October 22nd, 2006

Week 7 Wrap Up: NFL Enters Bizarro World

By Brett | Add a Comment »

Every year it seems like there’s a weekend in the NFL that season that takes all of the conventional wisdowm, assumptions, and preconceived notions that fans and media have about the league, and takes a great big piss all over them. Looks like week seven was that week this year. This phenomenon is perhaps the single most frustrating and confounding aspect of watching professional football for gamblers, fantasy footballers, power rankers, media-types, and wannabe smartass know-it-alls like us. It throws us all off our game.

Now that we think about it, we should’ve seen this seen coming after last Monday’s Bears-Cards game. That should have clued us in that strange things were on the horizon. As it is, we’re feeling more than a bit sheepish about our week seven picks — although we’re still holding out hope that the Giants-Cowboys game will end in a tie, with at least six season-ending injuries along the way. But just to give you an idea of how random this week was, in light of everything that had happened so far this season, considering the following:

• Donovan McNabb — the league MVP through six weeks and the picture of consistentcy — throws for three interceptions, two that get taken back to the house by Ronde Barber.
• Joey Harrington of all people turns in a 400-plus yard performance. This is Joey Freaking Heisman we’re talking about.

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  Category: NFL News, Weekly Wrap Ups
  Tags: NFL News, Weekly Wrap Ups, Tag Index

October 22nd, 2006

Mediocrity has returned to the building

By Bob | Add a Comment »

Losing on a 61-yard field goal to a team as pathetic as the fucking Tampa Bucs would kill me if I thought the Eagles were a Super Bowl contending team, but the fact is that this year’s version of the Birds is like so many before it: mediocre.

People always remind me of the three straight NFC championship game appearances, the Super Bowl against the Patriots and the fact that the Eagles are not traditionally as bad as, say, the Detroit Lions. All true, but the recent successes can’t mask the decades of frustration and futility that this franchise represents. The Andy Reid era has been more pleasant than most, but the fact remains that this organization has never won a Super Bowl and that isn’t going to change this year.

The Bucs started a quarterback today who probably wouldn’t be first pick in a flag football league. Tampa Bay is a sorry excuse for a team and a sorry excuse for a franchise. Yet, they have one more Super Bowl win than the Eagles do and they deserved the win today.

As Donovan McNabb goes, so goes the Eagles. McNabb was just short of miserable against the Bucs and as a result a team that two weeks ago was in the driver’s seat in the NFC East now faces the very real possibility that it won’t even come close to sniffing the playoffs. Jacksonville comes to Philly next week and I can tell you right now that 93% of Philadelphians are already predicting a loss. The other 7% are predicting nuclear holacust. We are doomsdayers by nature and this year’s version of our team has the all too familiar look of being a mediocre train wreck waiting to happen.

October 20th, 2006

Week 7: Game Previews

By Brett | 1 Comment »

Detroit vs. NYJ
Why does this thoroughly unintriguing game get first billing? Because we like the picture, and because it has major fantasy implications for us this weekend, when we have several regular starters out on byes. We’re looking for this one to be a high scoring affair. We like the Lions in this one. But only because Peter King is picking the Jets.

Carolina vs. Cincinnati
Two teams going in very opposite directions. Cincy’s O line is a mess, Chad Johnson has dropped off the planet, and their defense looks average at best. The Panthers, on the other hand, look like the Super Bowl contender that everyone thought they’d be. Amazaing what getting the best WR in the NFL back in the line up will do for an offense. We’re Carolina here.

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October 17th, 2006

Coaching Shorts: The Other Shoe Drops In Arizona

By Brett | Add a Comment »

Let’s re-cap the last 24 hours in the desert: The Cardinals jump out to a quick 14-0 lead over the lifeless Bears. Rex Grossman does his best Kurt Warner impersonation, turns the ball over 4 times in the first half, and the Bears find themselves down 20-o at halftime. As the 3rd quarter starts to come to a close, the Bears defense begins to engineer the craziest comeback we’ve ever seen, overcoming a 20 point deficit without scoring an offensive touchdown. Denny Green then has a postgame meltdown of epic proportions. Earlier today, Green found his fall guy for the debacle, and fired his offensive coordinator, Keith Rowen.

