Football
drorzel | January 6, 2008... because it's evidently a bad weekend for teams Jim Henley is rooting for.
(Edit: typo fixed.)
(Also, their secondary continues to suck.)
drorzel | December 28, 2007I'm going to be in the Boston area this weekend, visiting Kate's family, so I will end up watching Saturday night's Giants-Patriots game with my Patriot-fan in-laws. In case you didn't know, New England is currently 15-0, and if they win this game they have the chance to be the first team to ever finish the regular season 16-0 (and the second to go undefeated in the regular season, after the 14-0 Miami Dolphins of 1972). Of course, if you don't know that, you're probably also a little hazy on the rules of football, so you probably want to give this post a miss, and go read something else.
I…
drorzel | December 20, 2007It's been a rotten year for the Atlanta Falcons-- Michael Vick turned out to have even worse judgement than people had thought, and the team immediately went into a death spiral. Then, last week, their first-year head coach, Bobby Petrino (formerly of Louisville), announced that he was leaving to become the head coach at Arkansas, and basically snuck away in the middle of the night without talking to his players or the owner.
Petrino, of course, is being savaged in the sports media, with William Rhoden of the New York Times going so far as to declare him worse than the steroid scandals in…
drorzel | December 16, 2007Way to screw it up for everybody. The Jets held up their end of things, but you blew it.
(Actually, if somebody had to lose to the hapless Dolphins, it couldn't've happened to a better team. Well, OK, the Cowboys, but I really do hate the Ravens, whose defense is the absolute pinnacle of the strutting, dancing, chest-pounding horseshit that infects the NFL (and most pro sports) these days.
(Shut up and play football, already. If I want to see chest-thumping and bellowing, I can get a Tarzan movie from Netflix.)
drorzel | December 10, 2007A few comments from this weekend's action:
- My Giants improved to 9-4 after a squeaking out a close win over the Eagles when a potential game-tying field goal clanged off the upright. Weirdly, they are now 6-1 on the road, and just 3-3 at home-- granted, they've played better teams at home than on the road, but still, Manning seems to do better away from New York.
This is a good win for them, as it guarantees they'll be over .500 on the season, and puts them in the metaphorical driver's seat for the first wild-card spot for the NFC. They have winnable games coming up agaisnt the Redskins and…
drorzel | December 4, 2007Over at Inside Higher Ed, they have a piece looking at the state of college football as we enter bowl season. This is dominated by two large tables of numbers, one good, and one bad.
The first table is the good one, as it explains why the college football "championship" is so messed up. It lists the 32 bowl games that will be played over the next month, and the per-team payout for each. The five major BCS bowls pay each team $17 million, which neatly explains why the college football elite are unwilling to put in a playoff-- in any real championship system, they might end up having to share…
drorzel | December 4, 2007It was not a stunning display of football, but the Patriots' win over the Ravens was at least a tense and interesting game down to the last minute of play. New England looked awful, but pulled it together on the last drive, picking their way down the field for a game-winning touchdown with 44 seconds left.
It didn't hurt that the Ravens went into total meltdown, of course, with 13 penalties for 100 yards in the game, with thirty yards' worth of unsportsmanlike conduct penalities handed out to Bart Scott for throwing a tantrum after the final touchdown. New England kicked off from the Ravens'…
drorzel | December 3, 2007A handful of sports items of interest to me:
1) My Giants defied expectations, and pulled out a 21-16 win over the Bears on two late touchdown drives, after sucking for most of the game. Well, OK, the defense was good throughout, though they were aided by the Bears not having a quarterback better than Rex Grossman, but the offense was dreadful.
Eli Manning gets most of the blame for that, somewhat unfairly. Some of the blame has to go on injuries-- the second INT he threw wasn't a terrible throw, if Plaxico Burress was healthy-- and some on the coaching staff, who as usual reacted to Manning'…
drorzel | November 28, 2007You may have thought you saw some other posts here earlier in the day. You didn't. Pay no attention to the vanishing posts about things I wasn't supposed to post about.
This means, though, that I don't have any content on the blog, other than a cranky note about an idiot radio host, so, ummmm....
OK, so, this past weekend, the New England Patriots narrowly beat the Philadelphia Eagles to get to 11-0. On Monday, the Miami Dolphins lost a miserable sloppy game to the Pittsburgh Steelers on a last-second field goal, to get to 0-11 on the season.
Which team, the Patriots or the Dolphins, is more…
drorzel | November 28, 2007I generally listen to ESPN radio in my office in the morning, because I like the Mike & Mike show. Unfortunately, they're followed by Colin Cowherd, who is a world-class pinhead.
He's currently holding forth on the death of Sean Taylor, with his basic position being that Taylor had it coming because he had a checkered past. If you were reading back in April, you can probably guess how happy I am to be hearing this line of argument.
