NBA WHO SAYS NO Rankings - Part 2

Deeper down the rabbit hole we go.

GROUP H: “Stop It, He’s a Young Stud, No Way!”

There's got to be a less sexual way to word that.

30. Bradley Beal
29. Jimmy Butler
28. Andre Drummond

Beal is under contract for next season while Butler is not, but boy, there is a very wide gulf between those two guys in terms of ability.  Very wide.  Granted, Beal is still young after spending just a year in college before being drafted, but he has not improved at all since his good-not-great rookie year.  He's still a deadly three point shooter and not much else.  The Wizards will have a difficult decision to make with him in two offseasons if he's still just a 15/3/3 guy next season.  Meanwhile, Butler has turned into an all star, and does everything better than Beal does besides shoot 3s.  I don't think the fact that Beal has another cheap year on his rookie deal really accounts for that.

UPDATE: We need to find the right teammates for Drummond soon. I’m convinced that SVG traded D.J. Augustin and Kyle Singler for Reggie Jackson as a stealth tanking move. And if he did, congratulations. It worked.

Huh?  Jackson is going for 17 and 9 (plus 5 boards) since joining the Pistons.  Augustin is somewhere between has-been and never-was.  Singler is terrible.  I'm getting to this article quite a while after Bill published it--maybe Jackson wasn't meshing with Drummond in his first few games in Detroit.  For what it's worth, Drummond is averaging 16 points a game since the trade, compared to 13 before.  So as usual it sure as hell sounds like Bill has no fucking idea what he's talking about.

GROUP G: “Sorry, Too Many Karmic Implications”

Bill's constant references to karma: more or less obnoxious than Gregggggg's incessant references to the Football Gods?

27. Tony Parker
26. Tim Duncan
25. Dwyane Wade
24. Dirk Nowitzki

Well hey, lookie there, it just so happens that four veteran superstars with titles who have never changed teams all have EXACTLY the same trade value!  Go figure!  Actually, I kind of sound dumb making that point since they really DO have the same trade value--their current teams are never going to trade them unless it's at the player's explicit demand.  Still though, come on.  

23. Paul George

What's he doing in this group?  I guess Bill was like "He's probably not going to play this season... fuck it, just throw him in with the aging superstar group.  WHO SAYS NO?" while talking to a houseplant.

UPDATE: Parker is starting to look like Parker again. Oh God … oh no …

Parker has always looked like Parker.  He's 32.  His points and assists have taken a dip this year, but so have his minutes.  I assume in the original rankings he was like "PARKER IS FINISHED--HE'S DONE."  And now he's acting like it's some revelation that he's not done.  Exact same thing happened with Wade (who is 33) a couple of years ago.  Bill has the cognitive capacity of a goldfish.  

GROUP F: “Hold On, I Have to Finish Guffawing”

22. Andrew Wiggins
21. Giannis Antetokounmpo

UPDATE: I blew it with Wiggins. He’s a top-12 trade asset. 

Given who you put in the next group down, sheesh, I have to say you blew it with the Greek Freak (hate that nickname but not going to type out Antetokounmpo more than once) too.  

(Stop looking at me like that.) I don’t know what else to say. (Seriously, stop shaking your head.) We’re moving on. We’re moving forward.

Wiggins, of course, is having a great season.  Greek Freak just turned 20 in December, is 6'11" (so he's probably still growing into his frame and learning how to maximize his athleticism) and is good for an efficient 13 and 7.  If he were a Celtic, Bill would have put him in the top five.  Meanwhile...

GROUP E: “Well-Priced Impact Stars”

At least there's positional, contract, and experience variety here.  Lowry, Conley, Horford and Ibaka are all signed at least through 2016 and for roughly $10-$12 million each.  That security is nice, and they're all good players, but I would be shocked if more than just a few "win now" teams value each of them over Wiggins (which Bill admits), Greek Freak, Paul George (who's on an expensive deal, but is locked up through 2018) or Jimmy Butler.  Meanwhile, Lillard is 1) awesome and 2) locked up on a cheap rookie rookie deal through 2016.  Definitely right to have him at the top of this group, but I think he'd go above the guys in the next group too.  Leonard is also awesome, but more of a question mark, and he's an RFA this summer meaning he's about to get expensive.  I don't think he belongs here at all.  But enough of this levelheaded analysis.  Let's see what Bill manages to fart out onto his keyboard about these guys.

20. Mike Conley
19. Serge Ibaka
18. Kawhi Leonard
17. Al Horford
16. Kyle Lowry
15. Damian Lillard

UPDATE: I’m not rattled by having Lowry too high after his January-February offensive swoon. He’s too good. 

OK.  Good for you.  Way to show conviction, dumb person who is often wrong (although not here, necessarily).

I’m mildly rattled by Ibaka’s mysterious knee injury, along with the fact that I wouldn’t let OKC’s medical staff help me with a head cold at this point. 

And since that was written, Kevin Durant has started falling apart.  Hardly the fault of the OKC training staff, though.  Or so I'd think. 

Kawhi’s electrifying two-way showdown with LeBron on Thursday made me wonder if I ranked him too low, 

As Bill so often says, CONTRACTS MATTER BLAH BLAH BLAH

but man, when are those 3s coming back for him? How bad is that mysterious hand injury? This isn’t a normal trend for 3-point shooters: 37.6 percent (2012-14 regular season), 41.6 percent (2012-14 playoffs) … 32.2 percent (2014-15 season). 

Actually, that's really not that weird.  The playoff number is great, but even with all the playoff games the Spurs have played while making the Finals two of the last three years, that 41.6% is on fewer than 200 attempts.  The 2012-2014 regular season vs. 2014-2015 regular season comparison is more valid, especially since Leonard is also shooting worse on his twos and worse at the line this year.  But a dip from 37.6% to 32.2% isn't catastrophic, especially for a stretch 4 type guy who, as Bill knows, might be hurt.  Anyways, he's talking out of both sides of his mouth as well as his ass.  Suffice to say that Leonard is going to get paid this summer, whether by the Spurs or someone else.  But at this year's trade deadline, I'm not sure he'd be an asset on par with a cost controlled Horford or Ibaka.

San Antonio can’t win four straight playoff rounds and realize their ’69 Celts destiny 

LIKE I SAID IT AWL COMES BACK TO THE FACKIN' C'S.  

if Kawhi’s 3s don’t come around and defenses start leaving him wide open. It’s true.

Thanks for arguing with no one ("It's true, DON'T DENY IT") about something no one fucking cares about ("AHHH THE SPURS AS GOOD AS THE '69 C'S????????").  I'm sure they'll be just fine come playoff time.  They only have the best (ageless) PF ever, an elite point guard and the best coach of his generation to back Leonard up.  I don't think the difference between Leonard shooting a sub-average but still acceptable percentage on a handful of 3s per game versus him shooting the lights out on a handful of 3s per game is going to make or break them.

GROUP D: “The Mega Free Agents”

THEY ARE EQUALLY VALUABLE!  Actually, you know what, after looking at their lines--these two really do probably belong together.  They're about the same age, are both UFAs this year (who will probably look for short term deals due to the big salary cap bump that's on the horizon), and they do post pretty similar numbers while kind of sort of playing the same position.  Aldridge has the sexier raw stat line, but he also plays for a faster-paced team and doesn't share big man responsibilities with anyone as capable as Z-Bo.  Fine.  They deserve to be in "Group D" together.  Thank you for not calling them "young studs."

14. LaMarcus Aldridge
13. Marc Gasol

UPDATE: No regrets. 

NONE!  I DID IT ALL BY MYSELF, AMERICA!

Although it’s bizarre that Aldridge (23.3 ppg, 10.5 rpg, 22.3 PER, playing hurt for two-plus months, carrying a possible no. 2 seed) has been left out of the MVP race. It’s almost like the national media ignores Portland or something.

Well, first of all, fuck you and your own personal biases that cause you to ignore anything in baseball that's not BOS/NYY or relevant to your fucking AL-only keeper league full of zeroes.  Second of all, sure, Aldridge is having a nice season, but that PER is only good for 11th in the league.  He's not exactly within shouting distance of Davis, Westbrook or Curry, either.  But good job kissing babies and winning hearts and minds in RIP CITY.  I'm sure you appreciate all the dumbshits from there who will write you emails praising that blurb.

GROUP C: “No Offense, But I’m Hanging Up”

12. John Wall
11. Klay Thompson

Here again we have two guys who are almost the same age, with nearly identical contract situations (both locked up for big money through 2019), with similar PERs.  But in this case, I think the value comparison falls apart pretty quickly.  Whereas Bill overrates Bradley Beal pretty heavily, I think he's probably underrating Wall (or rather, overrating Thompson).  Thompson plays on the league's best team, alongside either the best or second best point guard in the league (who creates tons of wide open shots for Thompson every game), with a bunch of other very strong role players/semi-stars who make the team hum like a well-tuned engine.  Meanwhile, Wall carries the entire burden on offense for his poorly-coached team of good-not-great overpaid players (Nene, Marcin Gortat) and dinosaurs (Paul Pierce, Andre Miller until the Wizards cut him).  

