Interesting Football Tidbits

If the NFL playoffs go with the chalk the rest of the way, we will have the New England Cheatriots facing off against the Green Bay Packers in Superbowl XLVI in Indianapolis on February 5. And that will be the first time in NFL history that the two statistically worst defenses in the NFL will match up in the Superbowl. Those two teams each gave up over 411 yards of total offense per game through the 2011 regular season, and while the rush defenses on both teams are more middle-of-the-pack, the Cheats and the Packers are also the two worst teams against the pass in the entire league -- a good 20% worse than even the next-worst pass defending team -- which should be interesting because the passing game is far and away the strength of the other team. If the chalk takes it the rest of the way, we'll be looking at the #2 and #3 offense and the #2 and #2 passing offense, playing against the #31 and #32 teams both in total defense and in passing defense. That game could be just crazy.

Speaking of the playoffs, all the buzz in New York City this week is word that a bunch of Jets teammates have anonymously ripped Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez in the press this week, saying among other things that he has no legitimate fear of being replaced by head coach Rex Ryan, and several players questioning his work ethic. Of course, if you watched "Hard Knocks" this preseason, you already saw shades of that lack of work ethic, and the beginnings of a potential attitude problem, as I think it would be hard for mostly anyone to have been exactly "impressed" with Sanchez's personality if you sat through all the episodes of that series earlier in 2011. In this case, you've got the usual complement of talking heads, former players especially, who are ripshit about this move, questioning any player who would dare take such shots anonymously instead of just coming out and assigning a name to the comment. Because, the thinking goes, the next time Sanchez walks into that locker room, he's going to be wondering "Was it you who said that bad stuff about me?", "Was it you?", "Or you?". But that doesn't really seem to be the case here, does it? In this case, I count at least four different players specifically cited in that story -- at least some of whom are apparently leaders on the team in one capacity or another, so not insignificant players like the story from the third-string quarterback that broke last week. The bottom line for Sanchez is, it's not just one player here or one player there. It's most of his entire team who think these things about him. So focusing on who said it and how we find out who said what is, in my view, completely missing the point in this case. Mark Sanchez's team has a problem with his lack of preparation, his poor work ethic and his entitled attitude, and of course with the results that has led to for the entire team now here, three years in to the Sanchez / Rex Ryan experiment. At this point, the Jets can either waste time chasing down who said what and why they said it, or they can start moving on by beginning to work on fixing those problems. And nothing short of that is going to get the Jets team with this nucleus of players back where they want to be.

And before I go, did anyone else out there see this story? That Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow is Americans' favorite active athlete today? Seems crazy, doesn't it? But "Tebow was recognized by 3 percent of Americans surveyed as their favorite active pro athlete, placing him above Kobe Bryant (2 percent), Aaron Rodgers (1.9 percent), Peyton Manning (1.8 percent) and Tom Brady (1.5 percent) in the Top 5." Above Tom Brady, above Aaron Rodgers, above Peyton Manning? I mean, Tebow is more beloved by sports fans in this country than those three titans who happen to play in the exact same sport, and the exact same position as him, already? That just seems crazy. As does the fact that Tebow takes this top spot much faster than any other athlete since the inception of the poll in 1994, attaining the vote before the end of his second season as a pro. It took LeBron James eight years to reach this status, and Kobe Bryant 11 years before he became America's favorite active pro athlete. I'm not sure I would describe Tim Tebow as my "favorite" pro athlete just now, but I don't have any problem admitting that I would like to watch Tebow play this weekend more than I want to watch any other single athlete in professional sports in the world today. So maybe there's really something to this after all.

NFL Thoughts -- Week 15

Cardinals' QB John Skelton: 5-1. Kevin Kolb: 2-5. 'Nuff said. Given the young man a chance.

Tony Sparano is gone, but the Dolphins just keep on playing every game like it's their Superbowl. Miami beat the formerly high-flying Buffalo Bills on Sunday 30-23, behind Matt Moore's best game of the season and Reggie Bush's first 200-yard rushing game in as long as I can ever remember in the pros.

Sticking with the newly-departed coaches' teams, it's hard to read too much into the Chiefs ending the Packers' bid at a perfect season. But, I have to say that as I watched Aaron Rodgers over the past few weeks and certainly in his post-game presser on Sunday afternoon, he seems to have had a lot more invested in this run at perfection than he is letting on. It will be interesting to see if there are any long-term effects for the Packers who might have just lost the #1 thing that they as a team were keying on for most of 2011.

It's hard to get excited as an Eagles fan when the team's limited playoff hopes are based on Philly winning at Dallas next Sunday in a must-win game for both teams, and then beating the Skins at home to close things out. With the way this team has played in the 2011 regular season, anyone who looks at that and sees 2-0 just hasn't been watching this team this year, in particular on defense.

Nnami Asomugha was called for yet another holding penalty late in the first half as the Jets were trying to mount a comeback against an early Eagles onslaught on Sunday. That makes at least half a dozen times this year that Asomugha has blatantly held a receiver who had beaten him and was about to make an easy touchdown score. As much as getting value for Kevin Kolb is proving to have been a steal of a trade this past offseason, the Asomugha signing is without a doubt the Eagles' brass's worst move of 2011.

The NBC Sunday night coverage continues to be the worst commentating available on any major sports network. Especially painful continues to be the in-studio guys, with Tony Dungy seeming more suited for missionary work or possibly religious oration than commenting on NFL games, the Rich Eisen-like banality of Dan Patrick, and the contrived too-cool-for-school attitude of Rodney Harrison. These guys even make Chris Collinsworth's one-sided commentary seem professional and riveting.

Lesean McCoy punched in his 15th, 16th and 17th rushing touchdowns of the season this weekend, solidifying his spot atop the list of best non-quarterback fantasy football players in the NFL in 2011. McCoy's 20 total touchdowns now puts him comfortably ahead of Patriots' breakout tight end Rob Gronkowski's 15 receiving plus one rushing td, and even with Calvin Johnson's huge performance this weekend against the Raiders, Megatron remains a distant third with 14 total touchdowns. To think that this team with McCoy, Michael Vick and DeSean Jackson on offense, plus Jason Babin and his 17 sacks on defense to go along with Asante Samuel and big-name additions Asomugha and Dominick Rodgers-Cromartie at corner, would be sitting at 6-8 and hoping for a mathematical miracle to sneak into the postseason with a .500 record in an uncharacteristically weak NFC East, this is just everything that makes the NFL so great for all of us.

Speaking of great offensive threats in the league today, I think it's fair to say that Aaron Rodgers officially has competition for the league's MVP. While I think Rodgers would have won it walking away if the team went undefeated for the season given the year he is having, now that the Packers have fallen back down to the realm of mortal NFL teams, I don't see how what Drew Brees is doing right now can be ignored any longer. While Rodgers has thrown for 4360 yards (4th in the NFL), an NFL second-best 68.1% completion percentage, and an eye-popping 40 touchdowns vs just 6 interceptions through 14 games in 2011, Brees has been up to the task, posting 4780 passing yards -- on pace next week to break Dan Marino's all-time single-season passing yards record with a full game to spare -- and a mind-numbing 71.5% completion percentage. Though not as amazing as Rodgers' here through Week 15, Brees' touchdown to INT ratio is also a very impressive 37 touchdowns to just 11 picks. Each player has some areas where they are clearly the best, and I guess I might lean ever so slightly towards Rodgers if I had to pick at this moment, but in my mind with the Packers' loss, this race just got officially up for grabs thanks to the Chiefs on Sunday afternoon.

I thought Tim Tebow played pretty well -- for Tim Tebow -- against the Cheatriots on Sunday. In the end it was a big double-digit loss for the Broncos, but Tebow ended the day a robust 11 for 22 for a 50% completion percentage (his highest of any game this year), and with 194 total passing yards -- also, amazingly, his highest for the year. I imagine that John Elway was fairly unsure of how he should be reacting to his quarterback's performance against the AFC's best-looking team at the moment, but Tebow did run the ball well, and Tebow started off very strong before his team got bit by the turnover bug and gave a great team in New England too many chances to build up a lead.

