What We Learned From This Past Weekend in Football 9/25/11

With yet another weekend of football in the books, there are several more  important lessons we should have learned both in the college ranks and in the NFL.

1) You “instant replay solves everything” people can all bite me…again.

The Toledo Rockets got robbed by not just the officials, but also by the instant replay officials. The Rockets hit a last-second field goal at the Carrier Dome on Saturday, a score which only tied the game when it should have been the game-winner.   Just a few minutes earlier, Syracuse was credited with a successful extra point try that actually missed. And in a moment which proves my argument against instant replay, even after officials reviewed the play, the wrong call was upheld.  Here’s the video which shows the ball passing in front of the uprights.

2) Apparently, Sam’s Club sells testicles. 

Two weeks in a row, Tony Romo has shown an industrial-sized set of balls he’s never shown before. First there was that comeback win in San Francisco with a cracked rib and a punctured lung, then there’s the performance he turned in on Monday night, leading the Cowboys to another victory in spite of themselves. The Plowboys offense couldn’t even snap the ball effectively, and even when they did, the receivers couldn’t run the right routes, and even when they pulled off those two minor miracles, they still couldn’t catch the damn ball. With the sole exception of Dez Bryant’s catch on that 3rd-and-21 play, the Cowboys offense played without organization and focus, which is why they stumbled into 375 Romo-led yards of total offense and a win considering they never once found the end zone.

3) The stock on quarterbacks rises and falls more often than Robert Downey, Jr’s career.

Romo’s transformation from a week 1 “gutless bum” into a week 3 “super-hero” is only the most current example of this phenomenon.  Don’t forget about Joe Flacco, who has managed come full-circle in just four years. First, he was a rookie wunderkind because “he” won first two playoff games . Then he became dogmeat because “he couldn’t beat the Steelers.” There’s even a “Joe Flacco Sucks” group on Facebook. Here’s some of their recent handy-work:

Joe Flacco is wack yo! He is just your average Joe. Ozzie please fire flacco. This season 2011-2012 will be a hard season for us because he was a horrible QB, a wack as O-line, a wack as offensive coordinator and our head coach is a bum. Joe flacco’s stats says it all, he’s just average at best. He throws for 30 and catches 5. He throws for 20 and causes 10 interceptions.

It makes you wonder where those clever retorts are now,  since Flacco hammered the Rams on Sunday, completing 27-of-48 passes for a career-high 389 yards and three touchdowns in Baltimore’s 37-7 demolition of St. Louis. “He” also laid waste to the Steelers in week 1.  Kyle Orton, Jay Cutler, and Mark Sanchez all are on various places on this same roller-coaster.

4) Tom Brady is fallible.

Take the logic of the “Flacco sucks” crowd and imagine what they would be saying about Brady today if he didn’t have those three Super Bowl rings.  Brady has thrown for 1,327 yards in three games; the most yards passing in any three-game stretch in league history. But remember, this crowd believes in the “What have you done for me lately?” theory, and lately Brady tossed four picks and blew a 21-point lead at Buffalo. Not to mention, just how long has it been since the Patriots claimed the Lombardi trophy?

5) The NFL really needs to decide what it wants to be. 

Michael Vick’s commentary about officiating raises a legitmate point which nobody will discuss because his commentary lends itself too easily to a conversation about the protection of “traditional pocket passers” versus that of the “athletic quarterbacks.” We all know for what those terms are used as “code,” which is exactly where this discussion gets derailed.

The real point is that Vick has a point about his particular situation.  Like it or not, he is treated differently because his mobility gets him out of situations that a “pocket passer” does not. Does that mean he gets hit more often?  Probably, but that’s  not for any other reason than does Ben Roethlisberger. Both of them escape situations and extend plays in ways not possible for Tom Brady.

Let’s face it, anybody can go back and look through game footage to find examples of quarterbacks getting hit illegally and not drawing a penalty. Conversely, you can see many examples of quarterbacks that seem to get barely tapped and the flag comes out.

The problem isn’t about what type of quarterback gets what sort of call, the problem is the NFL in it’s half-assed approach to “protect” players has made a series of rules which are nearly impossible for officials to call at game speed. the root cause of all this is rather simple; the NFL needs to decide if its product is a league of 275-pound leviathans slamming into each other at full speed or if it’s going to be a league of doilies and tea-cakes.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying we should not care about the well-being of the players, but the NFL is going about it in exactly the wrong manner. The way to do this is not to lay it on the players by changing the way the game gets played and expecting players to change the way they play overnight considering they have played and practiced a certain way for decades.  The way to do this is not to enact a bunch of rules the officials can’t’ accurately enforce. The way to do it is to get all the involved parties together to have a honest discussion about the future of the game; the time to do it is now since the NFL and the NFLPA just secured a decade with no labor distractions.

6) Robert Irsay and Bill Polian must cry themselves to sleep every night.

Did you ever have one of those nightmares so bad you couldn’t even wake yourself up? That’s how this whole Peyton Manning situation must feel to the owner and general manager of the Colts.

First, there’s the neck surgeries. Then there’s the fact they didn’t want to be the guy who told Colts Nation that the Manning era might be over, hence the enormous contract they signed Fetushead to after his second neck surgery. Then there was the panic attack when they realized the second surgery didn’t work and they were staring the reality of Curtis Painter, Starting Quarterback dead in the face.  Then there’s the $10 million insurance policy known as Kerry Collins. And now that Collins was concussed by the Steelers defense, the Colts are trying out Dan Orlovsky and Brodie Croyle as back-ups to Curtis “Jeff Spicoli” Painter.

Stay tuned, Colts fans…the death spiral is only in week four.

7) Parity is a Parody

Does anybody think this league is better because it has 27 mediocre teams and 5 rancid ones? Seriously, look at the breakdown according to record after three weeks compared to their preseason power ranking:

* – Playoff team last season

3-0 Record (3 teams): Green Bay* (2), Detroit (18), Buffalo (28)

2-1  Record (15 teams): New England* (1), Pittsburgh* (4), New York Jets* (5), New Orleans* (6),  San Diego (7), Baltimore* (9), New York Giants (10), Houston (11),  Tampa Bay (12), Dallas (13), Tennessee (17),  Oakland (21), Cleveland (22),  San Francisco (27), