Favre vs. Ripken? Gimme a break

Last month, I approvingly quoted a comment made by Bill Simmons during the World Series: "And [LaRussa]'s firmly entrenched in that Brett Favre Zone, where the announcers are so busy paying homage to him for three hours, they don't even notice when he screws up." Seems like a good lead for a day in which sports reporters are falling over each other trying to out-superlative each other for Favre's 200th consecutive game. These guys are completely in love with Green Bay's QB and seek every opportunity possible to pay homage to him. For example, on Tuesday morning espn.com gushed that Favre's heroics "put the Packers back atop the NFC North." Well, actually, they're tied with the Vikings for first. I suppose we can argue semantics all we want, but that strikes me as a little misleading.

Fine, the man is a great quarterback. But this business of comparing his streak to Cal Ripken's is absolutely ludicrous. Obviously, the argument here is that football is a violent game and so it's harder to play as many games. Well, duh, that's why they play ten times as many baseball games as football games. 200 football games is 12.5 years. 2,632 baseball games is 16.25 years. The time given to recover between games is commensurate to the difficulty of recovery. How many times has Favre suffered an injury during a game and then taken advantage of the 7 days that he gets to recover from it? Ripken never had that luxury. If he would have gotten injured (and yes, folks, baseball players do get injured, believe it or not), he would have had less than 24 hours to recover.

It boggles my mind that people are so quick to minimize Ripken's accomplishment. Aaron Schatz, one of Snap Judgment's Morons in Residence, actually argues that "the reason Favre's streak is more impressive than Ripken's streak is that Ripken was mediocre by the end of his streak." In the first place, Aaron, this is a complete non-sequiter. But for the sake of argument, allow me to also point out that Ripken's streak is 4 years longer than Favre's. I'm pretty sure that Favre will be looking pretty darned mediocre in 4 years. And I'm talking about as a broadcaster.

Another ridiculously obvious thing that needs to be pointed out here is that Favre doesn't even have the NFL record for consecutive games played. And it's not even close! The record is held by Jim Marshall of the Vikings, who played in 282 consecutive games from 1960 to 1979. Back when they were playing 14 games a year. Marshall's position? Defensive end. I haven't played too many football games at defensive end, but I get the impression that there's a fair amount of contact down there.

And finally, there's that pesky, un-PC Peyton Manning. Peyton has started every game of his career and has a streak of 107 consecutive games. Anything could happen of course, but it seems like he has a pretty good chance of getting to 200. Will people be comparing him to Ripken then? Don't hold your breath.

The Brawl: Are we sick of it yet?

Well, duh: of course we are. Naturally, that hasn't stopped the media from indulging in an early Thanksgiving orgy of excess that continues as I speak. After Stern handed down the suspensions, the Monday morning SportsCenter devoted its first 25 minutes (and of course, "much more" later) to still more analysis and long-faced on-the-scene correspondents intoning soberly about the end of civilization as we know it. Deep down, of course, you know that they were practically doing backflips at the chance to do a "real story" and picturing how this bit was going to fit into their CNN audition tape. The NBA Shootaround folks even tried to pull off a Nightline effect with John Saunders as Koppel interviewing the experts on split-screen: two guys who on their normal shows try to out-jive the other with their street-hip talk. Now we're supposed to take them seriously as social commentators, I guess.

I should get the obligatory "Artest's behavior was inexcusable" out of the way right here. Because it was. As bad as it is to get a beer thrown at you, you just don't climb into the stands like that. That action crossed the line between a basketball fight and a full-scale rumble. But I still am surprised at the lack of outrage over the Detroit fans' behavior. Throwing a beer is also absolutely inexcusable. Sports fans rely on (and hence abuse) built-in security mechanisms and social norms to yell obscenities and epithets and generally act like complete idiots with impunity, and as far as I'm concerned, they got what they deserved. (Except, of course, for the fact that Artest went after the wrong guy. Slight problem there.) Especially those who in turn crossed their own line and went onto the court.

I mean, suppose that Artest had taken the high road and not done anything after getting pegged with a beer (which, remember, is what I too am saying he should have done). What would have happened to the offending fan? On the off chance that they could have actually caught him, what would they have done with him? I don't know, but almost nothing happened to those two White Sox fans who attacked the Royals first-base coach a couple of years ago. What I would like to have seen is for him to get a free smack in the face.

