the runner for a loss, San Diego ball and zero points for San Francisco.

But... but... going for it on 4th and 1! Letting your team know you believe in them and you're in it to win it! Being a manly man! Not launching a fraidy-cat field goal/trying to reduce the margin of defeat rather than going for the win! What did Singletary do wrong? Someone, anyone, please make sense of this. If Singletary had elected to keep the initial field goal on the board or kicked after the successful challenge, what would TMQ have written about it? Yeah, I think we both know what he'd have said. What a self-contradicting asshole.

That's the kind of moment that makes TMQ love sports -- undrafted unknown gets the best of megabucks glory boy.

Oh brother, don't we ever know.

Mike Singletary wore dark glasses on the sideline for a night game -- Does he have any idea how ridiculous that looked? (Tony Sparano of the Dolphins wears dark glasses at all times because of an eye injury he suffered in youth; that's different.)

Right, a practice TMQ mocked Sparano for last season without knowing about the medical condition. Smooth move Gregg. I wonder if he makes fun of Michael J. Fox for not being able to keep his hands still. I hope Singletary's glasses were also medically necessary and another printed apology is in order. That shit never gets old.

Reader Stephen Levy of Washington, D.C., reports the annual Winter Concert at Nottingham Elementary in Arlington, Va., which was scheduled for Dec. 16 -- six days before winter begins --

WHY DIDN'T THEY CALL IT THE LATE LATE LATE FALL CONCERT? THAT WOULD MAKE SO MUCH MORE SENSE.

was "canceled due to wintery weather."

Hilarious. Almost like a beach closing down for a day because the sand is too hot! WHO SAW THAT COMING?

Manly-Man Play of the Week: The Chiefs continue to be a team after TMQ's heart, having gone for it on fourth down 21 times this season, including on fourth-and-1 at midfield against St. Louis on Sunday, converting.

When the 49ers do something similar, they're dumbasses.

The Jaguars lead the league with 22 fourth-down attempts, and, at Indianapolis, they went for it on fourth-and-1 from their own 39 on the first series of the third quarter. The result was a busted play -- fumbled pitch -- and a quick Colts touchdown in the other direction. But the idea was the right one.

Always, even though it led to a Colts touchdown in a game the Jaguars would go on to lose.

Jacksonville and Kansas City, both going for it on fourth down much more often than common in the NFL, both have winning records.

The 49ers continue to be run by idiots who go for it on 4th and 1 as if that's ever a good idea.

Bonus Obscure College Score of the Week: Wisconsin-Whitewater 31, Mount Union 21 (Division III championship). Five-foot-8, 170-pound Levell Coppage rushed for 299 yards -- mostly on power runs between the tackles -- as Whitewater took the Division III title from Mount Union for the second straight year.

Wow- can you believe it? A successful running back at that size, busting it up between the tackles? He's the next Woodhead! He's even better! He must be the greatest athlete of all time to succeed in the trenches against NFL competition at that size! Oh, you said college Division III? Well it makes much more sense now.

BREAKING NEWS

ESPN wants you to know something about tonight's Indy/Tennessee matchup:




We'll get more details out to you when we hear them. I suppose I shouldn't complain too much- they didn't go for an unnecessary play on words like "CLASH OF THE TITANS (and Colts)."

GAH. Please Don't Do That

Jaguars QB David Garrard, on his game-winning 50 yard TD pass to Mike Thomas (fast forward to about 7:15 on this video):

I couldn't tell if he caught it... if there was even a play on the ball... and then I saw him running into the end zone. I didn't know what to do. I thought I was gonna just- literally explode right there.

Imagine that literally happened. Literally grosser than that time Joe Theisman's leg literally snapped in two back in the day? I literally believe so.

Adding some much-need clarity to his comment, Garrard continues:

On impact. Right there.

On impact? I'm literally befuddled.

Wow, that's racist! Well not racist, but man, it's pretty fucking dumb

I subscribe to the NFL RedZone channel. It's amazing. Everything about it rules. No commercials. Only exciting plays. The opportunity to feel like I'm watching six games at once- sort of like being in a crowded sports bar on a Sunday afternoon, without all the douchetard Cowboys, Steelers, and Patriots fans there whooping it up and making everyone around them stupider by osmosis.

Another great part of it is host/quasi commentator Scott Hanson. Scott rules. He narrates, runs down some of the exciting stories from the day, occasionally does play-by-play for whatever game is on, often provides color commentary or fantasy football advice, and is always quick-witted and sharp. He talks for six hours straight which is pretty impressive in and of itself; the fact that he does it well is even more incredible. Which is why it really surprised me (as well as pissed me off) when he said this about a Peyton Hillis TD run last Sunday:

And there's Peyton Hillis, reminding us of Mike Alstott.

Here are the ways in which Hillis should remind us of Alstott: they're both white. Here are the ways in which Hillis should not remind us of Alstott: the position each played, their running styles, the situations in which their team used them, and just generally what they looked like while playing football (ON A FOOTBALL FIELD AS PART OF A FOOTBALL TEAM IN THE NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE).

Hanson is far from the only moron sportscaster making this kind of claim. It's just frustrating that he had to join their ranks since he's such a badass otherwise. But really, come on. Let's try to look past race and look at ability when comparing players who play (roughly) the same position. Does Seneca Wallace remind you of Byron Leftwich? Does Kirk Hinrich remind you of John Stockton? Does every Asian baseball player remind you of a young Ichiro? Then you're stupid. Go throw yourself out of a moving ferris wheel.