That New York Giants loss this weekend at home to the hapless Redskins has got to go down as the most gutless performance of the entire NFL season so far. I mean, the Giants are at home in New York Jersey and playing the Redskins who just gave up 34 points at home to the Cheatriots last week and 34 also at home to the NY Jets the week before, and they manage to put a straight-out bagel until the final minutes of a game that was already long since over? I betcha Bill Cowher is on a plane out to Westchester County right now to look for a new house to buy. What an utter collapse.

It's a shame that right now the Bengals and Jets would play down to the third tiebreaker if each team wins out over its last two efforts in the 2011 regular season. With identical records of 8-6 overall, and identical conference marks at 6-5, the decision would turn on better overall winning percentage over common opponents, with the two teams even having performed identically there, but with the Jets being 2-0 against the Bills while the Bengals are only 1-0. Though it certainly feels like the wrong team and the wrong quarterback in Mark Sanchez are ahead in that seemingly silly category, this one really should still be decided on the field as the Jets are fixing to face the crosstown rival Giants in a do-or-die game at home followed by traveling to the keyed-up Dolphins in Week 17 who you know would just love to ruin the Jets' season (again), while the Bungles have on top the beatable Cardinals at home, followed by an end-of-season home-game clash with the Ravens, who might not be playing for anything that week after Baltimore's crushing by the Chargers on Sunday night.

Even with all the shenanigans and mathematical possibilities in the NFC East, the AFC West might be the most interesting division race in all of football here as we enter the home stretch. With the Broncos' loss to the Pats this weekend, and the Raiders failing to capitalize on last-second drive against the Lions, while the Chargers stepped up and crushed the AFC-North leading Ravens, and even the Chiefs sneaking a win against the heretofore undefeated Packers, things just got a whole lot narrower over there with two games still to play. Denver is still one game up with 2 winnable games left to play -- at Buffalo and at home against Romeo Crennel's rejuvenated Chiefs -- while, just one game behind at 7-7, Oakland (at Kansas City, and home vs. the Chargers) can obviously take care of its two closest rivals head-to-head, and San Diego faces the toughest path (at Detroit, and at Oakland) to finish the season. Even the Chiefs bringing up the rear still have games left against the Raiders at home and then at Denver to finish the regular season off, so what happens in that division is very much up in the air, especially if the Tebow magic fails to come back next week against a finished Bills squad.

2011 NFL Post-Season Predictions

Finally this past weekend I had time to put the finishing touches on this post, which for the record was written over the couple of weeks leading up to the start of the 2011 NFL regular season. And what a wild Week 1 it was, which will quickly become apparent when you see some of my picks for the postseason this year in the NFL.

NFC East: Eagles
NFC North: Packers
NFC South: Saints
NFC West: Cardinals

NFC Wildcard: Cowboys, Bears

NFC Almost's: Falcons, Lions, Rams

AFC East: Cheatriots
AFC North: Steelers
AFC South: Texans
AFC West: Chargers

AFC Wildcard: Jets, Ravens

AFC Almost's: Chiefs

So, that is a total of four new playoff teams I am predicting in 2011, two in the NFC (Cardinals and Cowboys, replacing the Seahawks and the Falcons), and two in the AFC (Texans and Chargers, replacing the Colts and the Chiefs). Four out of twelve ain't bad, but over the recent past that's still not as much annual turnover as the NFL has seen in its slate of post-season participants, so there are likely some more surprises to come this year. I just think the Seahawks have fallen behind both the Rams and the Cardinals given the moves of this past offseason, and for some reason I decided to hitch my prediction this offseason to Tony Romo, the greatest step-down-in-the-clutch artist in the NFL today, over Matty "Ice" Ryan. Pure. Genius. And in the AFC, I am expecting the Chiefs to impress again this year but they are going to have trouble winning their division again due to a much harder schedule and not being overlooked by their opponents this year, while the Colts are in my mind finished without Peyton Manning at the helm.

I'm not typically one for making detailed post-season predictions for later rounds here without even knowing who is playing who, who is injured, etc. But I will say that I think the Cheatriots look once again to be the class of the AFC if they stay healthy and are likely to show up in the superbowl again this year, while the picture in the NFC is a bit murkier, between the Eagles and the Packers. I'll take the Packers over the Cheatriots in the superbowl in a repeat for Green Bay. Since, just like the Red Sox over the Dirty Decade in Boston, the Cheatriots have never won a damn thing since they haven't been allowed to cheat.

NFL Is Back and Just Like Before

Although I still have not posted my completed set of predictions for this year's twelve NFL playoff teams -- that should definitely be done within the next day or two -- I just had to mention a couple of things I noticed from the Week 1 games. It's amazing really, how much the more things change, the more they stay the same in a lot of ways, and the beginning to the 2011 NFL regular season so far rang very similar in a lot of ways to what we saw in 2010 in corresponding situations.

For starters, the Saints-Packers game last Thursday to start the 2011 NFL regular season, if that was not a continuation of 2010, I don't know what is -- in particular for Aaron Rodgers and the Packers offense. But both quarterbacks and both offenses, really -- Rodgers went an extremely efficient 27 for 35 for 312 yards, 3 touchdowns and no picks, and Saints qb Drew Brees chipped in at 32 for 49 for 419 yards, also with 3 touchdowns and no interceptions. If those two teams had played at the end of the 2010 regular season, we probably would have seen the exact same thing, with more or less the exact same outcome. But when Aaron Rodgers and Drew Brees battle it out to a 132.1 and 112.5 qb rating, respectively, I'm definitely getting shades of last year all over again.

I should also mention along these same lines that that entire Cowboys / Jets game last night was like one big massive glitch in the matrix deja vu. I mean, the Jets pretty much got outplayed from start to finish. The Jets defense simply could not come up with the big play when they needed it through 58 minutes in the field, and they allowed the opposing offense to move the ball enough to grab and maintain a fairly comfortable lead. Jets qb Mark Sanchez made a couple of crucial mistakes and led the team on a couple of inept drives in huge spots, including late in the 4th quarter when the game should have been by all rights over. But then suddenly it's a ridiculously bad play leading to a touchdown runback for the Jets' defense late in the game, and then the opposition completely collapses again on offense in an unthinkable, Brett Favreian moment for Tony Romo. Even that pick by Romo, over to the sidelines, in the final minute of a game, with the game tied so that the only thing Romo cannot do is throw an interception, haven't we seen that exact thing not all that long ago our of the exact same quarterback in Romo, in that exact same, tie-game-final-minutes-drive spot? I definitely remember it, I think against the Giants a couple of seasons ago on a national game. So the Jets pull out a victory after sucking it up pretty much on both sides of the ball for 98% of the game, and Tony Romo steps down hugely and ridiculously in the biggest moment of the game. Sound familiar?

The Bears were another team that basically picked right up here in 2001 where they left off in 2010. As I wrote about last week, if there was ever a team with low expectations after making the NFC Championship game the year before, and basically losing nobody of real significance in the offseason, it is this year's Chicago Bears. And yet, despite once again being picked against by basically everybody this week with the Falcons coming to town -- just like we saw everyone doing last year whenever the Bears played in a big game, over and over again -- Jay Cutler did the same thing he did over and over again in 2010 that led his team to the conference finals in the first place -- he played great. Just as I felt watching Atlanta get drubbed out of the postseason at home by the Packers in the first round of the playoffs last year, it was clear right from the getgo that the Falcons were outmatched this weekend, and just like last year, it was Brain Urlacher and the Bears' ferocious defense making the big plays to make sure the team held on for the big victory.

Even the Eagles basically showed up in St. Louis for the start of the 2011 regular season the same way they played through most of 2010. Philadelphia fell behind early after the defense gave up a gaping hole and a nearly 50-yard run on the very first defensive play from scrimmage on the season -- with the big play being a constant problem for the Eagles; defense all through 2010 including especially in the postseason against the Packers -- but then the Eagles turned it on and basically blew out the Rams from then on. Michael Vick threw for 187 yards with two touchdowns and no interceptions -- recall Vick's amazing touchdown to interception ratio in 2010 -- and Vick chipped in with 98 yards rushing as well on the day, joining with 122 yards on the ground and two total touchdowns from runningback LeSean McCoy, and 6 catches for 102 yards and a score from star wideout DeSean Jackson to create a three-headed onslaught on offense that no team could withstand.

