Week 7 Hangover - Love/Hate

LOVE

- Umm, sorry Miles Austin. Maybe you are a #1 WR. That’s two straight monster weeks, 4 TDs, and over 400 yards. My bad.

- Watching Adrian Peterson run right through William Gay was impressive. Followed up like 3 plays later with a screen where he makes a slight little juke to the left and leaves a cornerback grasping at air. Power and footwork – no question the best back in the NFL and a special talent.

- A-Rod finally gets to his first World Series. Strange how suddenly, he’s become a media darling. After being torn apart for his phony steroid story, his hip surgery, his public divorce and his penchant for “manly” looking strippers, he’s now become a sympathetic and likeable figure – and it’s not just because he’s now dating Kate Hudson. I guess it just goes to show that winning cures everything. Can his career arc be compared to Britney? Big star coming out of the gate (in Seattle for A-Rod, Baby One More Time for Britney), getting paid and becoming irrelevant (Texas for A-Rod & the next 3 Britney albums), becoming a train wreck that everyone couldn’t stop watching (NY media for A-Rod, Britney shaves her head, etc), and now making a comeback and everyone is rooting for them.

- Cedric Benson has to feel pretty good today. That’s some good revenge on the Bears. 189 yards like a warm knife through butter. Made the Bears look like a complete joke. Just another chapter on why it sucks to be a Bears fan. Benson basically was the outcast who came back to his high school reunion after getting his book published and he had a supermodel on his arm.

- Not sure any team can slow the Saints offense. Down 24-10 at the half, and then exploding for 36 points in the second half while only giving up 10 more points. They look like a complete juggernaut and will be tough to beat before their showdown with the Patriots in week 11.

- Gambling – The Steelers INT return to ensure the cover against the Vikings. Ted Ginn Jr dropping the pass that would have covered against the Saints. The 49ers rallying from 21-0 to get a push at 24-21 on the arm of Alex Smith. I would bet there were quite a few angry gamblers on those games.

HATE

- Favre’s pathetic attempts to get in the way on both HIS fumble that was returned for a TD and HIS interception that cost his team the game were embarrassing. Just falling down doesn’t count as an attempt to make a play. This was the first of games that Brad Childress found a way to lose – throwing the ball 51 times and rushing only 23 times.

- Not surprising, playing defense worse than a little league team did in the Angels. They committed 8 errors in the 6 game series and the only 2 games they didn’t commit an error – they won.

- Maybe the Giants aren’t as good as we thought and padded their record by beating up on the red-headed stepchildren to start the year. 3 picks for Eli contributed to a big win for the Cardinals. Giants don’t seem to have quite the power running game they need/people think they have, Manningham drops a TD late, and they lose a home game that they needed to rebound from the Saints beat down the previous week.

- The bad teams are just so awful in the NFL, it lends to a ton of blow out and boring games. 6 of the 12 games yesterday were decided by more than 28 points, and 10 of the 12 were decided by double-digits. Maybe instead of worrying about sending teams to London, they should contract and combine some of these awful teams and hope they can be competitive.

- Mr. Tomlinson, unfortunately your days as a premiere running back are long gone. It was a heck of a run, and we’ll see you in Canton, but you are no longer feared, intimidating, or even barely effective. You used to be money at the goalline, and have explosiveness. Neither is there any more. At some point, we knew it would end, and it has. Please try to go out classy like Barry Sanders.

- Swine Flu. Seriously – wash your hands. The regular flu kills more than 30,000 people each year. I’m not a doctor, but that seems much higher than what swine flu has done so far. At least we have Obama on the case declaring it an emergency………

Barney Baseball

Baseball is in the final week of the regular season and I can’t remember a recent season with less drama in almost every race. The only exception is the AL Central where the Tigers and Twins are currently starting a 4 game series with the Twins trailing the Tigers by 2 games. Why does no one outside of Minnesota or Michigan care about who wins? Part of the problem is the media’s intense focus on only things involving the Yankees, Red Sox or Dodgers – the 3 biggest baseball markets. The other problem is that whoever wins the division is going to be first round fodder for those Yankees.

What’s better? To be the Twins where every year you might barely squeak into the playoffs and then get bounced in the first round, or to be the Marlins where they build up a team capable of winning (and they have won), then blow the whole thing up, are terrible for a couple years and then reload. I’m not sure, because I’d like to be in the playoffs every year, but do you become immune to the excitement if you just continually get bounced in the first round? Kind of like a girlfriend that has classic good looks but may not be a super model/singer vs. the girl with the boob job and botox that’s going to need to be “retuned” every few years. I think I’ll take the consistency year over year. Think Tony Romo trading in Jessica Simpson for Natalie Smith.

This season, there have barely been any changes in playoff teams since the end of June. As of June 30, the AL playoff teams would have been: Boston, NY, LA Angels, and Detroit. As of today, those are the exact same teams, the only difference is now the Yankees won the division and the Red Sox are the wildcard. In the NL, it took an extra 3 weeks, but as of July 20, the playoff teams would have been: Philly, St. Louis, Dodgers, and Colorado. As of today, those are the exact teams in the exact places.

The positive from the fact that the last 2+ months of the season have been meaningless, is that it confirms that the best teams will be active in the playoffs. These teams have proven over the course of the season that they have the best teams in their divisions and, in theory, the playoffs should be very competitive. I’ll put together a more in-depth preview once the regular season is complete, but for now I’ll just say that I think 1-2-3 starting pitchers and a couple guys who can mash are the keys to success in the playoffs.

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On a somewhat related, but different topic, I’m rooting really hard for the Rockies to fold in this past week and have the Braves or the Giants make the playoffs as the NL Wild Card. I’m not sure what I have against the Rockies – they swept the Phillies two years ago, which I thoroughly enjoyed – but I think it has something to do with the Purple Barney uniforms. Has a team wearing purple ever won a major championship?

NFL – Vikings -> Nope
NBA – Suns, Raptors (since dropped), Kings, Jazz, Bucks (since dropped) -> Nope
MLB – Rockies -> Nope
NHL – LA Kings -> Nope

The only real exception is the LA Lakers. Their purple and gold has won many championships, so maybe they break the rules about winning while looking like Barney.

I guess the only other exceptions I can think of are the Baltimore Ravens, but they are primarily black and white and use purple and gold as accent colors……maybe. And I guess you could make a case for the Arizona Diamondbacks, but since they’ve changed colors 3,217 times in the 11 years they’ve had a team, I’m not sure it counts.

So maybe that’s why I don’t want to see the Rockies in the playoffs. Either that or it’s the fact that games at Coors are never the classic pitching duels I like in the playoffs. Or I’d rather watch Lincecum or Tommy Hanson pitch than……….sorry, can’t think of a Rockies pitcher – Ubaldo Jimenez?