He leads his team in scoring by a good margin while also handing out ten assists per game (second only to CP3 in the league) and grabbing a not-insignificant five boards.  He's the only guy on that team that can create his own shot and he plays 36 minutes per game.  It's a bit of a weird exercise since it would be chaotic to play Wall alongside Curry, but imagine switching these two guys and I think the Warriors come out way, way, way ahead on the deal.  In fact, better exercise--switch Beal and Thompson.  I think their numbers probably switch too.  Thompson is nothing special.  He also looks like he's probably an asshole off the court.  There, I said it.

UPDATE: If I had to do it over again, I’d give Wiggins and Kawhi these two spots and bump Wall and Thompson back a few spots. We’re stuck with those first two parts for eternity. Without further ado, the 10 most untradable players of 2015.

Yeah, people are really going to be looking back at these rankings five years from now.  You'll rue the day you improperly valued Wiggins in your bullshit rankings until you're in the ground, Simmons.  Totally.

GROUP B: “The Untouchables”

10. Kyrie Irving

Covered in detail in Friday’s 1,900-word “sneak peek” of Part 3. I can’t even pull off a sneak peek correctly.

I'm impressed you're even able to maintain your job at ESPN without being curb stomped by someone there who has actual knowledge and charisma yet makes 20% of your salary.  Don't be too hard on yourself.  Also, everyone go read this again.

9. Boogie Cousins

Hard to critique this part since I'm a DeMarcus Cousins fan, for reasons beyond his game.  Just kidding!  (Not about being a fan, but about this being hard to critique.)

In Part 2, I mentioned the smartest non-trades in recent NBA history — 

An easy set of non-events to compile, since we know all of them that have ever occurred, and teams definitely would never leak incorrect information about non-trades in order to further shape the market, affect free agent salaries, placate angry fans, etc.

including the time Houston dangled Hakeem Olajuwon for a Godfather offer (Steve Smith, Glen Rice AND Rony Seikaly), got turned down, then rejected Miami’s counteroffer (Seikaly, Grant Long and Harold Miner). How on earth was the window ever open to steal one of the NBA’s 12 greatest players ever? Because you are what you’re worth. 

Gee Bill, thanks for answering a question no one asked.  Let's see.  Kareen was traded in his prime.  Shaq was traded as he entered his prime.  Barkley was traded in his prime.  Kevin Garnett was traded at the tail end of his prime.  Could the answer to the question be one that every sports fan already knows: "These things fucking happen?"

For the previous five seasons, an increasingly unhappy Hakeem had been stuck playing with so many past-their-primers, never-made-its and never-got-theres that everyone inadvertently forgot that the Dream was unfreakingtradable. 

No.  Go fuck yourself with scissors.  No one "forgot" that.

Had the Heat countered with Rice (a top-15 trade asset that summer), Seikaly (averaged 16 and 12 in ’92) and either Miner or multiple no. 1 picks, then the deal would have gotten done 

WHO SAYS NO

and we would’ve had a different champ in 1994 and 1995. Instead, Houston won the ’94 and ’95 titles and Hakeem unleashed one of the NBA’s most iconic three-or-four-year runs of the past 35 years: 

I'm glad we are evaluating the trade value of DeMarcus Cousins right now.

the short list includes Jordan from 1989 to 1993 and 1996 to 1998, Bird from 1984 to 1987, Magic from 1987 to 1990, Shaq from 2000 to 2002, LeBron from 2012 to 2014, Hakeem from 1993 to 1995, and Kobe from 2008 to 2010 

Great.  Cool.

(and probably in that order).

THAT ORDER AND ONLY EXACTLY THAT ORDER.  NO ONE SAYS NO.

Maybe 2015 Boogie isn’t 1992 Hakeem, 

So, thanks for the tangent, then.

but he is definitely on pace to earn the same level of career-related empathy. In less than five seasons, he’s played for six coaches, two GMs and two super-shaky owners. He lived through consecutive seasons in which the Kings were moving … and then weren’t … and then were … and then weren’t. 

The Kings had the worst owners in the league (yes, worse than James Dolan).  Then those guys sold the team to some other asshole who doesn't know what he's doing.  I'd feel worse for their fans if they didn't live in the only part of California that 1) is close to cool shit 2) doesn't have THAT much meth and 3) is not outrageously expensive.

When I asked him during All-Star Weekend 

I HAVE ACCESS!!!!!  EVERYONE LISTEN TO ME MY OPINION MEANS MORE NOW!  Bill is really stealing a page from the Peter King playbook there.

how many starting point guards he’s played with, he couldn’t remember everyone off the top of his head. Maybe he took much-deserved Internet heat for a variety of foolish young-guy mistakes, and maybe he could have been a better teammate at times. (I’m being kind.) 

More King-isms.  SHAME ON YOU, BOOGIE.  WHY DO YOU GO BY BOOGIE?  THAT'S CHILDISH.  I'M GOING TO CALL YOU BOOGIE FROM NOW ON BECAUSE I FIND IT AMUSING.

But ever since he got himself into terrific shape last year, everyone has HAD to double-team him. I mean …

Boogie, last two seasons (123 games): 33.0 mpg, 23.1 ppg, 12.0 rpg, 48% FG, 25.5 PER
Duncan, ’01-’02 and ’02-’03 (163 games): 39.9 mpg, 24.4 ppg, 12.8 rpg, 51% FG, 27.0 PER

Maybe he isn’t Apex Duncan, especially in the defense/teammate/leadership/intangibles/getting-thrown-out-of-games-for-wonky-behavior categories, 

I'm glad someone taught you the word "wonky."  It should never be used, ever, but if you're going to use it that is not how you do so.  WHICH IS THE WONK TEAM?  Remember that horseshit?  That was also not a correct usage.

Boogie HAS improved. Did you know his rim protection numbers are slightly better than DeAndre Jordan’s numbers this season? And with the spacing that Boogie creates and the numbers he’s putting up, you could absolutely run a world-class offense around him. Only you can’t … because he’s wasting his pre-prime playing for Jackass Central on a perpetual lottery team in a stacked conference.

Haha.  No sarcasm, that last one is a good line.  "Jackass Central."  That's pretty good.  Bill does induce one chuckle from me about every six months or so.  HE'S STILL GOT IT!

So if you were Boogie, what would make you feel good about playing in Sacramento other than the city’s fantastic hoops fans? George Karl? Too soon to say. 

Yeah, the guy only has like 1,000 wins as an NBA coach, all in mid-sized or small markets.  Probably not a good fit in Sacramento.

Ben McLemore? Too soon to say. 

I don't think he belongs on this list.  I'd hate to be a guy picked 7th overall in a super thin draft and have someone be like OUR BEST PLAYER IS COUNTING ON YOU.  GET IT DONE.  That would suck.  McLemore left Kansas after just a year, and wasn't even the best fucking player on the team for that one year.

Cap space this summer? Crap, they don’t have it. 

Dang, now they don't have a chance to get turned down by Gasol and Aldridge, whose styles of play wouldn't mesh with Cousins's at all, or to overpay Goran Dragic!  Nuts!

Their next lottery pick? Crap, it’s headed to Chicago unless Sacramento finishes in the bottom 10. 

Which they are almost mathematically assured of doing at this point, so, let's not shit our pants just yet.

This is bleaker than bleak. 

No, that is your narrative that you are constructing because Hakeem once almost got traded or something.  In fact, watch this: Knicks, Lakers, Nuggets, Pistons, 76ers, Nets, Heat, Thunder (very suddenly on this list), Magic, Timberwolves (even with Wiggins).  There's a list of teams with bleaker futures than Sacramento's.  Fuck, the Knicks might not be a playoff team again until like 2020.  That's hard to do in a league with 16 of 30 teams making the postseason.  I'll bet you a shiny nickel the Kings get there before all the teams on that list that aren't in the playoffs already this year (i.e., the teams on that list that are also rebuilding right now).

My advice to Kings fans: You better keep showering Boogie with love. Because the moment he checks out and says to himself, “I cannot play for these jackasses anymore,” there’s no going back. (And we’re damned close.)

He's under contract through 2018.  They'll be fine.

Last Boogie note: Check out these names: Wilt, Kareem, Barkley, Pettit, Duncan and Elgin. That’s the complete list of players, along with Boogie, who averaged 23 and 12 with a 25-plus PER in their fourth and fifth NBA seasons combined. 

HOLY SHIT DO YOU REALIZE WHAT THIS MEANS????  It means that when a player is really good, like Cousins is, you can concoct a moderately complex set of criteria and show that only that player a few other all time greats have met all the criteria.  Very cool stuff. 

Boogie isn’t THAT good. 

Jesus, whose side are you on, here?  I thought we were all in the DEMARCUS (I hate people like Bill who over-embrace nicknames) fan club together.  He has a good chance of being every bit as good as Barkley, Kareem and Baylor.  The other three, maybe not so much.  But still.

But he’s really, really good. And he’s saddled with Vivek and the Bumbling Vivikettes. 

Forced.  Just stick with Jackass Central.

We’re well past the point of using New Owner Syndrome as a viable excuse. Too much has happened. We wasted five years of Boogie’s career. Next year, we’re probably heading for a sixth. Might be time to get Liam Neeson involved.