Green’s claim that the team wasn’t scoring enough points is somewhat legit (the Cards are in the middle of the pack, averaging 18.5 points/game), but, c’mon Denny…that’s not at all what this firing is about. It’s about finding an excuse for the inexcusable, and deflecting blame from yourself. Sure, the Cards got a little conservative in the 4th quarter against the Bears, and yeah the ground game was atrocious. But the Cards came into that game with a brilliant game plan designed to exploit Chicago’s defensive weakness –lack of speed in the secondary– and executed it perfectly early on. As the game wore on, Rowen called plays exactly the same way any other good offensive coordinator would have while playing with a big lead against a good team and a rookie QB under center: He kept the clock moving, mixed it up with some high percentage passes, and put his team in position to put the game away.

So maybe this wasn’t about one game. Maybe this was about the fact that the Cards are now 1-5, but have enough talent to be at least .500. Maybe it’s a culmination of what’s happened in the first six weeks of the season. In all fairness, though, it’s Kurt Warner that turned the ball over 15 times in four games. It’s a disgusting offensive line and Edge James that can’t get the ground game going. Until last night, it’s been the Cards talented but underachieving defense that hasn’t stopped anyone this year. None of that is on Keith Rowen.

Denny Green did what all bad leaders do when the find themselves under fire….he blamed someone else. And, that, as Green said himself in his post-game conference, is bullshit.

October 16th, 2006

Denny Green Gets Pissy After The Cards Wet Themselves

By Brett | 1 Comment »

We knew there’d be some fallout from the Bears ridiculously improbable 24-23 comeback victory over the Cards on Monday Night. We knew there’d be the predictable gnashing of teeth in the Chicago over Rex Grossman’s god-awful performance. We figured there’d be cliches about ‘teams of destiny’ finding ways to win (hint: teams of destiny never have six turnover games, so let’s all get off the Bears nuts a little bit, shall we?). Hell, we realize that –horror of horrors– the Bears may even lose their standing atop ESPN’s Power Rankings after this one.

And we hoped that there would be a post game press conference that would be good for a chuckle or two. But never in our wildest dreams did we imagine that Denny Green would just completely fucking lose it. Well, OK we’re totally lying…we did kinda hoped something like this would happen, but we don’t want to seem greedy. A Bears victory (albeit a disgusting one) to put them at 6-0, and a coaching meltdown in one night? It seemed too much to ask for.

Anyway, the Football Gods were with us on Monday, because this one has all the elements of an epic post-game coaching rant. Dare we call this one “Mora-esque?” No, not quite. Mora’s “playoffs?” rant will probably never be equaled. Plus, Green didn’t actually use the word “poo” in his press conference, so we don’t think it’s quite worthy of Mora status. But this is definitely an instant classic. This, friends, is a man on the edge.

October 16th, 2006

MNF Liveblog: Bears vs. Cardinals

By Brett | Add a Comment »

The Bears. Monday Night Football. Hi-Def. Consider us sufficiently stoked, and ready to liveblog the living hell out of tonight’s game.

Here are just a few of the many things that are giving us THO an hour before kick off:

Chicago’s Pass Rush vs. Matt Leinart
Chicago has one of the best D lines in the league, even if starting DE Adewale Ogunleye doesn’t play. Arizona’s offensive line is hideous. Matt Leinart is a rookie (although we anticipate hearing variations “he’s not your average rookie QB” all night long). That, friends, is a recipe for bloodsausage. We love bloodsausage. It’s one of our NFL Logue approved football snacks.

Chicago Style Pizza
Speaking of appropriate football snacks, there is perhaps no food that is more appropriate to eat whilst football spectating than pizza. Those of here at NFL Logue HQ will be dining this evening on LouMalnati’s deep dish, Chicago style, fuck off pizza, courtesy of this guy, who had the pies rush delivered from Chicago to the West Coast today. We admit, we’ve been known to bitch about the US from time to time, but c’mon….where else in the world can you have a pizza delivered from 2000 miles away in one business day, and have it arrive in time for kick-off? That’s freaking unbelievable, and makes me damn proud to be an American.

The arena that was almost named Pink Taco Stadium
We’re pretty bummed that this didn’t actually end up happening. Had that deal gone through, our perception of corporate stadium naming rights would’ve been forever altered.