Just show some awareness, people. It's OK to admit that not every white guy who carries the ball is Mike Alstott, and not every white guy who catches passes is Brandon Stokley.

You Know What's Funny? Hair.

Fanhouse, Jay Mariotti's (presumably) erstwhile employer, has a lot of shitty writers. Shouldn't be surprising considering they hired Mariotti, but I think this article really helps drive home the point.

Take Adrian Peterson All Day, Every Day Over Chris Johnson

That's some nice nickname shoehornin'.

When it comes to the debate over who is the NFL's best runner, Adrian Peterson cannot carry Chris Johnson's hair products.

Chris Johnson has a lot of hair. Alright. Solid joke. Also, article's title and premise + its first sentence = ????

There is no doubt Tennessee's entry has the more fashionable hair.

Right, the hair thing again.

Those luxurious dreadlocks made him the first back in NFL history to gain 2,000 yards rushing while carrying 2,000 yards of hair last year.

That's a lot of hair! More hair jokes. Actually, that may not be a joke- there are something like 100,000 hairs on a human head, so yeah, multiply by length in feet, divide by 3, etc.

They also helped turn Johnson into the trendy pick as the greatest football toter on earth. At least one expert couldn't agree more.

"I'm the best back in the league," Johnson said. "He is not. I don't thinks it's close."

No hair jokes in here, just a typo.

He, of course, is Peterson, who started the latest round of debate last week when he proclaimed Johnson is not "faster, stronger, anything" than him.

Now it's up to Clay Travis and I to settle this argument. My venerable picking opponent is going with the trendy pick, probably because he wishes he had dreadlocks like Johnson.

Four hair jokes/references- this one a total BURRRRRRRRN on a fellow writer.

I'm comfortable with my boringly traditional 'do. Though I must admit there's more to like about Johnson that his hair.

Six.

He went to East Carolina, and it's always good to see a Pirate prove that NFL superstars can be found beyond the big-conference constellations. Johnson might not have even been drafted if Titans owner Bud "Comb-over" Adams

Oh for the love of God.

did not have such a keen eye for outstanding hair.

Sweet jumproping Jesus.

Johnson has quickly established himself as one of the NFL's best backs. He's just not better than Peterson.

I would definitively prove it through statistics, but you know how stats are more misleading than political attack ads. In this case they say Johnson gained about 700 more yards than Peterson last season.

I'm too busy picking on the hair bullshit to bother with the substance of this article (to the extent that any exists), but FWIW, Peterson's YPC 2009/career: 4.4/4.9. Johnson: 5.6/5.3. And then you can talk about offensive lines and yadda yadda.

What they don't say is how Johnson benefited from having Vince Young at quarterback. The Titans never knew if Young would be Superman or Lois Lane, so they had to make Johnson the offensive focal point.

Meanwhile in Minneapolis, Brett Favre rolled in and sucked half the life out of Peterson's rampaging career. That run-pass balance made the Vikings a better team, but it sure didn't enhance Peterson's fantasy value.

Johnson only averaged about three touches per game more than Peterson in 2009. BUT WHAT ABOUT HIS HAIR???

Any fantasy geek can tell you that you should always pick a runner from a Jeff Fisher-coached team. They have produced 12 1,000-yard runners since 1996, which was before the Oilers even moved to Nashville.

Any fantasy geek can tell you to always pick a Broncos running back, except when they suck, and then you shouldn't.

The Titans could dig up Johnny Cash and he'd gain 1,000 yards in their offense.

Too soon!

That doesn't mean Johnson is merely a product of the system. He is merely its latest and greatest beneficiary.

A distinction without a difference, but whatever. Let's talk hair.

But imagine if Peterson and Johnson switched teams. Their stats would probably flip, then this debate would come down to a tale of the tape:

Size --

Insert hacky joke about Johnson being smaller than Peterson.

Speed --

Insert claim that Peterson is one of the 15 fastest guys in the NFL, which is probably not true.

Intangibles -- Peterson spends his free time studying game film and baking cookies for orphans. Johnson spends his free time at the hair salon.

Haaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiirrrrrrrrrr

I'd be more analytical, but I'm afraid any sober analysis might not favor my guy. Despite having more moves, power and running instinct than Johnson, the public is currently wowed by the vision of his dreadlocks blurring through a secondary.

HAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIRRRRRRRRR

I just wish Fisher were Minnesota's coach instead of Brad Childress, who does not have a comb-over

HAIR HAIR HAIR HAIR HAIR HAIR

but does have a thing for Favre.

Who doesn't? Besides 98% of all sports fans I talk to.

In the season-opening loss to at New Orleans, the Vikings' coach all but forgot No. 28 existed in the second half.

" 'Hey, give it to me,' " Peterson told him. " 'Feed me.' I don't know if he really heard me. But there's a lot to learn from this game."

Like if the Vikings would rely on Peterson the way Tennessee relies on Johnson, he'd settle this argument once and for all.

Johnson or Peterson?

The Titan loses by a hair.

Heh heh heh. By a "hair."

But at least it's stylish hair

FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY IN HEAVEN STOP TALKING ABOUT HAIR