"We" haven't wasted anything.  You're not the center of the universe, you cunt.  You're not in charge of basketball.  You're not in charge of anything other than a vastly overrated "sports" (ok, it's really like 25% sports, but who's counting?) content mill and a shitty TV show that ESPN airs at 4 AM.  Just stay in your lane and come up with funny nicknames for dysfunctional franchises.  Christ.

More next week.

FMTMQR: NFL returns // I'm sick of it already // Fuck Gregg Easterbrook

It's time for the NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE OF FOOTBALL TEAMS to resume play.  Thus, I will resume torturing myself by trying to get through Easterbrook's columns without descending into a fitful rage of all caps internet yelling.  This column is particularly fun (read: goddamn infuriating) because of his continued misunderstanding as to whether people want to read haikus when they're looking for sports analysis.  He thinks they do, but little does he know, haikus are enjoyed only by serious poetry academics, 4th graders learning poetry and cleft-assholed writers.

America's original all-haiku NFL season predictions! 

I hate this article already!

This is the 15th year, the crystal anniversary -- Bristol, I'd like a dilithium crystal, please. 

Would a swift kick in the cunt work instead?

Below find a haiku, with predicted record, for each of the NFL's 32 teams. Allowing you casually to say to friends and romantic interests, "Hey, I was reading poetry today."

And if they sincerely respond with "That's very interesting," then fuck you and fuck them.

First, one of those serious topics that comes before fun. 

WHY ARE THE JEWS MAKING SO MANY VIOLENT MOVIES?  It's a new season, so I get to break that reference out again.  And hell, I might break it out in every TMQR.  Who's going to stop me?

There's progress at the intersection of sports and society -- especially, of football and society. In just the past five years, a bleak picture has improved. 

Uh... barely?  Negligibly?

So -- is victory won?

No?

• Emphasis on reducing deliberate helmet-to-helmet contact at all levels of football -- pro, college, high school and youth.

The NFL insists that rule changes aimed in this direction have nothing to do with concussion prevention, because football does not cause concussions, and even if it did, it would be the fault of the players who agreed to play the sport, not of the NFL or any of its subsidiaries or affiliates.

• Emphasis at all levels on teaching heads-up tackling form, something many coaches didn't even know about not long ago.

Yeah fucking right.  Coaches used to tell kids that leading with the head was perfectly acceptable--in fact, it was preferred, because it's easier to not see where you're going when you're trying to spear a guy in the sternum!

• Reduced contact time in practice -- more concussions happen in practice than in games -- in the NFL and NCAA. The defending champion Seahawks were just zinged by the league for not adhering to the less-contact rule.

I'm real sure these rules will be taken very seriously, especially at the NCAA level, where the average coach falls somewhere between "Ted Bundy" and "Timothy McVeigh" on the sociopath scale.

• The Ed O'Bannon and Power Five decisions, which may lead either to less inequity in the financial situations of big-college athletes or to the collapse of the NCAA. Either would be preferable to the current arrangement.

I'm happy about the O'Bannon decision (haven't read Power Five yet), but I am pretty sure that for fans of the sport of football, the collapse of the NCAA is not preferable to the current system, no matter how much said system eats butthole.

• ESPN put its weight and brand behind adding graduation rates to the ranking of college teams.

The latest sensation that's sweeping the nation!  ESPN Grade (that's really what it's called), the sports world's newest ranking system that is definitely going to change the way fans look at top 25 football programs!

Most important because of the large numbers involved at the prep level -- never forget most serious football is played in high school, and it's played by people who, legally, are children -- are two huge reforms:

I'll bet you thought most football was played by 57 year olds, but you're wrong.  Only Gregggggg has the intellectual capacity to understand that a time-consuming and athletically demanding sport is mostly played by the section of society with the most free time and spare energy.

• State laws requiring youth and high school coaches to get training in diagnosing and managing concussions have gone from unknown to almost universal. Rules regarding summer two-a-days heat acclimation have gone from rare to common. In 2011, on the same August day two prep football players died in Georgia of heat stroke. Then, Georgia had no meaningful rules about heat and hydration. Now, Georgia follows the National Athletic Trainers' Association guidelines. Many states do, and soon most or all will.

I don't want to shit on anyone's safety parade, but let's call a spade a spade: these rules change due to liability worries on the part of school districts and schools, not because they're good ideas from a safety perspective.  High school football is slowly but surely becoming big business, especially in states like Georgia, and you can be sure that the only thing that will stop schools from DOIN' FOOTBAWL PRACTICE THE WAY MY PAPPY DID AND THE WAY HIS PAPPY DID BEFORE HIM is a lawsuit.  Just sayin'.

• States are beginning to restrict high school football contact time. California, the most populous state, just enacted a law that soon will limit full contact in practice to three hours a week during the summer and season and prohibit offseason contact. Texas, ground zero of prep football culture, already limits full contact to 90 minutes a week.

OK, fine, I'll can the cynicism regarding serious topics and get back to the dumb stuff.  Right after this.

These are movements in the right direction. 

True.

Your columnist has been pounding the table about athletic reform for years, and many times expressed cynicism regarding whether there would ever be positive change.  Now there has been. 

PRAISE BE UNTO YOU, KING EASTERBROOK.  IT IS YOU WHO HAVE FOISTED THIS CHANGE UPON THE FOOTBALL WORLD.

Now -- America's original all-haiku NFL season predictions.

AFC East

Brady's last hurrah?
Modeling career beckons.
The New England Pats.
Forecast finish: 11-5

A smoking wreckage
of Jeff Ireland era.
Miami Dolphins.
Forecast finish: 6-10

"I am the greatest!"
Ali boast seems mild to Jets.
The Jersey/B Jets.
Forecast finish: 6-10

Foolish Club loses
Ralph Wilson, last of his time.
The Buffalo Bills.
Forecast finish: 5-11

Is there any good reason to pay this man to write this garbage?  Any reason at all?  Do his pageviews justify whatever ESPN pays him?  Is he bringing a core demographic to their site that otherwise wouldn't click there?  This guy is a fucking intellectual pissant.  I hope he regularly shits his pants when he's nowhere near a bathroom.  What a fucking waste of letters this is.

Department Of Redundancy Department: Ferrari's new $1.6 million, 950-horsepower supercar is named LaFerrari. Calling it "the LaFerrari" would become "the The Ferrari." Oprah has an endorsement deal for chai tea. Perhaps the tea should be branded Oprah Winfrey's Oprah Chai Tea Powered by Oprah Winfrey. "Chai" in Eurasian languages simply means tea. So "chai tea" is "tea with tea."

And what's the deal with airplane food?

Public Subsidies For Private Profit: New York state taxpayers just invested $90 million in upgrades to Ralph Wilson Stadium, mainly to increase Bills team revenue by making the concession areas more appealing. Reader Jim Medwid of Alden, New York, attended a recent Bills preseason game and reports: "The concourses are now wider, but all drinking fountains have been removed from the stadium, which prohibits bringing in any kind of bottle, even clear-sided water bottles." So taxpayers paid $90 million for renovations that force Bills ticket holders to buy $5 water bottles from the concession stands, and guess who keeps the profit.

Frank Stallone!  No, but seriously, fuck NFL owners in their fucking eye sockets.  Sometimes I think they pay Dan Snyder and Jerry Jones to be huge assholes in very public ways, so the rest of them can also be huge assholes without attracting the negative attention they deserve.

NFC East

Warp speed does not help
if the shields (defense) no good.
The Philly Eagles.
Forecast finish: 10-6

Volunteers from the
audience playing OL.
Jersey/A Giants.
Forecast finish: 9-7

Start fast, then brace for
annual December swoon.
The Dallas Cowboys
Forecast finish: 8-8

NEVER says Dan of
name change. CERTAIN say we all.
Washington R*dsk*s.
Forecast finish: 5-11

Normally I would remove this kind of garbage from my posts, but I'm leaving all 32 of these in.  Bask in their worthlessness.  Revel in their uncleverness.  For fucking Christ's sake, he shoehorns the team name into the last five syllable line for each of them, meaning he's only actually writing two thirds of a haiku for each team.  I hate him and I hate that I'm even bothering to analyze this crap.

New York Times Corrections On Fast Forward: During the past six months, the Paper of Record, according to its corrections page:

[List of like 25 things the NYT corrected that are kind of weird and in some cases probably didn't warrant a correction, which is the kind of thing that is interesting to people who enjoy the smell of their own farts.  But I left this one:]

• Corrected a correction;

HAHAHAHA OH WOW.  YOU TRULY ARE THE CAT'S MEOW, NYT CORRECTIONS DEPARTMENT.  PAPER OF RECORD?  MORE LIKE PAPER OF REPEATED MISTAKES!

AFC North

Took Lombardi, then
missed playoffs. Win some, lose some.
Bal'amer Ravens.
Forecast finish: 10-6

Oh-for-the-playoffs:
Marvin Lewis can't shake curse.
The Cincy Bengals.
Forecast finish: 8-8

Graying defense, no
run game. Still -- watch out for them.
The Pittsburgh Steelers.
Forecast finish: 8-8

Johnny, LBJ,
GOP: Cleveland does rock.
The Browns (2.0).
Forecast finish: 7-9

The Steelers one is just fucking terrible.  The Browns one is somehow worse.  I'd rather watch six hours of CBS's pregame show than think about these.