And speaking of the Eagles, then there was Donovan McNabb, the aging, too-old-for-the-league veteran. D-Mac's line on the day with his new team in Minnesota? 7 for 15, for 39 yards, one touchdown and one pick, for a passer rating of 47.9. And this guy was behind center for every offensive snap for his team on the day, which mustered a total output of 28 yards in the air. 28 yards passing, with McNabb at the helm all the way through. This is like Washington from 2010 all over again for Donny Mac, isn't it? Only this time, we might need to rename the JaMarcus Russell award if things don't pick up in what could be a looong year for McNabb and the Vikings.

Of course, there were a few areas where things were completely different from 2010 as well, including the bitter blowout of the colts at the hands of the Oilers, and the Bills absolutely schmeistering Todd Haley and the Kansas City Chiefs. I was also surprisingly impressed by Rex Grossman and the Redskins, who took it to the New York Giants and called into question just how good the men in blue will be in the NFC East during 2011, what is likely to be head coach Tom Coughlin's last season in charge in the Big Apple. But for me, it was more the similarities than the differences that stood out about the Week 1 action this year as compared to my recent memories of a lot of these teams and a lot of the players making the big plays for them.

NFL -- Wildcard Weekend Picks

In a very strange twist of events, for the first time in as long as I can remember, it looks like all four of the lower-seeded teams in this weekend's Wilcard Round games in the NFL have a good argument that they are actually the better team in their respective matchups. I mean, obviously the defending Superbowl champion Saints are far better than the embarrassing 7-9 Seahawks, who will host the Saints on Saturday due to the NFL's playoff seeding system that puts all division winners ahead of all wildcard teams right off the bat. That same system also has the 11-5 Jets travelling to the 10-6 Colts on Saturday afternoon, although that is at least a much closer matchup where you could easily see either team finding a way to win. And in the Sunday games, it's the 12-4 Ravens visiting the 10-6 Chiefs in the early game in another matchup of a far better record travelling to a far worse record team due to the NFL's divisional structure. And then Sunday's late game is what most are viewing as the best game of the weekend, a matchup of the 10-6 Packers visiting the 10-6 Eagles, but when the two teams played heads-up in Week 1, the Packers bested the Eagles in Philadelphia, albeit with Kevin Kolb at quarterback in what seems like it was about 10,000 years ago. I'm not sure I can ever recall a situation where all four of the road teams have a good argument to actually be the superior teams, and in particular where three of the four matchups feature a team with a better record on the season going on the road to play at a team with a worse seasonal record, doubly in particular in this case with two of the matchups being a road team visiting a home team with at least two fewer wins on the year.

All that said, the Vegas lines on these games are adjusted accordingly to take into account all of the above, and the end result is four games which are all pretty much hard to pick. With that in mind, I'm going to deviate from what I did during the regular season and just force myself to make picks for all four games, and see what happens. Whether I will really bet these lines in real life remains to be seen, but unlike my regular season predictions where I pretty much only posted picks on the games I had good confidence in, I'm planning to go ahead and just make my guess for each playoff game from here on out and see how I do.

For starters, I like the Saints over the Seahawks, even giving the 11 points Vegas has come up with for the line between one of the league's hottest teams and defending league champion and a truly bad sub-.500 divisional winner. In looking at Seattle's schedule, if you throw out Carolina and Arizona -- perhaps the league's two worst overall teams -- Seattle's total scores over its last 8 games have been, in order of most recent to least recent: 16, 15, 18, 21, 24, 19, 7, 3. The 21 and 24 both came in blowout losses as it is, and included a fair amount of trash time late in the game where those last points were not defended by the opponents with nearly the ferocity that the Seahawks are sure to run into this weekend in the Saints who are defending their Superbowl title. And, the 'Hawks are either looking at Charlie Whitehurst again at qb this weekend, or a beat-up Matt Hasselbeck at something like 70%. Basically, I'm thinking the Seahawks are going to score mid-teens in this one (unless the Saints run up 40), and the Saints should be able to pile on some serious points with their offense. New Orleans already scored 34 points at home against the Seahawks when they played in mid-season, and the Saints have put at least 30 on the board in 6 of their last 8 games to boot. This one looks to me to be a low-30s to mid-teens affair, which means the 11 points is not likely to be enough to cover the massive chasm in skill between these two squads. Especially with Seattle's average margin of defeat this season sitting at over 21 points, I'll take the champs and lay the points here, albeit a huge line for a road favorite in the playoffs.

In the second game on Saturday, it's the Colts favored by 3 points at home against the Jets, which is also a rematch of last year's AFC Championship. Only, this year, both teams seem a little worse than they were last year, and it seems to me that whoever wins this game is going down hardcore next week, regardless of which team wins and which team they play in the conference semis. That said, something tells me that Rex Ryan and the Jets will find a way to defend well enough against the Colts' incredibly one-dimensional offense, as Indy is the #1 passing team in the league but the #29 rushing squad. They're going to be an easy game plan in relative terms for what is still a strong defense in New York, and even the return of Joseph Addai a few weeks ago is likely to do a whole lot to remedy this big imbalance. In addition, the Jets' Mark Sanchez has had an inconsistent year, having particular trouble against aggressive, talented defenses, but the Colts just don't have one. They are 13th against the pass on the season, and 25th against the run. This means the pressure will likely be off of Sanchise to make things happen with his arm, and when he needs to make a play, the Colts have just not had a great time this year coming up with the big stops on any kind of a consistent basis. In all, I think this is a close game, but with the Jets getting 3 points on top of a favorable matchup, I think New York is where the value lies for this one.

Moving to the early game on Sunday, the AFC West champion Chiefs are getting three points at home against the Ravens, and even though I have been behind the Ravens as a dark horse Superbowl candidate all season long, I think this one could be a tougher matchup for Baltimore than most people seem to think. Yes the Chiefs haven't been good for several years before this one, but this is a deceptively good team, with the NFL's #1 rushing attack, a wideout with 1170 yards and 15 touchdowns, and a quarterback who threw 27 touchdowns to just 7 interceptions on the season. Although the Chiefs' defense is pretty much average at best, the Ravens don't exactly feature the type of offensive onslaught that is likely to give KC trouble, and the Chiefs have perhaps the single best home-field advantage in the NFL, losing in KC only in the last game of the season this year after the Chiefs had already clinched their first divisional crown since early in the last decade. Although I have a definite worry that the Chiefs faced only two playoff teams in 16 games all season long (one of them being 7-9 Seattle!), the Ravens no longer have the incredible team defense that they did a decade ago. I could see the Ravens squeaking one out in KC for sure, but on balance with the Chiefs having a lot going for them in this game and that incredible home field advantage, I think taking KC plus 3 points is the value pick here.

And then we come to the toughest game of the weekend to pick, both from a spread standpoint and for me from a personal standpoint as well, being a lifelong Philly fan. The Eagles are favored by 3 points at home against Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers, who sneaked into the playoffs with a Week 17 win over the Bears to knock the Giants and Bucanneers out of postseason contention. In the Packers' favor, Aaron Rodgers is pretty much the class of the NFC as far as quarterbacks go, and the team has a solid defense as well to boot. Andy Reid's amazing postseason ineptitude is another big plus that simply cannot be overlooked from Green Bay's perspective, as his in-game management is basically as bad as any coach in the league today. On the Eagles' side of the ledger, though: the game is in Philly, and the Packers were just 3-5 on the road this season, with one of those road wins over the Kevin Kolb-led Eagles way back in Week 1 -- a totally different team -- and another against the hapless Vikings back in Week 11. This is simply not a good road team, who managed to lose during the season at the likes of Washington and Detroit in the second half. The Packers are also another of these totally one-dimensional teams like the Colts, with the Pack ranking as the league's 5th-most prolific passing team but just the 24th-best running squad. And let's not forget that Packers' head coach Mike McCarthy is almost equally poor at game management as Andy Reid, so it's not like there should be a big advantage either way there. This one is so hard to pick, because the Pack's total give-up on the running game is going to make things much easier to game-plan for Andy Reid, and Reid does know how to win a game in the early rounds of the playoffs, and in this case he's facing a team that has not played well at all on the road overall on the year. But the Packers should benefit from the general beat-up nature of Mike Vick at this point in the season, and the game plan that the Giants twice put together as well as the Vikings most recently in showing how to take Vick out of his comfort zone pretty easily. I could go back and forth on this one all day, so in the end I think you have to take the points and go with the Packers, who could easily win the game outright, but could even lose a close one and still get you the winning pick for the game.

So in all, I'm laying the big points on the road in the one totally lopsided matchup on Saturday, but otherwise I am taking the points and the road team in the close matchups at Indy and at Philly, and am again taking the dog and the points at home with the Chiefs. Other than the Saints - Seahawks, this may be the best set of Wildcard Round matchups in recent memory in the NFL.

Da Jets

Wow, did the Jets shit the bed or what on Monday night up at Gillette Stadium against the Cheatriots? I've been highly critical of course of the Cheatriots ever since they and their coach Bill Belichick got busted taping other teams' practices and walkthroughs -- including in at least one of their superbowl wins, that against the vastly superior Philadelphia Eagles back when TO was still trying and was still relevant to the NFL. But, I mean, wow what a game plan against the Jets last night. You just can't say enough about how great Bill Belichick, Tom Brady, and that entire Cheatriots team are, with a special focus on Tom Brady, who after last night's nearly perfect and highly efficient performance now has 27 touchdowns and an amazing 4 interceptions on the season. That guy is just so fucking cool, there are almost no words.

Anyways, how bad are the Jets? Seriously now, this has got to be the single worst 9-3 team in the history of the NFL. Somehow the team that made the AFC Conference Championship in 2009 was gifted with the easiest 2010 schedule I've ever seen, and the Jets have responded in kind, going 8-0 against Miami (6-6), Buffalo (2-10), Minnesota (5-7), Denver (3-9), Detroit (2-10), Cleveland (5-7), Houston (5-7) and Cincinnati (2-10), opponents with a combined record of an unbelievably bad 30-66. Meanwhile, versus teams that are going to be in the playoffs this year, the Jets are 1-3, with an early-season victory over the Cheatriots the only bright spot. And what's more, while they've gone 8-0 against those bad teams this year, anyone who's watched the games like I have knows all too well how poorly they have played in mostly all of them, even in eventually squeaking by with wins. They beat the Dolphins late in the 4th quarter after playing some uninspired football against a key divisional opponent, they squeaked one out in the final minutes against a horrible Broncos team that just fired their head coach after less than two seasons in charge, and then they somehow scored 10 points in the final 3 minutes to tie Detroit and then poked one in in overtime to salvage a win against the most embarrassing franchise in the league. Still not learning their lesson about playing down to the level of their competition, they then allowed the 5-win Browns to come back on them and tie a game they should have had put away, and then failed to score in a few drives in overtime, only managing to run a pass play into the end zone in literally the final 6 seconds of the overtime period to avoid a damaging in-conference tie as well against a team they are supposed to be clearly better than. The next week they once again squeaked by a weak Texans team by a field goal in the 4th quarter. Anyone who's watched the Jets this season knows they could easily be 5-7 or 6-6 at this point in the season, even given the way they've played in their eight wins against subpar teams so far on their schedule.

The Jets have had some major problems on offense when they face strong opponents so far in 2010. While the team has averaged a lofty 28.3 points per game in their 9 wins against all those horribad teams this year (plus the Cheatriots), the Jets have basically had no offense whatsoever to speak of in their three losses against the only three playoff-bound teams they have faced, which is one of the most concerning things for Jets fans today. In Week 1, the Jets lost 10-9 to the Ravens, but that score might as well have been 100-9 because Mark Sanchez has perhaps his least efficient game of his entire football career, be it the pros, at USC or even in his kiddie touch football league, amassing just 74 yards passing despite playing the entire game and averaging just 3.5 yards per attempt, for a qb rating of 56 and change. In Week 8, in getting shut out 9-0 by the playoff-bound Green Bay Packers, Sanchez threw for 256 yards, but it took him 38 attempts to do so, and he threw two costly interceptions to put up a final qb rating of 43.3, which is getting right down there into JaMarcus-Russell-himself territory. And then in this week's 45-3 shellacking by the Cheats, Sanchise firmly planted himself in JaMarcus Land by amassing a quarterback rating of just 27.8 in throwing for just 164 yards, once again no touchdowns, and three interceptions. This team just does not have an offense when it plays good teams.

Almost equally concerning is the defense of the Jets, which is still strong but which is not even close to the league force that it was back in 2009. After easily coming in as the top defense of 2009, the Jets' defensive squad is currently ranked 8th in the NFL in total yards allowed, behind Miami in their own division, and San Diego, Pittsburgh and Baltimore in their conference, all potential playoff opponents, and likely on the road at that now that the Jets have lost the inside track to the AFC East crown. While the Jets remain 3rd in the league in rushing yards allowed, they have allowed nearly 50% more yards on the ground than Pittsburgh in their own conference, and the most concerning stat from my perspective is the pass offense, which has really slipped dramatically from a year ago and all the talk of "Revis Island", etc. So far through 12 games of the 2010 NFL season, the Jets are allowing over 218 passing yards per game, good for just 14th out of the 32 NFL teams, after finishing well out in front in first in this statistic back in 2009 with under 154 pass yards allowed per game. And, after also ending 2009 in first in points allowed at just 14.8 points per game, so far in 2010, the Jets have slipped to 6th and are allowing their opponents to score nearly 20 points each week. The problems on defense are still not as pronounced as those on offense, but this is simply not the team on the defensive side of the ball that it was in 2009, not even close really when it comes right down to it.

As I mentioned, the loss to the Cheatriots now puts the Jets one game behind the Cheats with four games left to play in the division, and clearly leaves the Cheats with the inside track to win the AFC East. New England's remaining schedule includes road games against Buffalo and Chicago -- both presumably wins for the NFL's best team -- and home games against Miami and the Packers, which I also assume the Pats will win based on what I've seen over the season so far as a whole. Meanwhile, the Jets still have road games left at playoff teams Pittsburgh and Chicago, which I think it is fair to assume will both be losses given the way this team has fared against teams with actual talent and skill in 2010, plus home games against Miami and Buffalo within the division that I would not call gimmes either given how poorly the team has played even in its eight wins against the dregs of the NFL. This does not sound to me like a good recipe for the Jets to catch the Cheatriots in the division after this Monday night's loss, meaning that the Jets are at this point likely playing for a 5 seed at best in the AFC postseason race. And with the Ravens already owning the tiebreaker over the Jets due to their Week 1 victory head-to-head, and with the Ravens set up to play Houston, New Orleans, Cleveland and Cincinnati in their final four games, even the 5-seed is not at all set in stone for the Jets at this point with four games remaining in the season.

Given the Jets' performance so far in 2010 against playoff-bound teams almost across the board, it's hard to imagine this team going far when they're set to start off the postseason in the wildcard round by travelling to a team like Jacksonville/Indy or Kansas City (they might take the Jags, but I would expect them to be a solid dog to either of the other two teams if they go on to win their respective divisions), and then even if they win those games on the road, the next stop will be a trip to Pittsburgh or another stop in New England. Unless something changes dramatically with Rex Ryan's squad here in the last four weeks of the regular season, one can only assume we're looking at an early exit for Sanchise et al in the 2010 playoffs.

Six Years

Six years ago today, my life changed forever.