But as bad as all that was, what bothers me more than anything is the inevitable lawsuits that came. We've all done stupid things in the heat of a moment, and we should be punished for it. But to sit down with a lawyer and make a calculated decision to try and make a profit off the whole unfortunate incident is to me the real sign of what is wrong in our society today. And nobody's writing about that.

Lenny-Baby

My post on Len Pasquarelli a while back might have left those of you not familiar with the Bard of ESPN scratching your heads. What's the big deal? you ask. Well, yesterday Lenny had a fantastic column on, well, I don't actually remember what it was about, but man that imagery was simply gorgeous. Here's a sample:

True enough, the NFL forum isn't a Broadway stage, and the men charged with nurturing and refining quarterbacks aren't exactly Henry Higgins mentoring Eliza Doolittle. The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain? In the NFL, the reign of terror falls more often on the head of the quarterback ill-prepared for the rigors of the position, and on those who don't possess the level of inherent skills necessary for a successful tutorial process.

Did you get that? The "rain in Spain," only this time it's the "reign of terror"! Brilliant! Although somehow "mainly on the plain" seems a little more succinct than "more often on the head of the quarterback ill-prepared for the blah blah blah blah blah...." A minor quibble, though. Let us continue to the next stanza:

You can, recent history has indicated, forge a quarterback. What one can't do, it seems, is create the clay that goes into the mold. The first difficulty is in assaying the quality of the natural resource. The second is in enhancing that excellence before it goes into the kiln.

Oh, man! Such beauty! It's getting a little dusty in here, as the SG says.

Let's do some parsing. What's the meter? "Assaying the quality." That thesaurus Lenny invested in is really paying off here. And I'm sure that we all have areas of excellence that we would like to "enhance" in our own lives. My snobby dictionary seems to think that you "forge" metals, not clays, and certainly not in a kiln, but what does it know? Moving on.

Everywhere he went, it seems, Walsh had a Svengalian gift for getting inside the heads of the quarterbacks with whom he worked. He didn't actively pull the strings nearly as much as, say, Steve Spurrier at Florida, where the former Heisman Trophy winner still wanted to play the position himself, almost as if by osmosis. Obviously, the hands-on Spurrier could not apply those skills at the NFL level. Walsh, though, didn't suffer such failures.

This excellent stanza reminds me of something Jonah Goldberg wrote a couple of months ago:

The rulers, bureaucrats, aristocrats, intellectuals, and guys in funny wigs running these empires refused to accept that their way of life was unsustainable, that the curtain was closing on their chapter under the sun ("Jonah Goldberg doesn't merely mix metaphors, he snaps their spines!" — self-blurb).

But back to Lenny. "Playing quarterback by osmosis." I have no idea what that means. Doesn't osmosis have to involve physical contact? Perhaps he meant some kind of telepathy? Ah, but like all great poets, Pasquarelli hides his intent from the uninitiated, challenging us to dig deeper and find new meaning in old phrases. Oh yeah, and my pesky dictionary insists that a Svengali always manipulates with an "evil purpose." And I'm pretty sure they didn't have any puppets. Unless Dr. Leo Marvin was a Svengali. Oh well, more challenges for the reader!

Pardon me?

Unlike all you Jonathan-Come-Latelies, I've been a Tony Kornheiser fan since I was knee-high to a grasshopper and he was doing his original show on ESPN Radio. I'm talking back in 1999, with the Know Your Heads game show (featuring Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3 heads) and interviews with the WaPost movie critic every Friday. Those were the days. Simpler days. Now that he's hit the big time with his TV show, I feel like I don't even know the guy any more. He doesn't talk about his kids ad nauseum, he doesn't return my calls, and I can't even remember the last time we played golf together.

Actually I like PTI. I don't get to see it like I used to listen to his radio show, but he and Wilbon have intelligent and entertaining discussions and I rarely have a reason to go off on them on SRAM (in fact, this is their first mention). But yesterday during the toss-up segment they not only stepped into a couple of mudpuddles of idiocy, but also it was related to SRAM's latest thread, so I figured, the time has come.

The first toss-up was the old chestnut "Who would you rather have to win a football game: Peyton Manning or Tom Brady?" The question featured very little debate. Tom Brady, of course! went the chorus. Sure, Manning's got the stats, but Brady's got the rings, and also, I'm quoting Wilbon here not once but twice, "Until Manning can beat him, you've got to go with Brady."

