Billy Paultz Reconsidered

I know he thinks he’s being funny, but still: Terry Bradshaw just picked the Giants because Eli Manning has the same TD/INT ratio as Rex Grossman did a year ago.
And we’re, uh, off…
This morning it was 18 degrees and windy as I walked from a building to my car. Actually ran. It took maybe 20 […]

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AFC: Tough to swim against the stream on this one. The Colts were the last best hope for somebody to beat the Patriots. San Diego came up with an heroic effort last week, but it’ll be tougher to play undermanned for a whole game, knowing it going in, than doing it on the fly.
The Chargers […]

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The Sixers just got their first win of 2008, and yeah it was against dysfunctional, T-Mac-less Houston, but still. And now - what are the odds? - I’m watching the transcendent, “I’m into Nuggets y’all, I’m into Nuggets y’all..”
Now if they’d won at Denver, that would have been perfect. Think about it.
In other news…
*The question […]

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Observations in the wake of a wild football Sunday…
Chargers-Colts: OK, I was spectacularly wrong about the Chargers, who have both the hot team thing going on and the gritty underdog thing and are, remember, the same bunch that went 14-2 last year.
But would anyone on earth have given them a shot without Philip Rivers and LT […]

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From the “Like I have a clue,” Dept.:
Jacksonville at New England: The Jags are this year’s designated defense-and-ground-game entry.
Except that Pittsburgh scored 29 points against the Jags last week, 22 in the second half, Ben Roethlisberger throwing for 337 yards, despite:
1. Playing without Willie Parker and thus without a ground game (43 rush yds, 1.7/carry).
2. […]

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The Eagles had fewest takeaways in the NFL (which is at least partly luck), the fifth-toughest schedule in the NFL, the worst special teams in the NFL (easily addressable), their quarterback wasn’t remotely healthy until about week 12, their coach was dealing with a family disaster, and they went 8-8. They’re not as far off […]

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The Mitchell Report on steroids, the latest major salvo in baseball’s longstanding public-relations war against itself, will be made public about 12 hours from now.
Journalists who’ve seen the report or talked to people who have say upwards of 100 players will be named as abusers of performance-enhancing substances. Mitchell had no subpeona power, and the report […]

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First of all, it was a great football game. Before we get caught up in the quarterback controversy and the analysis and whether the Patriots were overhyped, can we at least acknowledge that?
Thank you.
One thing I love about Andy Reid is that he always believes in himself, and he never cares what everybody says, what […]

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I think the deal here might be that Indy ran out of gas.
Joseph Addai has some history, by his own admission, of being wiped out late in games. The Colts’ defense is so reliant on quickness, and played with so much energy early, that maybe they just couldn’t physically sustain it for four quarters. […]

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Scoring margin as a method of evaluating football teams has become as devalued as neoconservatism. Or maybe communism.
Giving weight to scoring margin encourages bad sportsmanship and general ugliness, the thinking goes. The Bowl Championship Series directed the people who do its computer rankings to remove any consideration of scoring margin from their formulas in 2005, […]

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