I'll never forget the day we took my first child home from the hospital. I don't think anybody ever forgets that moment -- the fear, the uncertainty. Or the guilt, of knowing that you should absolutely not be legally permitted to leave the hospital as the only people officially in charge of any other person's life, let alone a tiny, defenseless, utterly helpless and dependent baby, caring for whom you know absolutely nothing about whatsoever. I don't scare easily, but believe me when I say, you don't know petrified until that's you leaving the hospital with your first newborn kid.

It's impossible to quantify all the ways your life changes the moment you change from an unencumbered individual -- even if you're married -- to a parent. Going out to dinner every night? Gone. Seeing movies in an actual theater? No more. Jaunting off to Vegas several times a year, just for kicks? Fat chance. Live poker in Atlantic City? Ha ha. Things like life insurance, driving carefully and even just eating healthy suddenly take on an entirely new meaning.

But even though it's sometimes those things that people like me tend to focus on publicly, having kids is not all just new responsibilities and less ability to enjoy the fun things in life. In fact, having kids makes you understand just how great the "fun things in life" can really be. Sure, I don't get to take lavish vacations to exotic locations like Hammer Wife and I used to do whenever we wanted to. But, it turns out, I had no idea just how much fun a vacation could really be until I started bringing my kids along with me, being there the first time they saw the clear blue water of the Caribbean, for their first encounter with a real life iguana, or even the first time they saw the stars from 2000 miles south of their home and about a million miles from the lights of the big city. And yeah, having to watch all of my favorite tv shows on the DVR nowadays cramps my style just a little bit. But you can't compare that to the feeling of being there when the little light bulb finally clicks over your daughter's head as you spend that time with her and her favorite book instead and she finally, for the first time, really starts to figure out how to read.

Six years ago today, my life changed forever. And now I cannot even fathom thinking that my life before my children actually fulfilled me back in those days.

Happy Birthday, M. You seriously light up my life.

On an unrelated note, I like the Buffalo Bills +3 against the New York Jets tonight in Toronto. Seems like everybody and their mother is picking the Jets to win their second straight game tonight against the 4-7 Bills, but I am just not seeing it with the Jets. If not for Jake Delhomme's JaMarcus Russell-worthy performance last Sunday, the Jets don't even beat the Carolina Panthers at home in a down year for Carolina last week, and the Bills have been playing some of their best football of the season since Dick Jauron got fired and was replaced as interim head coach by Perry Fewell three weeks ago. TO is back in the house with his three best performances of the season in those last three games, and as I mentioned the Jets continue not to play well as they look to claw their way back to .500 on the season. I would lean towards the Bills straight-up in this game which is most definitely a road game for the Jets, if not exactly a home game for the Bills, but with the three points I just can't stay away from the value on the Bills in this one.

NFL Pick 5 -- Week 5

So, after last week's powerful 5-0 record against the spread, my season record right now stands at 10-5 as we head into the first game of the second quarter of the 2009 NFL season. The league's best teams -- the Cheatriots, Ravens, Jets and the Colts in the AFC, and the Giants, Vikings, Saints and 49ers in the NFC -- have already started to distance themselves from the competition, while it's becoming increasingly clear who the bottom of the NFL in 2009 is going to be as well. It is with those teams at the top and bottom of the league so far this year in mind that I pick my five NFL games against the spread for Week 5, as always in no particular order:

1. Minnesota Vikings - 10 at the St. Louis Rams. Everybody knows the Rams are a terrible football team. With their utterly porous defense combined with an offense that can move the ball a little bit but finds a very hard time scoring, this should be a beatdown for the Vikings even when on the road. The Vikes control the ball with the best runningback in football, they have the grizzled veteran at qb who so far this year is managing the games beautifully, and they've also got one of the league's toughest defenses, in particular against the run which is perhaps the Rams' strongest point on offense. I know Brett Favre was really, really juiced to finally beat the team that chose Aaron Rodgers over him, so there is every possibility of a letdown game from Mr. Excitement in St. Louis this week, but even still this should be an easy win for one of the very best teams in the league over one of the very worst. I don't love the 10 points but ultimately I'm going to do what's worked over the past couple of weeks, and just hold my nose and pick a good team to win big against a bad team on the road.

2. Detroit Lions + 10.5 vs Pittsburgh Steelers. Now on this one I'm going the opposite way. I already lost once this year picking the Lions, but I'm back this week to try to duplicate that feat once again in Week 5. I don't think the Lions are going to win outright over the defending superbowl champion Steelers, but the simple fact of the matter is that Pittsburgh is not quite the same team without Troy Polamalu out there prowling the field on defense. They've looked better over the past couple of weeks, but then the Lions have also seemed to be getting it together themselves if not only for a couple of quarters like last week against the Bears. But with the Lions at home, playing a bit of improved football, and facing a depleted or at least injury-slowed Steelers squad even if Polamalu is able to return from spraining his MCL while Willie Parker appears headed for the bench for a second straight week, I think more than 10 points is just too much to give for this game. I'll take the points.

3. New England Cheatriots -3 at Denver Broncos. Here is a chance for me to put my money where my mouth is, as the Cheatriots head to Mile High to take on the 4-0 Broncos in what will be billed as one of the biggest games of the week for sure. Last week I gave the Broncos the "Not as Good as Their Record" award, and this week I'm backing that up by picking the Cheaters to win by more than a field goal. With Denver's stingy defense this one is not likely in my view to run much more than 3 points, but with the chance that Denver could win outright, combined with the chance that they lose but by a field goal or less, this seems like value-town to me.

4. Indianapolis Colts -3.5 at Tennessee Titans. This one scares me a little bit because it seems so low that I fear it's one of those games somebody knows something I don't know about, but I just can't stay away after watching these two teams play multiple games already this year. One thing I know for sure is that the Titans' defense is weak, and their pass defense is downright nasty. It stinks out loud. Oh, and Peyton Manning is coming to town. I don't see how I can stay away from the Colts, even against a beyond-desperate 0-4 Titans squad, and even on the road, with the matchup looking this good and only giving up 3.5 points. The Colts could win by double digits in this one.

5. Jets -1.5 at Dolphins. Once again I will keep with trend and pick the Monday night game this week, and this time I'm going back with the Jets, a common pick this year for me that's been working out well on both sides of the score so far in 2009. Once thing I have noticed repeatedly (and been impressed with) about Jets' rookie quarterback Mark Sanchez is how he picks himself up and comes back -- emotionally and physically -- from a bad play or a bad game. So far in his young NFL career, the Sanchise seems to have that uncanny resiliency that is so crucial for any big-time NFL qb, and he's coming off his first bad game of the regular season against the Saints last week in New Orleans. The Dolphins are a hungry team, finally having gotten off the schneid last week in killing Buffalo by ramming the wildcat down their throats, but something tells me that Sanchise, coach Rex Ryan and the Jets are going down to Miami to send a message this week. If memory serves, Rex Ryan has absolutely eaten up the wildcat that the Dolphins ran so successfully over the past year or two, crushing the team in 2008 and I think back in 2007 as well, so I'm not as concerned as I might be against a more poorly-coach and poorly-prepared team, and like I said I expect Sanchise to step up and lead his team to victory once again on his first Monday night national television appearance of probably many over his NFL career.

Winners and Losers

The NFL packed another powerful punch in Week 2, with several big winners and several big losers emerging from what we saw all Sunday long across the world's best professional sports league bar none.

The Big Winners:

Rex Ryan. The automated phone call to 55,000 Jets season ticket holders during the week, encouraging them to come out and support the team as hard as they can and hinting at expected victory for the first time against the Cheatriots in New York since 2000. Keeping his rookie quarterback totally in the game and not requiring him to do too much. Holding the Cheats to just 9 points in his first time coaching against Bill Belichik. In fact, giving up just 9 and 7 points in his first two games as head coach. Watch out for the Jets in the biggest sports media market in the world.

Jay Cutler. Cutler didn't exactly play great against the Steelers' vaunted defense, but he sure saved himself a whole world of heartache by throwing the fourth-quarter td pass to Johnny Knox to secure a win this week and stop himself from starting off 0-2 in Chicago. Although Cutler only threw for 236 yards on the day, it was enough to win against a very stingy defense, and more importantly, his line included two tds and no picks, a huge improvement from the 77 interceptions he threw against the Packers at Lambeau last week. Cutler has been redeemed for now, and his Bears are right back in the hunt for the hotly-contested NFC North.