Another NFL Abuse Of Taxpayers Continues: The FCC has begun its review of the proposed AT&T-DirecTV merger. Your columnist thinks this creates an opportunity for either the FCC or the Justice Department to end the arrangement in which only subscribers of DirecTV can purchase NFL Sunday Ticket.

I'm with him on this, and his points are pretty fair and reasonable, but I had to leave this in:

DirecTV is a great service if you can get it, but millions cannot -- clear line of sight to the sky above Texas is required. Trees? Live in an urban apartment building? Fuhgedabout DirecTV. 

Why in fuck's name are you doing an Italian mobster bit in the middle of explaining why the DirecTV/Sunday Ticket partnership is bad for consumers?

NFC North

Bears: high-scoring team
with no defense. Yes, the Bears.
The Chicago Bears.
Forecast finish: 10-6

Pack, Favre reach peace deal.
Brett: Give pointers to Putin.
The Green Bay Packers.
Forecast finish: 9-7

AAU football:
Superstars but poor results.
The Detroit Lions.
Forecast finish: 6-10

Breathe sigh of relief:
Broncs now more S. Bowl losses.
Minnesota Vikes.
Forecast finish: 4-12

I am slowly developing Stockholm Syndrome.  I kind of like the Bears one.  I'll admit it.  I kind of like that.  They had a bad offense and a good defense for so long!  Now it's reversed!  The world is a funny place.  Here, someone hand me that bottle of pills so I can knock myself unconscious.

Bad Isn't Good Enough; The 76ers Hope To Be Horrible: Two weeks ago, TMQ declared the Philadelphia 76ers have become "Zen masters" of the NBA art of getting rid of players in order to lose deliberately. I noted that in the past 12 months they'd traded away their three best performers, mostly for benchwarmers with expiring contracts, then used not one, not two, not three, but four choices in the June 2014 draft on gents who are either injured or have existing contracts with European teams. Drafting them ensured more losing!

Please don't try to understand or write about other sports!  You're bad enough when it comes to football!  Thanks!

Unified Field Theory of Creep: 

Yep, he's still going back to that well.

AFC South

Hardly seems as though
Peyton departed, does it?
Indy Lucky Charms.
Forecast finish: 10-6

Fisher shown the door
after 16: downhill since.
Tennessee Titans.
Forecast finish: 7-9

Kirk, Spock both yelled KHANNNNNNNNNNNNNN!
How long 'til Jax fans yell same?
Jacksonville Jaguars.
Forecast finish: 6-10

Texans last season,
Three Mile Island: two meltdowns.
The Houston Texans.
Forecast finish: 6-10

The Lucky Charms!  A terrible new nickname!  Has he been using this all these years, and I just failed to notice?  And look at the Texans one--don't tell me he's retiring "Moo Cows."  THAT'S GOLD, JERRY!  GOLD!  Their mascot looks like a cow, so he calls them the cows, plus adds the sound cows make.  Why isn't he editor in chief of Harper's yet?

Harvard's endowment is sufficient that every undergraduate could attend free, but instead university insiders live in luxury while alums are dunned for more donations, a topic this column will return to later this autumn with my annual endowment-abuse item.

Honestly the only part of any of his columns I actively enjoy.  Big private universities with huge endowments that beg and beg and beg their alums relentlessly are fucking awful.  

Hedge funds are consistently effective at one thing -- enriching their own top management. Bernard Madoff ran a hedge fund. 

Haha, look, I hate big time Wall Street investment bankers and fund managers as much as the next working stiff, but those two sentences next to each other are pretty fucking ludicrous.  You might as well say "Governments are terrible.  Pol Pot ran a government."

NFC South

Gave Seahawks better
playoff game than Broncos did.
New Orleans Saints.
Forecast finish: 12-4

League's only team with
a Director of Mascots.
Carolina Cats.
Forecast finish: 12-4

Bad-sport Schiano
replaced by nice guy Lovie.
Tampa Buccaneers.
Forecast finish: 6-10

NFC title
game seems very long ago.
Atlanta Falcons.
Forecast finish: 6-10

Look, Greg Schiano is a gaping asshole, but we don't need to keep talking about him, do we?  I think he has successfully eliminated himself from the NFL head coaching pool (non-Raiders division) for life.  The BROWNS wouldn't hire him this offseason.  The fucking Browns.  Let's let him fade into obscurity, shall we?

AFC West

Scoreboard was spinning
'til met the Bluish Men Group.
The Denver Broncos.
Forecast finish: 11-5

Made it to nine-oh;
do not talk about the rest.
Kansas City Chiefs.
Forecast finish: 10-6

Dude, let's hit the beach.
Whoa, we have a game today?
San Diego Bolts.
Forecast finish: 9-7

Soon may have no home.
Then San Antonio bound?
The Oakland Raiders.
Forecast finish: 3-13

The Chargers one is probably as bad as these could possibly get.  Right?  Jesus, Mary and fucking Joseph, I hope so.

Exhaust On The Car Pages: This column has noted that newspapers long have had a touchy relationship with auto reviewing. Auto dealers are major advertisers, so reviewers tend to praise all marques. Reviewers tend to extol maximum horsepower, regardless of cost, environmental impact or the relationship between horsepower and road rage -- after all, they don't fuel or insure the cars they test-drive. The terrific 2002 book "High and Mighty" by Keith Bradsher detailed the ways in which automakers all but bribe newspaper reviewers.

Dude, it's 2014, not 1987.  Fuel economy has been a large concern for like 99% of car buyers for more than a decade now.  This is not exactly a timely news item.  You think newspaper car columnists were busy talking about 0 to 60 times and number of cupholders in the middle of post-mortgage crisis recession five years ago?  Get fucking real.  The exception would be, of course, publications aimed at readers who want to buy super high end high performance cars with bad gas mileage, and who have lots of money, and don't care about fuel economy, and make up a small portion of the population, and are mostly assholes who aren't worth complaining about.

[Three paragraphs of complaining deleted]

Of course the New York Times has wealthy readers who want news about products for the 1 percent: the paper touts expensive fashion and high-end restaurants, too. 

He figured it out!  

But a designer cocktail dress or $300 meal don't have public-policy implications. 

First of all, they kind of do.  Second of all, good fucking luck getting a publication that caters to wealthy readers to try to tell the wealthy readers to stop enjoying the kinds of things wealthy people enjoy.  Let me know how that works out.

New Cognomen: Reader Damon Spear of Seattle argues, "If you're going to use Jersey/A, Jersey/B and City of Tampa, you should call Colin Kaepernick's team the Santa Clara 49ers." Mr. Data, make it so!

I'm going to fucking cry.  I'm going to fucking cry.

NFC West

Second-best for two
straight years. This year may be best?
Santa Clara team.
Forecast finish: 12-4

West Coast offense steps
back, West Coast defense steps up.
Seattle Seahawks.
Forecast finish: 11-5

Won 10, went home: League
needs seeded playoff format.
The AZ Cardinals.
Forecast finish: 9-7

Chose Bradford over
Griffin: Regrets begin now.
The St. Louis Rams.
Forecast finish: 4-12

Solid analysis on the Rams one.  The decision was definitely that simple: either Bradford, or Griffin.  That's all it came down to.  And to be sure, while Bradford's career is now completely off track. Griffin has zero injury issues and at this point is guaranteed to be much better than Bradford will be if and when Bradford's body stops falling apart.

Sports Economics Watch: Two weeks ago TMQ noted that Tony Romo and Andy Dalton, a combined 1-6 in the postseason, have richer contracts than Tom Brady, whose 18 playoff victories are the most ever. 

Record in seven preseason games (during which the guys named probably played a combined total of like 100 snaps) vs. number of playoff wins, 80% of which were accumulated before Barack Obama was elected.  That's some gooooood analyzin' right there.  How about you just say that Romo is getting old and getting terrible, and Dalton is young and will probably never be better than mediocre, and Brady, even though he's old, is better than both of them?  Would that maybe be a better way to illustrate this TRAVESTY that is pro athlete pay not perfectly tracking to players' relative levels of skill?

Next Week: During the preseason, Tuesday Morning Quarterback uses "vanilla" items designed to confuse scouts from other sports columns. Starting next week as the football artificial universe resumes, TMQ will come at readers from all directions with obscure references, recondite analogies and unorthodox fact packages. I'll employ an up-tempo format in which each new item begins before the previous one ends.

And I'll be right here the whole way, pointing out what a dipshit you are.

Three months after starting to follow hockey, I know way more about it than noted hockey writer Bill Simmons

That's about as noteworthy as knowing more about sabermetrics than Joe Morgan, or knowing more about hip hop than Tony Kornheiser. In fact it's no more noteworthy than knowing more than Simmons does about anything besides the NBA. Still, after reading a dogshit piece he wrote for Grantland about the Los Angeles Kings, I couldn't help but smirk. I followed the NHL back when I was in middle school, stopped for almost 15 years, picked it back up this January, and could easily recognize that Simmons was talking out of his colon. Never change, Bill. Never change.

