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NFL’s Con-fessional Bowl
Let me give you a scenario, and you can tell me if it seems like something you’d enjoy watching. The scenario involves a group of athletes voted to play in an all-star game. Fans have a certain number of votes per each position, and may cast an unlimited number of ballots - representing what is supposed to be 1/3 of the total vote for athletes. These athletes that eventually get voted in get to travel, usually with their family’s, to Honolulu, HI a week before the all-star game. Keep in mind these athletes are still recovering from a full 16 game season of hitting, tackling, lifting and rehabbing. The athletes will get to lounge around in 80-90 degree weather, practice a little bit with their fellow conference all-stars, play pranks on each other, converse, surf, and talk about who is going to win their sport’s champ
ionship the next week. Doesn’t sound half bad for the athletes, does it?
This scenario I’m describing is the NFL Pro Bowl, a game held (as of the past few years) a week before the Super Bowl. It is the only major sports all-star game that garners lower T.V. ratings than its regular season games. Players are voted in based on what could essentially be equated to a popularity contest. Coaches for each conference are automatically selected from the teams that lost the NFC and AFC title games, coaching teams, with usually, a good percentage of players opting out of the game for various reason, some related to injuries sustained during the regular season, some because their respective team is the one playing in the Super Bowl the following week… And if you’re Randy Moss, back before the game was held after the Super Bowl, you’ll opt out of playing, cause the week before your New England Patriots ended up losing the Super Bowl. Hawaii was just not motivating enough.
Patriots and Belichick Only Care About Winning
Bill Belichick’s only fetish is winning. Feet, legs, people wearing furry outfits, none of that entices him.
He wants to win NFL football games so much everything else in life is a distraction. Can you imagine Bill Belichick making a foot fetish video with his wife? Of course not. That’s wasted time. The feet, Belichick would think, you can’t sleep with the feet.
Rex Ryan is different, Falstaff in a headset, a walking quote machine who generates Internet page views at a faster clip than Brett Favre’s text pictures. But Rex is all bluster, if he loses to the Patriots he’ll be flipping fans off at the next UFC fight. He’ll get over the defeat, come back next year talking more trash. Belichick is different. He marinates in his defeat, pulls his hoodie over his head and hibernates like the Emperor in “Return of the Jedi.” Every thought comes back to football, every waking moment is an opportunity to gain a competitive advantage.
The Other Side
Every other coach bows prostate before Brady and Manning. What do you have to lose by trying to get inside their heads? You can lose face, which most coaches hate. Ryan can handle it. That’s why he’s getting personal this week with the modern-day Lombardi.
– David Whitley on why Rex Ryan and the Jets will down Bill Belichick and the Patriots
Wonder how good at what he does Bill Belichick is? His coaching tree is a sequoia with no branches. Everyone who has left him to succeed on his own has fallen to the forest floor, looking up dazed at the sky above — Bill Belichick’s brilliance is solitary. Romeo Crennel, Josh McDaniels, Eric Mangini, and Charlie Weis? Failure, failure, failure, failure. Belichick could plug in your Aunt Gladys and have her named coordinator of the year.
He’s that good at what he does.
Vick or Brady for MVP
The Eagles win started the chorus again, the one that calls for Mike Vick to be the league’s MVP. Clearly he’s one of the people worthy of strong consideration. If football ranked folks one-two-three (as it should), Vick would have to be one of the three. And he has the vote of Giants defensive end Justin Tuck. Tuck said so after the game. “He has my vote,” Tuck said.
But this great nation has become one of immediacy, and decisions are based on the immediacy of the last game played — not the entire body of work.
Which makes anointing Vick after that game wrong. Because the NFL MVP is still Tom Brady. Vick is doing wondrous things. His runs against the Giants were magical. But he is surrounded with two talented wide receivers and a running back who can play. Brady is doing what he’s been doing with Danny Woodhead at running back and a recycled Deion Branch at receiver.
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This Time Around Patriots Defense Was Enough to Stop Peyton and the Colts
This year, Bill Belichick was forced to try and let his defense stop Peyton Manning.
It did.
It was James Sanders, the most experienced member of New England’s secondary, who did what Belichick was afraid to let his defense do a year ago in Indianapolis. Sanders picked off what Manning called a “sickening” pass headed for Pierre Garcon by dropping out of double coverage. It cemented a 31-28 win for the Patriots over Manning and the Colts in what has become an annual contest between non-division opponents — one the NFL tries to make an instant classic each season by scheduling it during November network sweeps, almost as a separate entity in itself.
The annual Quarterback Bowl. Brady vs. Manning. Available to most of the nation and available for discussion at water coolers everywhere. (Do they have water coolers anymore?)
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Pats Rising in a Mixed-up NFL Season
That’s it. We should all give up trying to figure out this year’s NFL.
Nothing about it makes sense. A Sunday that saw the Bills, Cowboys, Broncos, 49ers and Jaguars all pick up wins ended with a Sunday night upset by Tom Brady and the Patriots over the Steelers at Heinz Field. The same Patriots who got rolled last week by the Browns raced out to a 23-3 lead and held on to beat the Steelers, 39-26. That’s right. They dropped 39 on the Steelers’ defense. In Pittsburgh.