Eli Manning. Say what you want about the guy, but Eli is getting better every single week, and he is downright proficient at leading a 4th-quarter offense. And how 'bout that 360-turnaround play and then accurate throw in the fourth quarter of Sunday night's game against the Cowboys? That was Favre-esque, and by that I mean the athletic, youthful version of Favre we used to see with the Packers several decades ago. Eli's Giants are off to a 2-0 start in the NFC East, and put a serious damper on the opening of the Cowboys' opulent new stadium in Dallas. And special kudos also go out to new Giants starting wideout Mario Manningham, who now has 13 receptions for 208 yards and two touchdowns through his first two games as a starter in New York, helping to fill the void left by the self-shooting Plaxico Burress.

Drew Brees. Wow. Nine touchdowns in two games this year, after easily outperforming all other NFL quarterbacks in 2008 as well in completing 65% of his passes for 34 touchdowns and 5069 yards last season. The Saints are averaging 46.5 points per game to start the season, and with the Panthers playing like dog poop, it looks like the Saints will be talking playoffs (cue the Jim Mora "Playoffs?!" soundbite here) soon enough coming out of the NFC South.

The Losers:

TO. Even with the Bills winning their game this weekend to move to 1-1, TO is quickly picking up right where he left off last year as far as his season being defined more by two blatant drops so far in his first two games than by any actual highlights he's been coming up with. Yeah he scored his first touchdown this weekend, but have you seen his stats so far on the season? We're 1/8 of the way through NFL 2009 already, and TO is at 5 catches for 98 yards and 1 score. Not good. Nor is it good that TO was seen angrily yelling at the fans on the sidelines after his touchdown this weekend, nor suggesting after last week's loss that his quarterback "needs to throw the ball downfield" more. Uh huh, Terrell. Just catch the damn ball.

Tony Romo. 13 of 29 for 127 yards on national tv on Sunday night to open the Cowboys' new gem of a stadium? One touchdown but three picks, all of which led to touchdowns for the Giants on the night? Granted one of the interceptions was a flukey off-the-shoe tip catch by Giants rookie Bruce Johnson, but still, Romo looked like crap on Sunday night, there's just no other way to say it. And how tired are we all getting of having to look at Wade Phillips' obviously confused, beaten-down mug on the sidelines 85 times a game for the Cowboys? Thank god that guy'll be long gone a year from now. Hope everyone likes the idea of Mike Shanahan or Bill Cowher's scowl on those sidelines, because that's what we other NFC East fans will be seeing a lot of starting in 2010.

The Tennessee Titans. The last team to lose a game in 2008 has now started off 2009 at 0-2, thanks to not enough offense and a very poor defensive showing giving up 420 yards against the Houston Texans this weekend. This week's beneficiary was Texans quarterback Matt Schaub, who followed up his awful performance against the Jets in week 1 with a 359-yard, four-touchdown outburst against the defending AFC South champions this Sunday. Also spoiled in the loss was the Titan's Chris Johnson's sick-ass effort, scoring on touchdown runs of 91 and 57 yards on the day in addition to catching a td pass of 69 yards. Now that right there is a fantasy football players' dream, especially the super dumb leagues that award extra points for touchdowns of more than 50 yards.

Special Category: The Loser Winners:

The Washington Redskins. A 9-7 "win", if you can even call it that, over the hapless St. Louis Rams this weekend doesn't even begin to describe the ineptitude shown by both teams at Fedex Field on Sunday afternoon. Skins qb Jason Campbell did throw for 245 yards in the win, but obviously no td passes as four 60-yard drives for the Skins stalled out at or before the red zone without the team notching a single touchdown against a Rams squad who has won only twice in their last 18 games. Daniel Snyder continues his reign of terror in Washington, DC, bringing in an endless parade of overpriced superstars and ineffective coaches to the nation's capital and absolutely wasting his time yet again this year in the NFC East.

And then there are the Raiders, and more specifically, quarterback Jamarcus Russel against the Chiefs in Kansas City. Russell went 7 for 24 for 109 yards on a thoroughly miserable day in the pocket, and yet somehow that was enough to win the game! In fact, this entire game was a total and utter mismatch, with the Chiefs amassing 409 total yards to the Raiders' paltry 166, earning 25 first downs to the Raiders' 11, and holding the ball for nearly 39 minutes to the Raiders' 21, but yet none of this could stop Jamarcus Russel from becoming the second quarterback in more than twelve years to complete less than 30 percent of his passes with a minimum of 20 attempts but still win an NFL game. It's hard to imagine an uglier win than this one, or an uglier franchise than the Oakland Raiders.

And the Biggest Loser of All award goes to:

NBC. What on earth are these guys doing with their Sunday Night Football coverage? This is Dick Ebersol's big plan to keep NBC relevant to the football scene in the U.S.? Faith Hill copying Hank Williams with a ghey pre-recorded song just prior to the coverage of the kickoff? Repeatedly showing the letters "SNF" to promote their own Sunday Night Football brand, also clearly copied directly from the long-standing MNF Monday Night Football moniker? And then, somehow, forbidding the studio commentators from referring to "NBC" at all during the opening segment and at halftime, instead insisting on repeated references to "Football Night in America". Football Night in America? On a day that is chock full from dawn to dusk with NFL football games, Sunday night is now going to be known across the nation and the globe as "Football Night in America"? Keep dreaming, NBC. And keep dreaming that your tagline "I've been waiting all day for Sunday night" will speak to a single viewer of your games, who once again have just spent an entire fucking day watching nothing but NFL football games! Why on earth would any of us be waiting all day for Sunday night? It's one thing to just blindly copy Monday Night Football like a bunch of plagiaristic lemmings, but for crying out loud, use your brains at least a teensy little bit and change the things that don't make any sense whatsoever when applied to Sunday Night Football instead of Monday night. On Mondays, depending on the matchup, I and I'm sure many of you out there do in fact look forward all day to the Monday night game. But on Sunday? I'm surprised they didn't just call their Sunday night broadcast "Monday Night Football" and not change that either when they stole it from ABC. What an absolute joke, top to bottom on NBC's coverage of the Sunday night games.

And NBC, I have a newsflash for you: Keith Olberman and Dan Patrick were really, really cool co-anchors on SportsCenter back in the day. But that was literally 18 years ago now. Today, Keith Olberman is widely regarded as one of the biggest assholes on network tv, so partisan and biased in his unprofessional "reporting" that he had to be kicked off of covering all political events on MSNBC, and NBC viewers don't want to see him anywhere on the network, including on Sunday night football games instead of the refuse pile where his stale ass belongs. And Dan Patrick is, well, old. In 1992 when Patrick used to bust out with "the Whiff" on a strikeout in baseball and "en fuego" to describe Michael Jordan's latest run, it was really new, cool and refreshing. Now Patrick's shtick is just old, and boring. Seriously -- really, really boring. And then to go along with the tired Keith Olberman and Dan Patrick routine, you bring in Tony Dungy and some other guy I've never heard of or seen before to liven things up? I've got some more news for you, NBC. Tony Dungy may be a very nice man, he may have endured a very sad situation with his son. He may have somehow underperformed and got overrated for that underperformance for years as a coach in Tampa Bay and then in Indianapolis. And, he may even have somehow hitched his wagon to Mike Vick this year and yet still, somehow, come away from it all squeaky-clean as ever. And of course Dungy may be a deeply religious man. But, unfortunately for NBC, none of this does anything to make Dungy even remotely interesting as a football commentator. He is just terrible, and the team put together by NBC for the Sunday night coverage is without a doubt the worst of any network, any game, covering football games on television in my entire lifetime. There, I said it.

Your World Champion Philadelphia Phillies' magic number is 6 baybeeee. Bring it on.

Realizations

The past several days have been a week of realizations for me. Some profound, and some borderline meaningless. But I thought I would take a break from poker again today and write about what's been swirling around in my head lately.