The L.A. Kings blew a chance to clinch their division (and a no. 3 seed) Thursday night, losing a shootout at home to San Jose. Those two teams play again on Saturday night, in San Jose, with the winner getting the no. 3 seed and the loser getting the no. 7 seed. (Late note after we posted:

Leitch and Simmons are the same person! Holy shit, it makes so much sense! It's like I just finished watching Fight Club for the first time!

Apparently Phoenix can win the division as well by winning its last two games.

Late note after I wrote this: my editors informed me that I didn't have all the facts correct. There's a first time for everything, I suppose.

I'm not too concerned because, again, it's Phoenix.)

Phoenix ended up winning those games and the division.

None of this really matters because seeds don't matter in hockey -- anybody can beat anybody anywhere at anytime --

Home teams in game 7s in NHL playoff history: 85-55.

but for the die-hards sitting in my section, it mattered for two reasons.

I love his insinuation that any RATIONAL fan doesn't care whether their team is the 3 seed or the 8 seed. It's only those crazypants lunatics who actually want home ice advantage.

1. The no. 3 seed potentially means an extra playoff game (Game 7, no less). Like everyone else who bought Kings playoff tickets, I wanted that extra game. Badly.

Ah, the perspective of the everyman fan that made Bill famous. I DEMAND THE OPPORTUNITY TO BUY MORE $200 PLAYOFF TICKETS! ALSO, DAVID STERN, YOUR REFUSAL TO MAKE SURE TEAMS PLAY THEIR STAR PLAYERS IN EVERY GAME SPITS IN THE FACE OF THOSE OF US WHO GO TO DOZENS OF GAMES A YEAR! I DID NOT BUY THESE CLIPPERS SEASON TICKETS TO SEE DERRICK ROSE ON THE SIDELINES IN A SUIT! A POX ON YOU!

I was rooting for the Kings like they were a Boston team last night.

Sitting in your section must be super fun.

2. I know this sounds impossible, but in 44 years, the Kings have only captured one division title. They even put up a banner in Staples Center for it. Is there a better way to prove your fans have been tortured than hanging division banners,

Lots of teams that aren't 80+ years old do that. I know it's funny to imagine franchises outside of PEDROIA NATION being excited about regular season success, but it happens.

or even worse, having one of those fans say during a game, "We need to get that banner?" (And yes, I heard someone say that last night.)

Lol what's that guy's problem? What is he, a fan?

So last night's battle against the Sharks felt like a de facto playoff game.

What a shock, considering absolutely nothing was on the line.

You can always judge the chippiness of any hockey game by the number of times after a goalie freezes the puck when an opposing forward does the "go an extra couple of feet and abruptly stops right in front of the goalie just in case the puck falls out" move, then at least one opponent whacks him in the face and they do the whole "Hey, what was that????" staredown/shoving/sarcastic swearing routine.

Hockey, explained by a nine year old pro wrestling fan.

The Kings and Sharks did that after just about every whistle.

And then dad bought us popcorn, but I spilled mine, but it was OK because then we got hot dogs.

Late in the third period, with the Kings pressing on a power play and Jarrett Stoll flying up the ice on a two-on-one, the evil Ryane Clowe (a bearded bully on the Sharks who had already scored a goal and won two fights) broke up the breakaway by deflecting the puck with this stick. This wouldn't have been a big deal except, you know, CLOWE WAS SITTING ON THE BENCH AT THE TIME!!!! Did all four referees miss him doing this? Of course they did. After the 75th time they replayed it on the video screen, everyone knew the Kings would lose because that's just how hockey works — when you get screwed over on something like that, there's no bouncing back.

"That's just how hockey works." - some asshole who is a famous sportswriter because of his super sweet Las Vegas bachelor party tips, his reality TV knowledge, and his ability to repeatedly drop the same tired references from the same five or six movies into columns that use sports as a backdrop for stories about his family

Of course, that wasn't my biggest takeaway from Thursday's game. Like always, the Kings got their asses kicked in all three fights. I grew up watching Terry O'Reilly, Stan Jonathan, John Wensink, Wayne Cashman, Al Secord and everyone else on the Big Bad Bruins, a team that fought so much, they even climbed into the MSG stands once to fight Rangers fans. The Bruins always know how to scrap; it's been that way for my entire life, and really, you couldn't have it any other way in Boston.

Last sentence sounds like it was lifted from a Dan Shaugnessy column. May you and him both contract Crohn's disease. ALSO: TOM BRADY STOPPED WINNING CHAMPIONSHIPS EVERY YEAR, SO HE'S NOT ONE OF US ANYMORE!

So it's been disorienting to watch the Kings keep getting beaten up. Thursday night, Joe Thornton pounded Drew Doughty so relentlessly that we were watching it the same way Apollo Creed's wife watched the Drago fight.

Wait, what was I just saying about repeatedly dropping in references from the same five or six movies?

Was it a coincidence that the Sharks rallied back from a 3-1 hole after winning those three fights? Maybe, maybe not.

"Was it a coincidence that the Sharks rallied back from a 3-1 hole after winning those three fights? Maybe, maybe not." - some asshole who wrote a 4000 word column about how meaningful it was to hear Coldplay rocking a live show on Hollywood Boulevard the evening of the first Jimmy Kimmel live taping

The Kings have a well-balanced team with an outstanding goalie, and they chase the puck pretty relentlessly (at least lately). But you can push them around, and if you want to make a cheap run at Kopitar, Quick or anyone else, you definitely don't have to worry about someone making you pay. After sitting through half of their home games this season, that's their biggest flaw (that I can see, anyway).

Someone with stronger analytical skills might see that the Kings scored the second fewest goals in the league this season and arrive at a different conclusion, but you could be right. Another strong nominee? Too many division championship banners!

For instance, the Bruins

"Let me tell you about my night at the Kings/Sharks game. For instance, the Bruins [robble robble robble]" - some asshole who has about 50 million Twitter followers hanging on his every word just in case he drops a hot gambling tip, and who also routinely finishes under .500 against the spread in picking NFL games over the course of a season

Nobody captures their identity better than Dustin Penner, their frustrating 6-foot-3 forward who's evolved into something of a whipping boy for the Kings faithful. One of the biggest guys on the team, Penner barely throws checks, much less punches. Every time he wades into the corner and goes through the motions of not hitting someone, you hear this chorus of pissed-off "COME ON, PENNER!" hisses coming from every direction. I always want him to do well, just because it's funny when he scores and the fans instantly flip that switch and pretend to be Penner fans again. But if you're trying to win the Cup? You need less Penners and more Ryane Clowe.

Clowe has played his whole career in San Jose. During that time (the last six seasons) they have made the playoffs every season, and twice been the #1 seed in the West. They've also never gotten closer to the Cup than last year's 4-1 conference finals loss. In 2009 they won the President's Trophy and promptly lost in six games in the first round. Not to say it's Clowe's fault or something, I just thought Bill's analysis was funny.

You know who summed it up best? My 6-year old daughter,

Of course she did! I knew we weren't going to get through the whole article without hearing about some poor sap who has to spend time with Bill because they have the same blood.

who has somehow attended a whopping 14 Kings games this season and wants to marry Anze Kopitar. (I wish I were making that up.)

Brendan Fraser is offended on Kopitar's behalf.

We were watching the Zamboni drive around between the second and third periods last night when she suddenly piped up, "Hey, daddy, why doesn't someone teach the Kings how to fight?" Let's hope that doesn't become the epitaph for their 2012 season.

The real story if that ends up happening? Not enough Bruins on the team.

Peyton Manning seems somewhat at peace with his departure from Indianapolis

And really, has anyone ever been upset about leaving that city? But since he seems OK with it (publicly, at least), it's time for America's sportswriters to be outraged on his behalf. Gene Wojciechowski, man holding the prestigious title of ESPN's "Senior National Columnist," you can begin spewing moronic invective whenever you're ready.

What if the Indianapolis Colts didn't have the first pick of the 2012 NFL draft, but the third?

Yeah, what if? Would that make them feel better about paying Manning a $30 million roster bonus so he could lead their clearly-not-going-to-contend-for-a-Super-Bowl team next year? I mean, that's what pro sports is all about: paying an ungodly sum of money to one 35 year old guy when even the stupidest superfan can tell it's time for the team to rebuild. (Note: sarcasm does not apply to the 2014-2016 Phillies and Ryan Howard)

What if Peyton Manning was recovering from knee surgery, not multiple neck procedures?

Yeah, that'd make them more comfortable with paying him all that cash for sure! Quarterbacks don't use their knees. Silly goose.

What if Colts owner Jim Irsay didn't talk out of both sides of his horseshoe?

"Both sides of his horseshoe?" (Insert picture of Hindenburg crash)

Think about it: Irsay would rather roll the bones on Andrew Luck or Robert Griffin III than on Manning. Luck and RG3 have a combined zero NFL snaps. Manning has a Super Bowl ring and four league MVP awards and has thrown for more yards in NFL history than everyone except Brett Favre and Dan Marino.