In support of this brilliant insight, he's just touted his track record in correctly assessing high-profile public legal cases by noting that he didn't believe…
drorzel | November 24, 2007LSU lost to Arkansas in "overtime" yesterday (scare quotes are because the college overtime system is bizarre), becoming the latest highly-ranked team to lose to an unranked opponent. This throws the BCS championship system into chaos for the Nth time this season-- by the end of the weekend, at least three of the top ten teams will have lost, and there are only two undefeated teams left. There's never been more confusion about who is the best team in college football.
Boy, if only there were some way to settle this. I mean, imagine if you could get, say, the top eight teams together somehow,…
drorzel | November 21, 2007I generally like Gregg Easterbrook's writing about football (though he's kind of gone off the deep end regarding the Patriots this year), but everything else he turns his hand to is a disaster. In particular, he tends to pad his columns out with references to science and technology issues. I'm not quite sure what the point of these is supposed to be, other than to demonstrate that he, Gregg Easterbrook, is so much smarter than the average football fan that he knows, like, rocket science and stuff. The problem with that is that his knowledge of rocket science seems to owe more to Star Trek…
drorzel | November 11, 2007As any NFL fan is aware, the game of the week is my Giants against the hated Dallas Cowboys, who stand for everything that is evil and blighted in the league, no matter what Gregg Easterbrook says about the Patriots. All the talking head shows on ESPN this morning have talked about the game, and none of them have missed a chance to slag Eli Manning
Of course, this is foolish. Not that Eli is suddenly Tom Brady, or anything; but it reflects a deep ignorance of the first same this season.Yeah, the Giants lost to the Cowboys earlier this season, but it wasn't Eli's fault. Not by a mile.
In…
drorzel | November 6, 2007Boggling discovery of the week: ESPN will be broadcasting from my alma mater:
Williams College will play host to archrival Amherst College in football at noon in the 122nd meeting of "The Biggest Little Game in America" on Saturday, November 10th.
ESPN's College GameDay Built By The Home Depot with host Chris Fowler, Lee Corso, Kirk Herbstreit and Desmond Howard will make its first appearance at a Division III game when they kickoff their show at 10:00 ET live from Weston Field.
OK, that's just freaky.
I should note, though, that this is not the first time that ESPN has visited the Purple…
drorzel | November 4, 2007The Patriots are playing the Colts this afternoon. And they're both undefeated.
Why doesn't anybody tell me these things? You'd think a story like this might merit a mention or two on ESPN...
I fully expect this game to suck, as games receiving this absurd level of hype almost always fail to live up to it. I hope it doesn't suck, but I'm not counting on it.
drorzel | October 29, 2007Hey,
I just wanted to drop you all a note to say sorry about that football game yesterday. I know I've already admitted that rugby is a superior game, but honestly, the NFL can do better.
You see, the thing is, the Miami Dolphins are a really bad team this year. And the New York Giants, much as I love them, have a long history of playing down to the level of their opponents. You match those two up anywhere, you're going to get pretty much what you got yesterday. I'm just sorry it had to happen in your fine city.
(Though, honestly, the conditions of the field didn't help. You know, in American…
drorzel | October 28, 2007With my Giants having done their part to ensure that the NFL never catches on in Europe, here's a college football play that ought to appeal to the rugby fans out there. Trinity vs. Millsaps, two seconds to play, Trinity needs a touchdown to win, and has the ball on their own 39:
All it needed was a band out on the field (look below the fold, if you don't get that reference, or the title.).
(Via a mailing list...)
drorzel | October 14, 2007I've been largely silent about the NFL for the past couple of weeks, mostly because I don't know what to make of anything that's happening. I only saw the first half of last week's Giants game, where it looked like they had reverted to their early-season form, but then they exploded in the second half, while I was in a meeting. I thought the Packers had the Bears beat, and they blew it, and I thought Dallas was dead on Monday, but somehow they came back.
What does it all mean? Hell if I know.
Anyway, in lieu of insightful commentary from me, consider this an open thread about everything…
drorzel | September 24, 2007I had a long post about Norman Spinrad all typed up when Firefox crashed, so you'll have to wait for train-wrecky SF goodness. So here's some sports commentary to pass the time.
It was a good sports weekend in Chateau Steelypips:
1) I don't really follow college football, but I do have a certain affection for Syracuse, so it was great to see the Orange, 36.5 point underdogs according to the bookies of the world, upset Louisville 38-35. It's always sweet when a 30-point underdog wins a game, but it's especially nice when it's one of my teams.
2) My Giants won in improbable fashion, stopping…
drorzel | September 17, 2007Three comments on the second week of the NFL season:
1) Given that Brett Favre famously lay down to give Michael Strahan the single-season sack record, it seems only fitting that the Giants should roll over to give him the NFL wins record for a QB. If the clock hadn't run out, he probably could've broken the total touchdown record, too-- he only needs three to pass Marino, and God knows, the Giants weren't going to stop him from throwing a TD pass every time the Packers got the ball.
2) I feel for Eli Manning, and not just because I re-aggravated a shoulder separation on Friday (and then…