First things first: the Jets suck. It's official. It's over, they just plain suck. If you're a Jets fan, I'm sorry for you. But if you couldn't see how much that was the Exact Same Schtunk Brett Favre on Monday night, then you'll never see it. He threw interceptions like the government bails out financial companies -- blindly and plentifully. And I would love to at least be able to say that he was under pressure all night, but that simply isn't the case. That's what was so quinessentially Favre about his performance -- he throws picks when he's not under too much pressure. He just can't throw the ball with consistent accuracy anymore. He throws every pass about 150 miles an hour, the majority of them off the mark, and in multiple cases on Monday, smack into double or triple coverage with basically no chance of being caught (by his team, anyways), and quite often directly to the other team with none of his receivers even around. They might have started off 2-0 or whatever, but this team is simply not good. Start facing it now. And I'm not some hater -- I actually enjoy the Jets, and being a Philly guy they are easily the only likeable football team in this city, and over his career I've been a huge Favre fan as well. But let's face facts -- the guy has been an interception machine for a good three or four seasons now. He should not have come back, Green Bay was right to want to get him out of town at this point, and he stizzinks. Some of those throws last night were so awful, it's enough to make you wonder if he was accepting a bribe to throw the game. But then, sadly, you realize that he would never be that obvious if he were throwing the game. No, unfortunately for Brett, he just sucks at this point in his career. It pains me to say it, but it's the inescapable truth.

OK, what else. Well, while we're on the topic of sports and of Favre and the Jets showing their true colors last night, the baseball race is heating up and we're seeing the Mets once again show their true colors as well in September. Last year they lost what? A 7 game lead with 17 to play in September? Well just about two weeks ago, we were already about a week in September and the Mets once again found themselves with a comfortable 3.5 game lead over the flagging Phillies in the NL East, with probably no more than 17 games left again in the season. Now fast forward two weeks, and the Mets find themselves 2.5 games back of the Phils -- 2 back in the loss column -- with 6 games left to play (5 for the Phillies). The Mets have lost 6 of their last 9 games -- including 5 out of 8 to the Braves and Nationals who are a combined 50.5 games out of first -- and now sit just one game ahead of the fading Brewers for the wildcard lead. This team has already done what it can to blow another comfortable September lead in the division, one year after the most historic September choke in MLB history, and like with Brett Favre above, it gives a great insight into the character of this team right now. They are chokers, and they do not have what it takes to win. Every single player is stepping down here in September, for the second year in a row. David Wright? Choker. Carlos Beltran? Choker. Pedro Martinez? Huge choker. Jose Reyes? Chok -- no wait. He just plain sucks. Name your favorite Mets bullpen pitcher? All fantastic chokers. Obviously I would fire the shit out of Jerry Manuel if this team fails to make the playoffs, and frankly I would fire him anyways given this year's final-month collapse and bring in someone fiery who won't allow this to happen again. And when is someone finally going to get rid of Omar Menaya, huh? Let's face it -- he has not delivered and in fact consistently seems to make poor personnel decisions with guys like Pedro and Beltran who everybody else but him seems to recognize for the overpaid, under-performing players that they are. You keep shitty management around for long enough, and your team starts playing shitty, year in and year out. Believe me, I know -- I'm from Philly.

Speaking of which, what a time to be a Philadelphia sports fan. The Eagles look legit, with perhaps the greatest defense in the NFL this year, and the Phillies are getting close to mathematically locking up a playoff berth for the second year in a row. If they win the NL East again this year -- which is not set in stone by a long shot yet, but with 5 games to play and a 2 game lead in the loss column, and with all home games left, two against the Braves and three against the last-place Nats, things are looking good -- but if they do win the East it will be the first time since I grew up that the Phils win the division back to back. I know they won several consecutive NL East crowns in the late 70s, but since then it's been fits and starts at best for the world's losingest professional sports franchise. But this is a good little team here, with great balance between a decent starting pitching corps and a great bullpen on the one side, and a very solid, if a bit inconsistent, lineup that includes the greatest home run and RBI guy in the game today and the last two years' league MVPs.

And getting back to the Eagles for a minute, it's a shame that Dallas looks to be the early favorite to walk to the Superbowl, because the Eagles are looking strong. They are also playing a bit inconsistent so far, with two great offensive performances until getting more or less shut down by Pittsburgh at home this past Sunday, and two great defensive performances as well, other than last Monday night's defensive debacle in Dallas. And now with McNabb starting his injuries early with last week's abdomen issue that saw him miss a few series, and with Westbrook obviously an injury waiting to happen every single year and now weighing in with the sprained (?) ankle that caused him to miss most of this week's game as well, you have to figure the Eagles for second-best in the division, if not third. Remember, we play in the NFC East, which has quite literally been the best division in football for a good two decades straight now, and once again is clearly this year, with the 3-0 Cowboys, 3-0 Superbowl champion Giants, 2-1 Eagles and the upstart 2-1 Redkins. Amazingly, this season early indications are that the three best teams in the entire NFC are all in the NFC East, with teams like Arizona and San Francisco (!!) leading the West, Tampa Bay, Carolina and Atlanta (!!) leading the South, and with the NFC North, as always, not even worth mentioning. So the Eagles have their work cut out for them this year with 6 games against the 'Boys, Giants and Redskins, although our out-of-conference schedule this year is decidedly weak which is good given the toughness of those games coming up against the division later in the year.

One other realization I have come to over the past few days while I've watched this truly historic time in the stock market is that I am very close to deciding to get out there and do what I can to vote out of office anybody who votes in favor of this ridiculous trillion-dollar "bailout" package for Wall Street. Because that's exactly what it is -- it's for Wall Street. Sure, Hank Paulson and George Bush can say it's for taxpayers, for investors, whatever, but that's all a steaming pile of crap. It's for Wall Street, for the bankers and the traders and the CEOs who selfishly and without foresight hawked any kind of mortgage they could to any kind of borrower, often without any look at that borrower's actual ability or likelihood of repaying the debt, and then packaged up all those mortgages into securities and sold those to even more naive clients for even more money. And I can live with that btw, I really can, because we live in America, a free market with a free market, capitalistic economy where nobody forces the banks to offer these products, and nobody forces the customers to come along and buy them and trade them. But what I cannot live with is these same bankers and traders, who didn't share a dime of the wealth that these ridiculous securitizations of mortgages brought them over the past seven or eight years or so, who went out and bought huge homes in Hamptons, drove up apartment prices in Manhattan to the stratospheric levels they are at today, helped prop up the recockulous price of private schools in the city to today's impressive $33,000 a year for a 4-year-old to get a decent education, etc. etc. etc. These guys consumed, consumed and consumed some more with all that wealth they made over the past several years hawking these absurd mortgages products to the world, but now when it has all turned around because the real estate prices underlying all these securitized oblgiations have fallen just 15% or so from their highs, now we taxpayers have to pay a trillion dollars to buy these bad loans off these bankers' books? That's the part where you've lost me.

The stock market pundits are largely right that, without this silly bailout business as announced late last week and soon to be finalized by Congress, the Dow would have probably dropped another 2500 points from where it was early last week. I don't think there's any doubt about that. But you know what? Just like I said a week or two ago when Lehman Brothers and AIG were teetering on the edge, that 25% drop would have been the right thing to happen. Sure, I am heavily invested in the stock market, and in the short-term that would have crushed my portfolio value. As a relatively young man with a young family and some excess fundage, I invest primarily in an aggressive but diversified portfolio of equities and some other securities. But here I am, living proof of someone who actually believes in free market forces, and who actually believes in capitalism through and through. If circumstances as they existed a week ago lead people to want to sell the market down 25% from current levels, because it becomes obvious that much of the gains of the past several years were illusory and are all now coming back to roost, then so be it. Because I truly believe in capitalism and the free market, I am willing to take my medicine and lose 25% of my investment holdings in the short-term in order to get the market back to where it actually belongs given the current state of things.