Holy shit. Your understanding of how teams operate is like an infant's understanding of pretty much anything. You get an F-. You get a zero. You get whatever the worst imaginary grade I can give you is. If you're honestly writing this because you're outraged that the Colts would rather draft a 22 year old QB and pay him $25-$30 million over the course of the next 4 or 5 years (Scam Newton got $22 million over 4) than pay Manning whatever the hell they would have owed him to lead them to a couple wild card berths during that span, you're the stupidest sportswriter of all time. If instead you're writing this with full knowledge that cutting Manning was the right managerial move, but still think Manning needs someone to stand up for his honor, you're the biggest asshole sportswriter of all time. Or you could be both, who knows.

And never mind what caused this divorce

OK, sounds like you're going with "stupidest" rather than "biggest asshole." Probably a good decision, although keep in mind that you can change it if you see fit.

or where he'll end up next. How about we take a few moments and remember exactly what a legend looks like?

Mmmm. More platitudes, please.

Manning made Indianapolis forget that it was a football stepmother.

Manning transformed a horrible franchise into a perennial contender.

Fuck paying players for what you expect them to do over the course of the contract in the future- the real key to success is to pay players for what they've done in the past. (Insert picture of Ed Wade)

Manning killed it on "Saturday Night Live" ("I just thought about going out there for the second half, and a little bit of pee came out.")

Fuck paying Manning- is Jon Hamm available?

Manning reported to the Giants Stadium interview room wearing a suit and tie -- and no shoes or socks -- after a night-game win against his brother Eli. He did it (and I was there) because he knew the East Coast sports writers were on a crushing deadline.

Now shifting over from "stupidest" to "biggest asshole." HE WAS NICE TO ME AND THEREFORE HE DESERVES TO ALWAYS BE HAPPY AND NEVER BE INCONVENIENCED! Classic sportswriter assholery.

Manning led the Colts to a pair of Super Bowls and won one.

Mostly irrelevant.

Manning engineered a comeback for the ages: down 21 points at Tampa Bay with four minutes left, and won the game in OT!

Completely irrelevant.

Manning never made TMZ's greatest hits.

Almost completely irrelevant.

Manning prepared so thoroughly that he could have double-dipped as a coach.

I think the Colts already have one of those. They fired Jim Caldwell, yes? OK, then yeah, they presumably do.

Manning had 63 games with at least 300 passing yards.

How many of those does Andrew Luck have? THOUGHT SO.

Manning was proud of playing in Indianapolis.

I know, weird, right? I'm starting to doze off.

But this is about the business and commerce of the NFL, not loyalty.

And now I'm awake again. The fuck?

Plus, the necks of Luck and Griffin haven't felt a surgeon's scalpel. And the price tag for a rookie quarterback, even the No. 1 overall pick, is Happy Meal-cheap compared to what it would have cost Irsay to sign Manning. In 2012 alone, we're talking a $28 million bonus and $7.4 million in salary.

I know Irsay's decision makes financial sense, but that doesn't mean it makes football sense.

There's the big "Larry B copies and pastes it multiple times" line from this article. Drink it up.

I know Irsay's decision makes financial sense, but that doesn't mean it makes football sense.

I know Irsay's decision makes financial sense, but that doesn't mean it makes football sense.

I know Irsay's decision makes financial sense, but that doesn't mean it makes football sense.

That's great stuff. It's fantastic that you can be a Senior National Sportswriter for a major outlet and not understand that in a Venn diagram, "financial sense" is a small circle inside the larger "football sense" circle (a nipple on a boob, if you will).

If Manning is healthy -- and his arm strength certainly seems to be trending that way -- then Irsay just deprived the Colts of their best chance to win games.

Your editor took "in 2012 and maybe 2013" off the end of that sentence. Sorry about that.

Luck, the presumptive No. 1 choice, was a remarkable college quarterback. But show me the documentation that guarantees he'll be a remarkable NFL quarterback.

Prove to me that the guy scouts are calling the most polished college QB since Manning will be amazing in the NFL. You can't. ARGUMENT: OVER.

I'll go read -- and finish -- James Joyce's "Ulysses" as you try to find that paperwork.

KABOOM.

And had he stayed in Indianapolis, there's no way the Colts would go 2-14 again. Irsay could have kept Manning, then traded the overall No. 1 pick for at least two first-round picks as well as a third-rounder and a fifth-rounder. Think that would've helped the short- and long-term rebuilding process?

And in 2014 when, those draft choices started to blossom and Manning was ready to retire, THAT'S when keeping him around would REALLY pay off.

Irsay (and others) will insist that you get only so many opportunities to draft a quarterback the caliber of Luck. But you also get only so many opportunities to draft and keep a quarterback with Manning's first-ballot Hall of Fame credentials.

You only get so many chances to pay him $35 million a year while he's in the twilight of his career and the team is falling apart around him.

Ask yourself this question: Would the Colts win more games during the next one to three years with a healthy Luck or a healthy Manning?

That rhetorical question does not accomplish what you intend it to accomplish.

I'll give Irsay credit for making a difficult decision. But for all his talk during the past four months, when he sliced apart the Peyton-returns scenarios as though they were garlic cloves, it is obvious he didn't want to keep No. 18. If he did, Manning would still be a Colt.

Astute observation. What's the next lid you'll blow off? I DON'T WANT TO ALARM ANYONE, BUT IT LOOKS LIKE THE REDSKINS MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN DRAFTING ROBERT GRIFFIN.

Maybe everyone lives happily ever after. Luck becomes Manning Lite. Manning finds success and contentment in another uniform. Irsay finds vindication.

But I doubt it.

Actually, that all seems about as likely as any other outcome.

Experience counts. Manning -- even a 90-percent-healthy version of him -- counts.

Oooh, thanks for listening when I asked for more platitudes. Manning counts, people. He counts.

Remember the story Manning told Sports Illustrated's Peter King years ago about the 1998 draft? Colts management was split over which quarterback to take with the No. 1 overall pick: Manning or Washington State's Ryan Leaf.

Manning requested a meeting with then-general manager Bill Polian and then-coach Jim Mora. He told them,

"I promise you I won't beat up any reporters or start dealing painkillers."

"I'd really like to come here if you want me. But if you don't, I promise you I'll come back and kick your ass for the next 15 years."

Now Irsay and the Colts don't want him anymore. So Manning will adapt. He always does.

He'll kick their butt for the next three years.

JOKE'S ON YOU AT POINT, IRSAY. (Insert picture of any QB who started as a rookie, struggled for a couple years and then blossomed into a good player)

MMTMQR: Gregg ends the season about as well as Tom Brady did HEY-OHHH

A fair assessment of Brady's overall performance in the playoffs and the Super Bowl? A timely joke given that I'm finally getting around to writing this on Sunday night? No and no. Well, no and maybe. Also, before I dive into this crap, big ups to reader James B. He's one of the six people out there still regularly checking in (and sent me an email to that effect), so I owe him a shout out. Yes I know no one else reading this cares. Man, I feel like Peter King right now.

It would be easy to say New England's nemesis is the Giants -- but Lady Luck has been as big a factor for the most accomplished football team of the 21st century. Whenever a football game ends with a margin of less than a touchdown, the contest might have gone either way based on a bounce of the ball.

Worst possible starting point for analysis. Worst. Wurst. Blurst. Blurworst.

In New England's three Super Bowl victories, the critical bit of luck favored the Patriots. In New England's two Super Bowl loses, the critical bit of luck favored the Giants.

Put on your aluminum foil hats, everyone. Keep the brainwaves flowing so you can comprehend the nothingness coming off of this simpleton's keyboard. "If a game is close, basically we can just boil it down to luck and call it a day. ALSO, CAN YOU BELIEVE HOW UNREALISTIC BABYLON 5 WAS?"

Consider:

In the 2002 Super Bowl against the St. Louis Rams, New England was outgained by 160 yards. But Rams quarterback Kurt Warner had an unblocked rusher in his face and short-armed a pass that Ty Law cut in front of and returned for a touchdown. New England went on to a three-point victory.

Great defensive gameplanning and playcalling? Luck, because on this one specific play it just so happened that the right defenders were in the right places to generate a defensive TD. Another hugely lucky play from recent Super Bowl history: the pick six by Nick Collins in the first quarter of last year's Super Bowl (he just as easily could have run the wrong way for a safety after catching the Roethlisberger pass!).

In the 2004 Super Bowl against the Carolina Panthers, the Panthers tied the score with 1:08 remaining. But the Panthers' place-kicker honked the kickoff, which went out of bounds. Taking possession on their 40, the Patriots moved into position for the winning field goal just ere the clock struck midnight.

But the Patriots outgained the Panthers in that game. Those lucky Panthers were lucky they had a chance to win the luckiest game in the history of luck.

Midway through the 2005 Super Bowl against the Philadelphia Eagles, New England safety Eugene Wilson went out injured, which sent a rookie into the game. But the Eagles' coaching staff did not realize there was a backup at safety until about five minutes remained.

And Reid? Shitty in-game coach? NEVER.

Then the Eagles, who had only one receiver per side most of the second half, lined up with double wides and ran a deep post at the new defender -- touchdown. The Patriots held on to win by three. Had Philadelphia attacked the novice safety earlier, the outcome could have been different.

Still not luck. Good fortune, perhaps, or more accurately a reflection of complete dumbassery on the part of your opponent. It's worth noting that he's probably completely bullshitting about this whole situation; sort of like how according to Gregg, if you watch any play in which someone scored a touchdown, there were AT LEAST seven defenders STANDING AROUND DOING NOTHING AT ALL!