“Your last one is your best one,” Patriots linebacker Jerod Mayo said, and while his point was about his team and the way it bounced back from the Cleveland loss, he could have been summing up the weekly goal of every team in a league in which no one has stood out and these 7-2 Patriots might just be suited to be the last team standing.
Will Brady Be the Difference Maker For Deion Branch
Tom Brady was so happy to have Deion Branch back in a Patriots uniform that he aimed his first dozen passes in Tuesday’s practice right at his new/old receiver.
Who was fresh off a red-eye flight from Seattle.
“Tom was so amped up it was like he was hopping up and down, trying to make sure I got right back into things,” Branch said after a nine-catch performance in a 23-20 overtime win over Baltimore Sunday as the numerical replacement for Randy Moss (both wear No. 84), if not the physical one — there’s a seven-inch difference in height there and a couple of tenths in the 40-yard dash that Branch lacks.
Brady was amped up again after the win Sunday, in which he brought the Patriots from 10 points down in the final quarter with two drives, including one capped off by a 5-yard TD pass to Branch that cut New England’s deficit to 20-17. And Branch was amped up about those nine catches for 98 yards, more receptions than he caught in any game in Seattle, to whom he was shipped by New England in 2006, after a long-simmering contract dispute of the kind that led to Moss being dealt to Minnesota a week before Branch returned. Read More >>
Randy Moss Fate and Future May Lie Outside of The Patriots
Randy Moss didn’t catch a pass for the Patriots on Monday night in Miami, and there’s a chance he may not catch another one for them again. Jay Glazer of FOXSports.com reported Tuesday night on Twitter that the Patriots and Vikings were “very close” to a deal that would send Moss from New England back to the Vikings, provided he and Minnesota could agree on the contract extension the Patriots don’t want to give him.
Moss, who is making $6.4 million this season, is set to become a free agent after the year ends. After New England’s season-opening win over Cincinnati, Moss said he didn’t feel “appreciated” by the Patriots.
According to a report by BostonHerald.com, citing a source, Moss asked the Patriots for a trade following that blowup. Read More >>
Reality hits Tom Brady with Richard Seymour trade
Trades such as the most recent between the Patriots and Raiders for veteran defensive end Richard Seymour don’t necessarily sit well with all involved. But decisions like there seem to be a way of life in the NFL.
“Who would be thrilled to go to the Oakland Raiders?,” former Patriots teammate Rodney Harrison told PFT. “Maybe somebody who’s happy to just get a chance but not a guy like Richard Seymour, a five-time Pro Bowler. For a veteran player to go to Oakland at this juncture it’s just difficult.”
But not only has this decision directly affected the future of Richard Seymour but also those whom went to battle each game day. Even Tom Brady could not help but incite conversation about the decision and how it has affected his outlook.
“Our goals are the team goals,” Brady said this morning on the Dennis and Callahan program. “At the same time you’ve got to understand what’s best for the team isn’t always what’s best for you as a player. It’s a real fine line because you want to feel the commitment and the loyalty to the team, but you’ve got to understand it doesn’t go both ways. And that’s OK, because we’re getting a lot out of it as well. Having the opportunity to win, the opportunity to play and improver as a player, those are all things that being in the situation we’re in with the Patriots, there’s nothing more you can really ask for.”
Tom Brady Looks to Regain a Lost Season
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Expected to play in exhibition games next month after missing basically the entire 2008 season after tearing his anterior cruciate ligament and the medial collateral ligament after the helmet of Kansas City Chiefs safety Bernard Pollard collided with Brady’s knee.
“Yeah, I think I’ll play,” he told reporters after practice on Friday. “I mean, last year it wasn’t like I wasn’t supposed to play. I would have loved to have played. Just some circumstances came up where I couldn’t.”
“I think it’s been a great learning experience for me, and I’m using it as a positive,” and with talks of the New England Patriots already being atop the NFC with Brady back he remains, “Hopefully I can go out this year and be a great quarterback for this team.”
After being operated just back on Oct. 6th as well as two follow-up procedures less than two weeks later the two-time Super Bowl Most Valuable Player and 2007 NFL MVP throwing for 4,806 yards
Patriots star Brady back with new weapons
Quarter back Tom Brad of the Patriots returned to the practice field recovering from a knee injury and sporting a brace at the recommendation of the Patriot ‘s medical staff. Brady spoke about what it was like to watch the 2008 season from the sideline, losing LB MikeVrable and offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels, and his football mortality, his new weapons on offense and his new wife, supermodel Gisele Bundchen.
During practice, Brady spent a significant amount of time working with his new NFL veteran weapons on offense — RB Fred Taylor and WRs Joey Galloway and Greg Lewis. Brady made a few errant throws during the 11-on-11 session with the defense in his face. As Brady is wont to do in his self-deprecating manner, he made sure to bring up to the media that he wasn’t sharp and didn’t complete as many passes as he would have liked. Brady said he didn’t need to teach himself how to throw again, but he just needed to get back into the rhythm of playing in live time with the defense instead of just throwing routes to his receivers in side sessions.
New England Patriots fans are always thrilled at the excitement Brady brings to the game and are looking forward to seeing the young star back.
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