Okay, let's add another entry to the Sports Reporters Hall of Fame of Meaningless Cliches. How many times have you heard that? "Until so-and-so proves he can beat such-and-such (or win thus-and-such), you have to go with such-and-such." But this makes no sense. It's like saying, "The Patriots are the NFL champs until they lose in the playoffs." Well, duh. And then at that point they will no longer be the champs. The whole point is, who's going to be the champ? I didn't ask you who was last year's champ.

I mean, suppose all of Brady's receivers and offensive linemen were to break their legs. Gone for the year. Do you still go with Brady, because hey, you have to go with him until he loses?

SRAM has already been down this path over and over. I can't believe that reporters continue to think they can get away with saying, for example, "Well hey, Peyton didn't beat Brady back in September. QED." Do I really have to point out that Peyton was going up against New England's defense, while Brady was going up against Indianapolis' defense? Does anybody really think that if Tom Brady were in charge of Indianapolis' offense, that they would have a better record? Or if Peyton was in charge of New England's offense, that they would have a worse record? Por favor.

But that's only the first half of PTI's idiocy. Because the very next toss-up was, "Who would you rather have, LeBron or Kobe?" Tony comes out and spouts some nonsense about how he'll take Kobe as soon as Kobe "learns to be the team leader" or "handle his new role" or whatever. Wilbon fires back with some stats: LeBron is shooting 48% (actually 47%) versus only 39% for Kobe. Rebounds is 8.6 to 6.3. Etc.

What, suddenly stats are king now? It's been a grand total of 30 seconds, and now suddenly we're paying attention to the numbers! And oddly enough, no mention of Kobe's rings. I seem to recall him having a few. "Ah, but Kobe had Shaq." Oh, so now it's a team sport again!

But there's no arguing with Conventional Wisdom, which has decreed that Brady shall be better than Manning because of The Rings, but when it comes to LeBron versus Kobe, well, that has yet to be settled, so feel free to use whatever arguments (intelligent or otherwise) you need.

How to compare offenses? Hmm...

The geniuses over at Snap Judgment take a stab at the latest question du jour: do the Colts have the greatest offense of all time? Here are some snippets of their comments:

Jeff Merron: The 2000 Rams and 1998 Vikings (both dome teams, like the Colts), were better. Maybe, maybe the Colts will finish the season as one of the best five offenses ever. But check out Indy's schedule...

Patrick Hruby: Greatest ever? Please. Manning is having a memorable season, without question. But would I take the Colts over the Triplet Cowboys? Air Coryell? A San Francisco club featuring Montana, Rice, Craig, Rathman, Jones and a Hall of Fame o-line that turned cut-blocking into performance art? No, no, and heck no. Indy plays on turf, has the rules stacked in its favor and boasts, at most, three Canton-worthy players...

Skip Bayless: ... Manning's offense isn't in the same all-time-scary league as, in ascending order, Dan Fouts' Chargers, the Montana-Rice 49ers and the 1999 St. Louis Rams. This league has never seen anything quite as indefensible as Kurt Warner's '99 attack.

Aaron Schatz: I'm still partial to the early '90s San Francisco 49ers and the Otto Graham Browns of the '50s.

You can see the quandary these guys are in. After all, it's not like they're debating the all-time prettiest quarterback here (which clearly comes down to Brady vs. Montana). If only there were some objective way of measuring what the best offense of all-time really was; some statistic, perhaps, that could somehow guide us in determining the answer to this elusive question. Too bad there's no way of measuring that.

"Unless...."

You know, the purpose of an offense is to score points, is it not? So if we could somehow dig up the extremely obscure statistic of "points per game" scored by an offense, we may be able to compare offenses across the years. It's so crazy, it just might work!

Sarcasm aside, while it's true that points scored by an offense does get us most of the way there, let's remember some mitigating factors. There will still be differences across eras, so one should take into account the rank of an offense compared with the rest of the league. Perhaps the best single number for measuring an offense is the ratio of its average points per game for a year over the average for every team in the league for that year. I don't have those numbers easily available to me, so I'll leave that particular analysis to Rob Neyer for when he finally gets bored of crunching baseball numbers, at which point he'll no doubt run the numbers and proclaim the 1903 Akron Knickerstockings the greatest O of all-time.

What I can do, however, is mock some of the choices that our panel of geniuses chose. First off, not one of them mentioned the 1983 Redskins, who set a record for most points scored in a season, and only one of them managed just a passing reference to the '98 Vikings, who finally broke that record. Come on, guys, that was only 6 years ago! At least they haven't already forgotten about the '99-'01 Rams.