In the 2008 Super Bowl versus the Giants, perhaps you have heard about a long catch a Jersey/A player made against his helmet. New England lost by three.

Yes, that is actually luck. Or at least a much better example of it than "the Patriots called a successful blitz which led to a duck of a pass which was picked off- it's just like winning the lottery!"

And with four minutes remaining in Sunday's Super Bowl, Wes Welker, among the most reliable receivers in football annals, dropped a pass that would have put New England in position to ice the game. New England went on to lose by four.

Welker's drop was 10% of the reason that play didn't work. Brady's awful throw was the other 90%. The dearth of analysts willing to confront that reality doesn't surprise me, but does disappoint me. One of the few I've seen who acknowledge it? None other than Simmons (probably because he's decided that Brady IS NAWT A TRUE BAWSTONIAN and used Brady as a whipping boy in his pity party wrap-up column).

In many aspects of life, luck is a bigger factor than we care to admit.

Watch out, here comes social scientist Gregg! He's only marginally less of a stumpfucker than football analyst Gregg.

We want to think some become rich and others poor based on merit, not luck.

And what's up with Jews getting rich off of violent movies? HAVE THEY NO SHAME?

We want to think some teams win and others lose because the winner "deserved" laurels.

Which is very, very often the case.

In a 20-point football win, the winner did deserve to win. In games that come down to the final snap, either team might have prevailed: luck calls the ultimate shot.

(Holding my head in my hands, considering pulling out my hair.)

TMQ praises the "all-unwanted NFL player who was undrafted or waived or both, yet never gives up. Eleven undrafted free agents started in the Super Bowl, versus 10 first-round draft choices.

Those GLORY BOY failures! Nevermind that at any given point in time, there are only maybe 150-200 1st round picks on rosters in the entire league, versus hundreds and hundreds more undrafted players. Titillating news flash for everyone, from the brain of football savant Gregg: sometimes, 1st round draft choices flame out. Other times guys who didn't get drafted, perhaps because they were injured their senior year of college, succeed in the NFL. You're welcome.

Undrafted Chase Blackburn made the game's most important play;

First overall pick Eli Manning and 3rd round draft choice Mario Manningham made the game's most important play.

Blackburn wasn't even on an NFL roster this season until Thanksgiving. Undrafted Victor Cruz from Division I-AA Massachusetts scored a touchdown,

He's now asking to be highly paid. TRAITOR!

undrafted Danny Woodhead from Division II Chadron State scored a touchdown. No first-round draft choice scored a touchdown.

Riveting stuff. Very valuable information, from which you can draw tons of non-worthless conclusions. Such as: getting rid of first round picks is the key to reaching the Super Bowl. And: Gregg Easterbrook's brain must rattle around the inside of his skull if he walks too quickly.

If not Lady Luck, did the football gods determine Sunday's outcome?

Nope!

This being the season of Roman numerals,

What?

I will state my view in the Roman tongue, with thanks to Josh Rasmussen, a Latin teacher at Bishop Dunne Catholic School in Dallas:

Caelicoli mortales puniunt, nam eos desidera paene adipisci sinunt; tum demum haec eripiunt. Di pilae calciatae New England Patriots semper punient, dum Bill Belichick se in Spygate fefellisse confiteatur.

Still not as pretentious as the "Wacky Wine of the Week" bit he ran a few times.

Brady looked deep and saw Rob Gronkowski, with the most touchdowns in the NFL this season, streaking deep with no safety in sight, covered only by undrafted linebacker Chase Blackburn. Watching at Lucas Oil, I thought when Brady escaped the rush and spied Gronkowski, the Patriots were about to make the deciding play. Brady heave-hoed -- just as Jason Pierre-Paul hit him hard. The ball was underthrown, Blackburn intercepted and the momentum swung to the Giants. Sweet.

LUCK! IT WAS ALL LUCK!

Think about the coaching situation. New England had a two-point lead and faced second-and-11 on the Jersey/A 44 with 4:06, the Giants already down to one timeout. Two straight incompletions stopped the clock, keeping Jersey/A alive. On the downs that became the Welker and Branch incompletions, had New England simply rushed for no gain, Jersey/A would have gotten the ball back on its 12 with one timeout and less than three minutes. Maybe the Giants would have won anyway,

Well yeah, seeing as how their game winning TD drive took 2:49, I'm pretty fucking sure the whole "just run up the middle for no gain!" thing wouldn't have made a difference here. Not that it ever does. How fast must Gregg's heart be pounding when a team runs up the middle with an undrafted/unwanted RB like Woodhead? I feel dirty just thinking about it.

but the situation on the Jersey/A sideline would have been more tense.

Yeah, it would have gone from a 9.7 to a 9.9 on a 1 to 10 scale.

Yes, the New England offense is good at completing passes. But Belichick's disdain for the rush

"Yes, this team has built its wildly successful offense around a historically great QB and his high percentage passing game for a decade now. BUT STILL, THREE YARDS AND A CLOUD OF DUST DERP DERPY DERP"

hurt the team in a Super Bowl clock-killer situation. The Giants' defense had its linebackers backed off, expecting pass, on both downs.

Shame on you, Perry Fewell! You should refuse your ring and give your SB bonus check to Victor Cruz!

And on procedurals, the police always catch the bad guy. Actually a significant number of homicides are never solved, while most burglaries never even lead to an arrest. Of course, procedurals are just Hollywood nonsense.

These are just three sentences from a 4000+ word rant (I copied and pasted it into Word just to verify the length) in this column about how unrealistic CSI-type shows are. Words fail me, and they will fail you should you choose to read it. He sounds like Keith Law complaining about Moneyball, noting that actual police work is much less exciting than it's portrayed on TV. Wouldn't advertisers line up around the block to sponsor a show that features cops mindlessly searching a crime scene for clues that probably don't exist, and then filling out mountains of paperwork?

Final State Standings: Tuesday Morning Quarterback's annual State Standings are based on the states in which teams actually play: Maryland teams are the Ravens and Redskins, and so on. California, Pennsylvania and Texas, traditional football hotbed states, finished a respectable 69-48; the other traditional football hotbed states, Florida and Ohio, limped in at 28-53. The year's Super Bowl was held in the state that finished last in the State Standings.

Wisconsin: 15-2

Massachusetts: 15-4

Louisiana: 14-4

Pennsylvania: 20-13

California: 30-20

New Jersey: 21-15

Georgia: 10-7

Michigan: 10-7

Texas: 19-15

Tennessee: 9-7

Maryland: 18-16

Colorado 9-9

Arizona 8-8

Illinois 8-8

Washington: 7-9

Ohio: 13-20

North Carolina: 6-10

New York: 6-10

Florida: 15-33

Missouri: 9-23

Minnesota: 3-13

Indiana: 2-14

Anybody learn anything from that? (Waits for nodding.) (Sees none.) (Nods in approval.)

Plus ca Change, Plus C'est la Meme Chose: Only 13 of the 44 starters were the same as when the Patriots and Giants met in the Super Bowl four years ago; three of the four coordinators had changed, too.

If you are surprised or fascinated by that, you either don't follow the NFL at all or are Peter King.

Super Bowl Postscripts: Giants offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride elaborately warmed up on the field pregame, including doing standing and prone hurdlers' stretches. Do you need to be warm and loose to call passes?

How dare he enjoy that moment!

Reader Mike Jones of Indianapolis notes, "If Tom Brady's career was happening in reverse, the way Merlin lived going backward in time, the media would be saying right now that Brady just can't win the big game."

Someone in Indianapolis key that guy's car please.

New England was the home team of record, meaning its choice of what to wear. Belichick chose the teams' blues -- the same color New England was wearing when it lost to the Giants in their previous Super Bowl meeting. OK, sports superstitions lack a certain factual grounding.

You have to be fucking kidding me. You. Of all people. In this column. No fucking way.

But New England could have opted to wear its whites.

The Giants are super lucky they didn't!

As usual, I recommend you employ the offseason to engage in spiritual growth. Take long walks. Exercise more and eat less. Perform volunteer work. Appreciate the beauty of nature. Attend worship services of any faith. Read, mediate, serve others. Do these things, and you will feel justified in racing back to the remote, the swimsuit calendars and the microbrews when the football artificial universe resumes in the autumn.

First of all, I don't think anyone is racing (or racing back) to swimsuit calendars in August/September. That aside, I will agree to do all those things during the next six months as long as you agree to do one: try to learn a single fucking thing about how football is played. Kthx.

MMTMQR: Preseason games, midseason stupidity

Back to the salt mines, people. It's time for another six month stint of awful, Gregg style.

Harbaugh-East note: Baltimore led 24-13 with 1:18 remaining in its preseason game Friday against Kansas City. Baltimore head coach John Harbaugh had the Ravens' third-string quarterback Hunter Cantwell play-fake and throw deep. Having reached the Kansas City 1 with 8 seconds remaining, Harbaugh-East called timeout to allow a final play, running up the score to 31-13.