Fantasy Implications
OK, so no one cares about our fantasy team or league, but, it tuurns out there are several match ups in the Yahoo MFHT league that hinge on how tonight’s game plays out. We like it when that happens. Nothing better than a good Monday Night skew in the old fantasy league. For those of you keeping score, we have two guys going tonight — Robbie Gould and the Bears defense– while our opponent has Anquan Boldin going on the other side. As luck would have it, we’re so far out in front of the unfortunate piss-ant that had to play us this week, there’s really no foreseeable scenario in which we could possibly lose. So we got that goin’ for us. Which is nice.

Alright, enough screwin’ around…MNF liveblog in 60 minutes.

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October 15th, 2006

The Curse of Lester Hayes

By Bob | Add a Comment »

The Superdome in New Orleans conjures up a lot of distressing memories for Americans. While I would never minimize the horrors of what took place there in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, as a Philadelphia Eagles fan the building represents one of the worst days in a lifetime of miserable days.

In January 1981, the Eagles met the Oakland Raiders in the Super Bowl. At the hardened age of 6, I was a diehard Philly fan. I watched every game that season. I knew the tendencies of the linebacker corps. If my parents had let me have a dog I probably would have named it after my favorite player, the lithe wide receiver Harold Charmichael.

Memories fade over time, but no matter what happens in my life I will always remember the night of that Super Bowl. The Raiders were the perfect villains. They were led by the talented, yet annoying quarterback Jim Plunkett. On the defensive side of the ball there was the one of a kind character Lester Hayes. The defensive back was most famous for smothering his hands in a mysterious substance known as stick-um. It is now banned, but at the time Hayes’ uniform and the uniforms of his opponents would be covered in the stuff that helped him snag interceptions. Even though I was a young boy, I was quick to observe that Hayes’ exposure to the toxic goo might have had something to do with his utter lack of intelligence. The guy couldn’t form a sentence if you spotted him a subject and a verb, but boy could he play.

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October 13th, 2006

Week 6 Preview: Somewhere The Boz Is Smiling

By Brett | Add a Comment »

A quick aside before we get to this week’s predictions: wtf on the mohawk/faux hawk making a comeback in th NFL? We figured that this was just another Chad Johnson attention deficit thing in the pre-season, but it seems to have really taken hold. Shawne Merriman jumped on the bandwagon as well, looking even more like a badass than he did before. Clinton Portis got in the act too, sometime after the filming of the “you didn’t see me….on Sunday, but can see me….on Tuesday, and Wednesday!” NFL Network commercials. Our personal fave, though, is that of Broncos CB Darrent Williams, if for no other reason than it reminds us of one of the most ridiculous players in recent memory: The one and only Fred Ex.

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October 12th, 2006

Is the NFL Entering a New Era of Suckitude?

By Brett | 1 Comment »

We have a very short commute to work. Walkable, in fact. When we’re too lazy to walk, which is about four days a week, we often find ourselves getting caught listening to the Herd on ESPN Radio in the car for a few minutes. This morning, we listened as Colin Cowherd ranted about how the NFL is starting to come down from it’s perch as the dominant sports league in the US, at least in terms of quality of product, if not marketability.

Cowherd’s main point was that the NFL is all about QBs, and right now there are very few marquee QBs in the league. Most teams, he claims, are content to have the dreaded ‘game manager’ at QB (we’re looking at you, Minnesota). We find ourselves agreeing with this point, to an extent. We’ll expand on this in a post to be named later.

But first, the larger question at hand: Does the quality of play in the NFL generally suck ass right now?

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October 10th, 2006

Parcells Stinkpalms TO

By Brett | Add a Comment »

A friend just sent us this little nugget of wisdom about the TO vs. Philly game, which, apparently is still a top news story:

According to those close to Cowboys players, Bill Parcells was hell-bent on ensuring Terrell Owens wasn’t the star on Sunday. Although it’s no secret Parcells is partial to wideout Terry Glenn — this season — many believe he purposely didn’t want Owens to shine, to avoid the migraines such a colossal ego would cause.
– Philadelphia Inquirer

This, in our humble opinion, is the coaching equivalent to the Stinkpalm — shoving your hand up your own sweaty ass crack, and then shaking someone’s hand shortly thereafter, as demonstrated by our hero, Brodie from Mallrats.

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