But that right there is the rub. The current administration -- and once again, that includes the chimp in the white house in addition to the baboons in Congress -- is not willing to let the market be where it belongs right now. They stepped in once with Bear Stearns, two more times with Fannie and Freddie, once again in forcing the buyout of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America, and yet again with a massive $85 billion bridge loan to keep AIG afloat. And now here they are again with a trillion dollar package to form a fund to buy all the shitty mortgages from the banks. And don't worry, the Democrats in Congress are now insisting that they also be able to buy credit card debts and car loans too! These clowns will do anything to control the markets, to keep them artificially and externally propped up far above the levels everyone and their mother knows they would drop to immediately if this latest government bailout package were to suddenly disappear. They fear what would happen if free market forces allowed stocks to fall until they reached the level where the buyers once again equalled the sellers. They fear the effect on the market, they fear the effect on personal wealth, and they fear the effect on the economy at large. These fuckheads actually fear letting the free markets work to create their own equilibrium.

We as a society have a name for people who believe in capitalism only when the economy and the stock market are doing well, but who favor taking control of the economy and the market when things turn south. People who say they believe in the free market as long as it is working for them, but when the inevitable slowdown threatens, they manipulate the market, printing money to throw at private companies to prevent them from further hurting the economy as it grapples with its natural forces that always inexorably lead to contraction and expansion, contraction and expansion. You know what we call those people? Communists. Plain and simple.

I have no problem with people who support Communism. I really don't, I mean that. It's one option, and there have been literally billions of people over time who have grown up and lived their entire lives under Communist regimes. But unlike many of those people, I don't believe in Communism. I prefer true capitalism, and because I am a true capitalist -- not a bullshit one like our current government -- I put my money where my mouth is. As much pain as it will cause in the short-term, I am absolutely willing to watch my portfolio lose 25% of its value this month, when it turns out that the 40% gains over the past five years were all bullshit based on assumptions which have now proven to be utterly and completely false. What can I say? I'm a true free market guy, right down to my core. That's what capitalism is supposed to be all about when it comes right down to it. Obviously, our government needs more people who understand what true capitalism is.

So watch out, you pig-headed politicians. I'm going to look and see which one of you assheads votes for this trillion-dollar subsidy to the financial institutions who greedily abused unknowing consumers and naively took on massive risks all hinging on the notion that real estate prices woud literally never decline again. And if you vote for this plan, I'm going to be out there, lurking, working in my own ways to get you voted out on your fat ass this November. And next November, and every November after that. I'll give up 25% of my money if that's what the free market economy says I have to do. But being forced by you to pay it out as taxes to save the rich bastards who ran up 8-digit bank accounts over the past seven years by being greedy and having no foresight at all? Nope. I live in America because here we're not supposed to do that. Here the free market is supposed to reign.

It is just amazing and embarrassing how quickly so many people in this country are willing to completely trash our basic fucking economic precepts just because a little number at the bottom of their portfolio statement starts dropping from the obviously over-inflated levels it has been at for the past few years.

Favre

Wow. I mean, wow. Brett Favre a New York Jet. Needless to say, this city is electric this morning.

It's like this. As many of you know, I'm a Philadelphia fan through and through. In all the sports. Yep, that's right. Phillies. Eagles. Sixers and Flyers. The whole shebang of local franchises where I grew up and where my family still is today. So let's just say that I know what it's like to be a fan of loser teams and the butt of every joke a city across. As my few fellow haters bloggers from Philadelphia are all too keenly aware, it means a special something to be a real hardened Philly fan. You grow up with a certain feeling -- call it pessimism, call it inevitability, fate, whatever -- but you basically know how mostly every season is going to end before it even begins. And it really affects you, inside and outside the world of sports, in ways that only a true fan of Philadelphia could ever understand.

The New York Jets are one of the very closest things to these Philadelphia teams, another team that hasn't won a superbowl in basically two generations. A team that always seems to find a way to lose, to trade the better players for the worse, and the one who always seems to come out on the losing end of every transaction and just every occurrence in which they are involved as a franchise. Get the first pick in the draft? The guy blows his knee out in training camp. Picked to finish first in the division for the first time in over 20 years? Quarterback shreds his Achilles tendon early in Game 2 and the team ends up 4-12. Trade for the coach who just won one of the toughest divisions in football? Guy ends up being the literal worst coach in any sport in the history of time and is gone after two abysmal seasons. It's just like that when you're a fan of the Jets, and again it's eerily similar for me to what my own sports fandom has been in my nearly 30 years of being an avid fan of all the Philly teams.

So Brett Favre struts into town with the truly shocking news in this area that he has been traded for what, a 4th round draft pick. And you know what? I have absolutely no doubt that Favre is going to make some real waves here in this city. I mean, many people just aren't cut out to play and live in New York City. For some it's too busy, for some it's too loud, for some it's too big, and for many it's just too much of a microscope, and they end up cracking under the pressure, performing poorly and/or just flipping out. I remember Randy Johnson in his first week as a New York Yankee literally punching out a camera man who was asking too many questions up in Johnson's face. Guys like that, and there are many of them, just aren't cut out for the big city like this. Scores of other players just find out they could never handle the media scrutiny, the constant criticism, the millions of fans writing, talking, calling into sports radio, etc. all picking apart every little thing their star athletes say or do. It's a rough life, and it takes a special kind of player with a special kind of focus, including an uncanny ability to tune out all the noise that comes along with being in New York, to really survive here and to thrive here.

But Brett Favre is just such a guy. Even though he's from the back woods of Mississippi and has spent basically his entire life there and then in the local-community environment of Green Bay, the guy still has that certain je ne sais quoi about him. More than anything else, it's a presence. Favre is going to step foot off the plan at LaGuardia in a day or two, and I'm telling you, he is instantly going to be the king. If there is any quarterback in the NFL that is just plain cool, it's Favre.

And don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say this is the greatest thing to happen to the NFL since Joe Namath's improbable victory in I think the third superbowl ever back in the late 60's. Personally, I think one of the big losers in this ends up being Brett Favre. Sure, he gets to keep playing football, and obviously with the shit qb's the Jets have going on right now, he will be the obvious started right from the get-go for his new team. And yes, he gets to continue his already-record streak of consecutive starts at quarterback in the NFL. But there are two big downsides to this move. The less significant downside in my mind is that Brett is now playing for the hapless Jets, and I don't think he is even close to good enough to overcome the loser mentality that afflicts that franchise as bad as any of the Philadelphia teams. So Brett is in my mind jumping out of his current situation and into another where he is highly unlikely to have any huge success, and I don't think even the Favre-enabled Jets are anywhere near good enough to make the superbowl, or even possibly to make the playoffs in what is sure to be another stacked AFC.

But the worst part of this whole thing is that I always cringe a little whenever one of these franchise guys who spends more or less his entire career playing for one team in one city and building a bond with the fans and really the entire community, suddenly up and leaves for a new team, new city, etc. I mean, did it feel good to you watching Joe Montana end his career as a Kansas City Chief? Now Favre is in some ways throwing away everything he built up over the previous 16 seasons in Green Bay. There is just something magical to me about these all-time greats at their sport, starting and ending their careers with the same team and going down in history as an icon for the city in which they always played. The Robin Yount / George Brett type of athletes. Now Favre has removed himself from this venerable group, and personally I never find that history reflects quite so well on such players once they leave the friendly confines of the city, the field and the fans where they became famous. I suppose only time will tell if Favre lives to regret the decision to venture away from his home away from home in Green Bay and to the media center that is New York, where the fans are crazed but the team has basically been a comedy of errors and a comedy of failures over the past many, many years.

What's that? Oh this is supposed to be a poker blog? Well eff poker. I am tilted beyond tilt these days. It's so bad that on Wednesday night I went and unregistered from a couple of FTOPS tournaments I had previously been all set to play later this week and weekend, and I'm not sure when the next time will be that I'll be up to putting up hundreds of dollars of my very hard-earned cash on the line when I can't beat players who bet at me on 6th street with three of a kind or two high pairs showing in razz (both true stories!) and I haven't flopped a set in probably four months. Eff poker, did I mention that already?