Are you surprised that Gregg thinks getting high pressure late game reps during a preseason game for players who may or may not make the team and need a chance to distinguish themselves is no different than running up the score in a regular season game? If so raise your hand. Now use it to tap yourself on the balls for being a dumbshit.

Not only was this bad sportsmanship, but it was classless considering that in their previous meeting, at Kansas City in the playoffs, Baltimore had won big.

In what way is the outcome of last January's playoff game relevant here? I'm racking my brain. Is Gregg mad because he thinks the Chiefs and their players had forgotten about that game, but this would remind them of it? Because he thinks it's bad form to blow another team out twice in a row? Because Harbaugh was dressed more warmly than Todd Haley? Your guess is as good as mine.

Lack of class always comes back to haunt you -- and now the Ravens enter the 2011 season as bad sports.

Go Ravens!, And also this.

This season the Bills go to a retro-1970s uniform, which is better than the Rusting Russian Dreadnaught look. But why did the Bills return to a uniform style they wore when making the postseason three times in 17 years? They could have gone back to a gloried Super Bowl look based on red, white and American-flag blue -- not to put too fine a point on it, but the single most successful color scheme in world history.

Let me tell you, I really put a lot of stock in what uniforms teams zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

During the offseason, coach Chan Gailey and general manager Buddy Nix repeatedly criticized defensive end Aaron Maybin, the 11th overall choice of the 2009 draft. Then this summer, they tried to trade him. The public criticism meant other teams knew Maybin would be waived, so no one made a trade offer, leaving the Bills with nothing when they released Maybin last week. So was the public criticism nonsensical? Not if the goal is to lose cheaply.

The last line goes hand in hand with the main hypothesis advanced by Gregg this week, specifically that many owners find it more profitable to put a crappy team on the field that's way under the salary cap than to spend up to the cap and field a winner. This ignores the non-monetary value that some owners derive from fielding a winner and being in the good graces of the team's fans- although I concede that many owners really don't give a shit about that and would rather make a few extra million than be liked.

The reason I didn't pick apart the hypothesis is that if you grant him the 17 assumptions he made in calculating the profitability of a winner vs. a low-cost loser, he's pretty much right. And I didn't feel like doing my own research. However, I explain it here and copied/pasted the passage above because Gregg is apparently blissfully ignorant of the fact that Aaron Maybin was fucking atrocious (a source close to the Bills organization, i.e. a friend of mine who likes the Bills, says the real problem is that he never bothered to bulk up). Generally trying to trade and then releasing an atrocious player is a way to get better rather than worse.

And of course, let's all get on the same page re: one other thing. Clearly Maybin sucked ass with the Bills because he was a high drafted megabucks glory boy.

Making a great show of discussing how bad the previous regime's high draft pick was creates an excuse for Gailey and Nix to present a losing team in 2011 -- "What did you expect, when the guys who came before us blew the team's 2009 first-round pick?" Since arriving a year ago, Nix has waived, traded or let go four recent first-round draft choices (Maybin, Evans, Marshawn Lynch and Donte Whitner), cutting costs while shifting blame backward to the previous coach and general manager.

I love this. Maybin = terrible. Lynch looked terrible at the time he was cut, although he did have that beastly run against the Saints in the playoffs for the Seahawks. Still, probably more likely to be out of football in 2 years than starting anywhere. Whitner = terrible. Evans wasn't even the best WR on the team at the time he was traded, although I admit it didn't make a whole lot of sense to do it. Still, it's fantastic watching him work himself into logical knots in order to prove his next big point. He's so eager to paint the Bills FO as trying to field a loser by getting rid of good players that he completely ignores the fact that none of the HIGH DRAFTED MEGABUCKS GLORY BOY guys they got rid of were very good in the first place.

Didn't Ohio used to be a hotbed of football culture?

Perhaps, and on the HS and college level it certainly still is, but it's also a miserable place to live. It combines all the fatness of Indiana with all the failing rust beltness of Pennsylvania.

The Bengals' last winning coach was Sam Wyche, who left in 1991. The Browns' last winning coach was Marty Schottenheimer, who left in 1988. Since these two gentlemen departed, the state of Ohio is 226-364-2 in the NFL. And Ohio's record will not improve opening weekend, because the Browns and Bengals meet.

Listen, I'm just sayin', as long as they don't tie the state's to win percentage will go up. Just sayin'.

Leading the Patriots 10-0 in the first half, facing fourth-and-1 in their own territory, they went for it. So what if on the next snap, the Browns lost a fumble? The football gods smile on boldness.

They smile on it so much they caused a turnover 15 seconds after the gamble. Chris H nominates this as the most striking display of cognitive dissonance in the history of sportswriting.

Houston: The Texans have a chairman and CEO, two vice chairmen, a general manager, a president, three senior vice presidents, three senior directors and 14 directors -- resulting in a franchise lifetime record of 55-89. Maybe if this organization wasn't so top-heavy, it could get things done. Such as making the playoffs, which the Moo Cows -- check their lovely cow-inspired logo -- never have accomplished.

First of all, if you don't know what the Texans logo looks like, please stop reading TMQ and go click around NFL.com for a while. On the other hand, people like that are probably right in Gregg's target demographic. "Say, I'm a pretentious faux-academic who obsesses over nerdy pop culture and pop economics, and I also sometimes watch the Super Bowl! This Easterbrook fella is really something if you ask me!"

Second of all, I love the assertion that the Texans struggle because they employ too many useless executives who pull a paycheck and don't do much else. I'm quite sure they have too many useless executives who pull a paycheck and don't do much else- and I'm also quite certain that that's the case with approximately 31 other NFL teams. Look at the Bears, for crying out loud. And yet they were within a few plays of making the Super Bowl last year. Bloated upper management kind of tends to be a part of the deal when you're involved with the most popular, profitable sport in the country.

Jersey/B: Traditionalists believe the run is the key to NFL success, despite nine of the past 10 Super Bowls being won by teams with pass-oriented offenses.

/goes into archives, finds 46 TMQs from the past five years that bemoan how pass-wacky the league has become [Edit made later- I somehow tried to loop "Stop Me Before I Blitz Again!" into this point by saying there was an identical item titled "Stop Me Before I Pass Again!" As usual, the reason for the mistake is that I'm a fucking idiot.]

/sighs

/eats Sharpie

Cut by the Jets, DE Shaun Ellis signed with archrival New England, causing Ryan to say, "There's no way I am going to wish him well." But New England made Ellis the best offer. If Ryan had been fired by the Jets and gone to New England because that's where the best offer was, no one would bat an eyelash. This seems to be yet another example of a pro sports double standard: If a player does what's in his best interest, he is condemned as a mercenary. If a coach does what's in his best interest, he's viewed as just taking care of business.

Huh? Although this is a stupid paragraph about an irrelevant distinction, at the very least I think Gregg and I can agree that pretty much every single NFL coach is a raging self-important asshole.

But then the Patriots wheezed out at home in their first and only game of the playoffs. It was the second consecutive year New England had been fabulous in the regular season, then looked awful at home in the postseason. The year before that, the Patriots finished 11-5 but didn't make the postseason owing to a standings quirk. Here's the deal: The New England Patriots have not won a playoff game since Spygate broke.

Spygate broke in September 2007. In January of 2008, the Patriots won two playoff games.

/eats another Sharpie

Bill Belichick continues to refuse to say, "I cheated and I apologize." Until he does, the football gods will torment this team by allowing the Patriots to play very well during the regular season, then denying them in money time.

Go Patriots! Oops, sorry, nevermind. Fuck the Patriots.

A Boom or Bust Round: With the Steelers' decision to waive Limas Sweed, the 2008 second round of the draft continues to be a tumultuous one for the wide receiver profession. Picks were either terrific or terrible. The 2008 second round produced DeSean Jackson and Eddie Royal, both stars; Jordy Nelson, who was terrific in the Packers' Super Bowl win; and Donnie Avery and Jerome Simpson, both of whom have shown flashes. The 2008 second round also produced several wide receiver busts, all since waived by at least one team -- Sweed, Devin Thomas, Dexter Jackson and James Hardy. Malcolm Kelly, another 2008 second-round receiver, is a long shot to make a 2011 NFL roster. There must have been something in the water in 2008.

Breaking news: sometimes, draft picks work out. Other times they completely fizzle. Unfortunately, you have to be an ESPN Insider to read the rest of Gregg's analysis, in which he explains the fact that offensive linemen are secretly very important to a team's success.

Tennessee: Bearing in mind that the Flaming Thumbtacks were once the Houston Oilers, this team now has two coaches who made the Hall of Fame as players in its colors. New head coach Mike Munchak was a Hall of Fame offensive lineman for the Oilers; new offensive line coach Bruce Matthews was a Hall of Fame offensive lineman for the Oilers/Titans. If nothing else, that is good vibes.

Munchak was drafted 8th overall. Matthews was drafted 9th overall. Sounds like bad vibes to me. Get me a coach who never played, and was told his whole life he'd never be good enough. THAT'S who I want coaching my team. Someone like Josh McDaniels.

Next Week: The Eagles become the Philadelphia Heat, plus the rest of TMQ's NFC preview.

Go Eagles! Oooooooooooooof.

/considers a Philly-New England Super Bowl

/drinks dish soap