Not surprisingly, several of them bow down at the altar of Holy Joe Montana. This is not a bad choice, of course, but Joe's Niners clearly fall short statistically to Steve Young's Niners of the Nineties, who barely get mentioned! (I'm not exactly sure what Schatz means by "early 90s Niners.") The Montana/Craig/Rice Niners led the league in points scored and yards gained twice, in 1987 and 1989, while the Young/Watters/Rice Niners did it four straight years from 1992-95. The most points in one season that Montana and co. ever scored was 475 in 1984, while in 1994 Young and co. scored 505.

Now for a word on SRAM's go-to guy on the panel, Patrick Hruby. The "Triplet Cowboys," Pat? Are you serious? These guys never even led the league in scoring. Not once! They were, to be sure, 2nd in the league three years in a row from '92-'95 (hmm, those years sound vaguely familiar), but the most points they ever scored was 414, which wouldn't have led the league in most any other year, either. Their rank in yards per game those years, by the way, was 4, 4, and 13. Looks to me like they got some help from their famous defenses of those years, too.

And finally, that was a nice old-school reference that Schatz made to Otto Graham's "Browns of the 50s," but they only led the league in scoring once, in 1955. Air Coryell did it 3 times. You don't have to be that old-school.

The common thread among all the notable omissions and stupid inclusions is, of course, the absence or presence of a Super Bowl victory in there. The '83 Redskins didn't win it, so no mention. Neither did the Chargers in the '80s or the '98 Vikings, so little mention of them. Montana won it 4 times to Young's once, so of course he gets a much more prominent mention. Let's try and remember guys: there are two sides to the ball.

Now, having said all that, I find out that all the hard work has been done for me, and by espn.com's Page 2, no less. A while back they published a list of the 10 greatest offenses of all-time, based on solid numbers, rather than the knee-jerk reactions of a panel of geniuses. I have no problem with their list, and I note that Montana's Niners, Aikman's Cowboys, and even Graham's Browns aren't mentioned . Maybe the Snap Judgment wizards should read their own rag next time.

The Morning After for Simmons

Friday SRAM featured a thorough exposure and subsequent dismantling by Craig Hansen (not no relation) of Bill Simmons' anti-Peyton bias and general know-it-all arrogance of all things NFL. So today let's do a little morning-after follow-up in light of yesterday's games.

We'll start with Manning, who was facing Houston at home. His line:

18-27 320 YDS 5 TD 2 INT

Only the third time this year that he has thrown 5 touchdown passes in one game, tying the NFL record. And he did it in the first 3 quarters. Against Green Bay, he threw all 5 in the first half. Needless to say, he is still on pace to break the season records for touchdown passes and quarterback rating. He would fall just a couple of hundred yards short of Marino's record for yards. And oh by the way, he's playing in what some consider the best division in football. Not me, though. I loved Krusty.

And how about that terrible Indianapolis defense, eh? Giving up touchdowns so fast that Manning gets back on the field before he can swig a gatorade! Actually, Houston scored a whooping two touchdowns, both essentially meaningless, and the Colts' defense scored two touchdowns themselves, after which Manning no doubt trotted back out onto the field, only to realize that it was the Texans receiving the ensuing kickoff. And anyway, what's so great for your offensive stats about having a horrible defense that routinely gives up long, sustained drives to the other team? Wouldn't a 3-and-out type of defense be better? Get you better field position, too, for the TD passes? Help me out here, Bill.

(And let me anticipate another argument here: "Manning just tosses the ball and his receivers run all the way down the field!" Actually, I'm old enough to remember 1984, and that's exactly what they were saying about Marino, too, with his two main guys Duper and Clayton. Remember them? As I recall, the record still counted anyway.)

Okay, so Simmons is clearly too blinded by his infatuation with Saint Brady to see what everyone else sees: that Manning is the MVP so far. But in the long run, he knows more than the unwashed heathen, right? Surely his in-depth knowledge allows him to separate the winners from the losers? Of course!

But not according to his weekly picks. I will give Simmons credit for fighting the good fight, for putting himself on the line each week and publishing his picks for all the world to see and mock. But he needs to correctly pick tonight's Eagles-Cowbs game just to get up to a 6-8 record for--get this--the 5th time in 6 weeks! Quite a run. In fairness, this still leaves him over .500 (72-68-4) for the year, but his "50 games over .500" guarantee made in September just ain't happening. Turns out--what a surprise--he isn't any better than anyone else at picking against the spread. No shame in that, of course. Just stop writing your columns like you're smarter than everyone in the NFL.

