I don't want to bore you with an old timer's prattle, so I'll say it quickly and then move on. Doesn't it seem to you that there are an awful lot of bad teams right now? Partly through injuries or the failure to lay in the necessary depth to cover them, partly through that ultra conservative, "please God, let us find a way to win," school of coaching, partly through just bad execution. But there are things out there that just don't seem nice. I'm sure that if I went back through the years, I'd probably find this same situation at this point of the season in 1990 and '70 and '50, but what I'm trying to say is ... ah, who cares, really? Let's get 'em ranked and get 'em out. (And as always, feel free to send comments to siwriters@simail.com.)
| NFL Power Rankings |
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Just when they're flying high they get their bye week to get people healthy. What people? Who's not healthy? Well, there's free safety Eugene Wilson and, uh, and ... isn't there anybody with a sore throat or heat rash or something? |
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I'm looking three games ahead, to a Nov. 29 Thursday nighter when Green Bay comes to the Big D. Can the Packers win this? "Yes," says Darren Sharper, Minnesota strong safety who just lost to the Pack, as reported by our demon Midwest correspondent, Scoop McGinn. "Favre will be able to attack their corners." Hopefully after they've arrived at the stadium. |
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On Monday I read the headline: "Favre goes over 60,000 yards passing against the Vikings." No wonder that game took so long. |
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Joey Porter has moved to Miami, using up a payroll that should go to those more needy, James Harrison has taken his place in all-pro form. I give credit here to the coaching staff, past and present. He came to the club as a rookie free agent, and gradually they coached him up to the highest level, as this organization does with a lot of young defensive players. |
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Adam Vinatieri originally left New England, where he could have gotten elected to any political office they could think of, to kick in a dome and give himself a shot at the Hall of Fame. So what's he done this year? Missed a 36-yarder in a two-point win over the Titans, missed a 50-yarder in the four-point loss to New England, missed a 42 and, yoiks!, a 29-yarder, in Sunday night's two-point loss to the Chargers. Two out of those three games were outdoors. Repeat after me ... "the best laid plans of mice and men ... " |
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Quite a scene in Tennessee Sunday when Fred Taylor hit his 10-G mark for yards rushing. It was announced over the PA system and the fans gave him a nice ovation, leaving him visibly moved. See, that's the difference between Europe and the USA. Say it happened in a soccer match over there. They would have stopped the action, uncorked the bubbly and everyone would have drunk his health. |
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So I picked up the Monday paper with trembling fingers and said, "Please God, don't let me read it, please don't let me read it." And there it was, in nice bold headlines, how Tom Coughlin, after establishing that wonderful new personality, had shed it in the wake of that tough loss to Dallas and had reverted to grumpy Tom. The journalistic trash can never runs out of new material. Leave the poor guy alone already! |
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The first two victories in the recent three-game homestand feature an overload of rushing yardage against passing. Ridiculous, people said. So against Jacksonville Vince threw for personal highs in passes and yards, and the running attack hit ground zero (62 yards, 52 by Young) and the Titans lost the game and got shoved all over the place. Looks like evil times ahead. Cold weather is coming in, and you know what that means. Forget the running. Better have a passing attack in place. Wait a minute ... have I got that thing wrong or something? Give me a week. I'll get it worked out. |
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Tampa Bay, Tennessee, Jacksonville ... this is what I call the grey area of the chart. Students in the B to B-minus range, coaches who keep hollering about how they have to get more physical out there ... make that how their players have to get physical, nothing but license plates from southern states. You shake these teams up, spill 'em out on the table and they always manage to look the same, don't they? |
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Well, they had the Steelers by the nose and they went in at halftime and said, good heavens, eeek, we can't really be doing this to the Steelers, can we? And laid an egg in the second half and shut down their offense and their rush on Big Ben and lots of stuff. Hopefully this has all been a valuable lesson. I get the feeling it has. |
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