Billy Paultz Reconsidered

I’m now going to declare myself a pillar of naivete and gullability: I think Tom Brady is hurt.
There were a couple plays in the AFC championship game when an ankle injury to Brady could have taken place. I thought there were times after those plays when Brady’s mechanics seemed off, and an inability to push […]

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Yes, the game’s nine days away. But you’re better off making a pick before being bombarded with the annual nonsense. If anything, this should have come earlier, especially since it was promised yesterday.
My bad.
My read on the Patriots’ season goes something like this: They stomped out of the gate, whip-cracked by their coach, enraged by […]

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When Payton Manning played brilliantly but couldn’t get his team over the top in big games, the rap was that individual stuff means nothing, wins are the only thing that matters.
When Eli Manning’s team wins three straight road playoff games to get to the Super Bowl, now the wins don’t validate, and everybody wants to […]

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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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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 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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So the Patriots got caught cheating three months ago, and their reaction - their coaches’ reaction in particular - was to turn this season into a crusade to stick it to the world and show everybody. This has led to the unsavory spectacle of guys ecstatically spiking the ball after touchdowns that put their team […]

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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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