Somehow, there are still Manning detractors

Alert reader Craig Hansen (no relation) (Ha! Just kidding) got himself quite worked up over the Sports Guy's latest NFL picks column. This kind of irritable, fomenting overreaction to immature adults making a living analyzing child's play is exactly the kind of attitude we need to encourage to make SRAM the runaway success it deserves to be. Forthwith, Craig's remarks:


I couldn’t let the SG’s latest rant about Manning go without contradicting him on every single point he makes. The SG is lobbing in some serious meatballs today. Let’s take the first point:

And how is the team better off with him changing the plays every down?

Let’s see: The Colts are 5-3 with a defense that ranks next to last in the league in yards allowed and 28th in points allowed. The Colts’ offense ranks 2nd in yards and 1st in points scored. How good would their offense be if Manning didn’t have the freedom to call the plays? That’s impossible to say but before you say that it doesn’t benefit the team it would be a good idea to check not only the numbers but also your own words. Multiple times this season the SG has raved about how good the Colts’ offense is. Everybody knows that they have a great offense but don’t you think that if the coaches thought it didn’t do any good for Manning to change the plays they wouldn’t let him do it? Just another arrogant pronouncement from the SG without a shred of evidence about how he knows more about coaching football than men who have been around the game their entire lives and get paid a ton to coach players on whom their professional lives depend. It never enters his mind that perhaps the coaches are doing what they feel is in the best interest of the team. The fact is that if the Colts did things the way everyone else did they couldn’t be much better off than they already are, but they could be a heckuva lot worse.

I've had it with this guy. If he breaks Marino's TD record, that would be almost as bad as Bonds breaking Hank Aaron's record with a size 9 3/4 head. Like Marino wouldn't have thrown 70 TDs in his prime with these passing rules and Indy's defense constantly putting him back on the field.

If it’s so easy to break Marino’s record in this day and age why has the record stood for 20 years? Not only has it not been broken but the closest anyone has come other than Marino was Kurt Warner in 1999 when he got 41. No one else has even broken 40. Manning is on pace to have fewer passing attempts than Marino did in the 1984 season, so I think Marino was spending plenty of time on the field trying to throw touchdowns. Besides, Brady and McNabb benefit from the rule changes just as much as Manning does and I don’t think they are a threat to the record.

But please, keep calling Manning the MVP over Brady and McNabb ... wins and losses clearly shouldn't matter.) (Seriously ... I'm getting angry. I might need to take a walk.)

The SG criticizes reporters who analyze baseball players purely on their stats, calling them robo-journalists. What is more robotic or lazy than anointing the quarterbacks of the teams with the best records as the only possible MVP candidates? Of course, we all know that as far as Brady is concerned the SG has lost all sense of objectivity so it’s not possible to argue with him, but there aren’t any statistics that suggest that Manning is clearly an inferior quarterback as he suggests. The table below shows the NFL rankings of Manning and Brady in several statistics.

Quarterback ranks:
Stat	Manning	Brady
Completion Pct.	6	17
Yards per attempt	1	11
TD pct.	1	6
Int pct.	6	17
Sacks	1	16
Passer Rating	1	11

Incidentally, Manning is also on pace to break the passer rating record. I’m willing to give Brady some breaks since Manning probably plays with better offensive players but the SG gives absolutely no evidence that Brady is the better quarterback other than that New England has the better record. But does anyone doubt that if the Colts had the Patriots defense they would have just as good a record? What’s worse is that not only does he not give any evidence supporting his points but his very attitude is that anyone who even remotely disagrees with him must be an idiot.

Welcome back, Dan!

I hope I'm not crossing the line here into "beating a dead horse" territory, but I just think that you've got to appreciate this. Dan Shanoff is back at the Daily Bandwagon and on his very first day back comes through with another doozy of a failed prediction:

Award Watch (Wed): AL/NL Mgr
Quickie AL pick: Terry Francona
Quickie NL pick: Phil Garner

Actual winners were Showalter and Cox. Okay, so he missed the manager of the year awards; big deal. It's not like there were any consensus favorites there. But remember, it's not just that Shanoff is wrong, it's that he's spectacularly wrong. So let's look at the final tallies:

NL
Cox (140)
La Russa (62)
Tracy (52)
Garner (27)

AL
Showalter (101)
Gardenhire (91)
Scioscia (31)
Torre (18)
Francona (8)

Yeah. His guy finished 4th in one league and 5th in the other. A whooping 8 points for Francona. Good call, Dan!

My dos cents: it's a joke that Torre gets 18 points for managing a team of all-stars to 101 wins. Including 1 first-place vote.

Adieu to Schoenfield

Believe it or not, there are days when I scan the sports pages and don't find anything that ticks me off. On such days, the Daily Bandwagon is my go-to column for SRAM material. But with David Schoenfield writing it the past couple of weeks, moronic comments in that normally fertile space have been harder to come by. True, SRAM did blast Schoenfield last week for twisting his ankle jumping off the Patriots bandwagon so fast, but in general common sense seems to prevail in his columns. Said sense will be tossed back out the window starting tomorrow, however, when Dan Shanoff returns.

Today Schoenfield does a quick summary of the NL Cy Young race, which he claims to be between Clemens and Johnson. The stats, provided by Schoenfield himself, break down thusly:

Roger Randy

W-L 18-4 16-14

ERA 2.98 2.60

IP 214.1 245.2

H 169 177

BB 79 44

SO 218 290

Clemens, of course, had greater run support; Johnson was 13-2 when Arizona scored more than 2 runs. Johnson's 8.10 hits+walks per nine innings was the best in the NL since Greg Maddux in 1995. Johnson also had 31 more innings pitched.

On the other hand, Clemens pitched in a pennant race; Houston won his last nine starts. The vote: Clemens wins. The Quickie vote: The Big Unit. He would have won 20+ playing with Houston.

(My apologies for the poor formatting on the table.) A solid analysis. Schoenfield as usual gives too much weight to the category over which the pitcher has the least control (W-L), but still makes the right call. Johnson is clearly better in all of the other categories.

Schoenfield also probably makes the right prediction on which way the real votes will fall. The journalists making the votes will of course make the same cockamamie arguments for Clemens that they do for the MVP race each year and favor the player on the playoff team over the player hanging out with the sad sacks. Plus they like the whole Clemens storyline thing.

Meanwhile, the ESPN panel of "experts" actually gives the Cy Young to Johnson, 4-2. Only Jim Caple (moron) and Tim Kurkjian (what?!) give it to Clemens. Kurkjian is one of my favorite analysts; I'd like to know his reasoning behind that call.

No Scottie, No MJ

I'm a bit late on this, but Bill Simmons had an excellent article earlier this week on the retirement of Scottie Pippen. I've been as perplexed as Simmons as to why Pippen's retirement is such a non-story. Simmons claims the man is one of the top 20 all-time players in the NBA. I'm not going to get into ranking historical players, and that does seem a bit high, but the fact is that Scottie will likely slink into the sunset without ever receiving his just desserts in terms of notoriety.

And of course we all know why. The Sports Reporters as Deifiers phenomenon guarantees it. The reporters handbook states that there shall be one god above all other gods and please brush aside the fact that this is a team game. See also Tom Brady and Joe Montana. But Simmons persuasively argues that without Pippen, MJ wouldn't have won any of those titles, and then who knows what we'd be saying about him today (worst GM ever?).

But there are a couple eyebrow-raisers in the article, too. Such as this quote:

And when the 1998 Pacers tried to snuff out the MJ era, Jordan and Pippen crashed the boards and willed themselves time and again to the foul line in Game 7, two smaller guys dominating the paint against a bigger team. They just wanted it more.

"They just wanted it more" is one of the most meaningless cliches in sport, of course, but that whole "willed themselves to the foul line" bit is the real eye-roller here. Especially coming from the same guy who, in his brilliant NBA preview (seriously--those two-part columns he does every year are something to behold) this very week, wrote about the Heat:

As an added bonus, they'll be getting every call because the NBA will be doing everything possible to facilitate a Heat-Lakers Finals, even if it includes flying Dick Bavetta around in a private jet to referee two games in the same day.

Simmons is one of the leading NBA conspiracy theorists, of course, but when it comes to making obeisance to Deity, why, "they just wanted it more."

The Dick Harmon of espn.com

There certainly hasn't been a lack of material for SRAM to write about over the last couple of weeks, which has unfortunately caused me to neglect one of my best potential sources: Len Pasquarelli, "senior NFL writer" (snort snort) for espn.com. Len is more of a comic relief guy, though, and is too easily lost in the shuffle in these urgent times. I apologize to Len for my neglect and hope to get to him eventually. In the meantime, I needed to throw out a quote from his column today on the Steelers beating the Pats, because I have a feeling it'll come in handy some day:

Getting into the spirit of the holiday, Staley suggested his offensive linemen carved up the Patriots front "like a Halloween pumpkin." While somewhat forced and more than a tad hackneyed, the analogy was an apt one.

Len Pasquarelli as literary critic! Ho ho ho! And flaunting his journalistic superiority to the jocks: "Forced"! "Hackneyed"! That's rich! Pardon me while I wipe the tears away. Just fantastic stuff. We'll come back to Len, I promise.

A week after the Day After

Every day, of course, is a week after the day after something, but I refer specifically to SRAM's mocking of the Daily Bandwagon's Day-After fever a week ago today. Recall that Shanoff last week (1) proclaimed himself back on the Jacksonville bandwagon; (2) called the NY Giants' 4-1 record the first six weeks a "facade" after they lost to the Lions; (3) announced that the Lions had just "proved they're for real," particularly on the road; and (4) pronounced Vick-as-West-Coast-QB officially deceased. And those were just the ones that SRAM bothered to highlight.

The next day, SRAM also mocked Patrick Hruby for his inability to name a single quarterback other than Saint Brady whom he would rather have in the last two minutes than Byron Leftwich.

Okay, let's look at some results from NFL action yesterday:

1. Jacksonville lost to the mighty Texans 20-6, with "For Real" Leftwich throwing an interception that was returned for a touchdown in, yes, the final two minutes. And by the way, Patrick, your man Tom Brady didn't do too much better in Pittsburgh.
2. The "Bill" NY Giants slaughtered the previously 5-1 Vikings in Minnesota, 34-13.
3. The Lions, on the other hand, lost 31-21 at Dallas.
4. And finally, Michael Vick put up 367 yards of offense in the Falcons' 41-28 win over Denver. His stats: 18/24 252 YDS 2 TD passing; 12 rushes for 115 yards on the ground.

Dan Shanoff has an uncanny ability to not just be wrong, but to be spectacularly, unbelievably wrong, and proven wrong within a ridiculously short period of time. If he were to pick all 16 NFL games against the spread, I wouldn't be surprised to see him get zero of them correct--a feat that is, of course, just as hard to accomplish as getting all 16 right. I think you can make a lot of money playing Keno down in Vegas for being that wrong, can't you?


The Patriots -- Dynasty?

Fast-forwarding to today's Daily Quickie, reading the first few paragraphs of that column made even this jaded DQ reader rub his eyes in disbelief:

New England has been playing with leftover karma for weeks. While their streak in this age of increasing parity and randomness is more impressive than Miami's undefeated season, don't confuse the Patriots with being a historically great team. Witness:

*Entering Sunday, they ranked 20th in the NFL in yards and 12th in yards allowed.

*In 2003, they ranked 18th in yards in 7th in yards allowed.

*Their Super Bowl win in 2004 came against one of the weakest Super Bowl teams ever in Carolina.

*Of their 21 wins, 10 came by six points or less.

*Even going back to 2001 (when they did beat a good Rams team in the Super Bowl), they ranked just 19th in yards and 24th in yards allowed.

All this from the same column that last January declared that the Patriots' two Super Bowls in three years was more impressive in the "age of parity" than the Cowboys' three championships in four years, or even the Steelers' dynasty of the 70s. "With a flip-flop this blatant," I was mentally writing, "is there any doubt about who Shanoff will be voting for tomorrow?"

But there was one problem: it wasn't Shanoff.

Today's DQ was written by Shanoff's occasional substitute, David Schoenfield, who has yet to establish his idiot credentials the way his boss has. Should a column be held responsible for a pronouncement that was made in the same space but by a different writer? You be the judge. But Schoenfield can still be held accountable for idiocy in the above analysis by looking back to Friday's Quickie, also written by Schoenfield, in which we find the following prediction:

NE (6-0) at PIT (5-1)
Always top plot until Pats lose.
Prediction: not this week.

David, David, David! How in the world did you pick a team "ranked 20th in the NFL in yards and 12th in yards allowed" on the road?! With the same initials and the same penchant for prognostication, looks like somebody is angling for his boss's job.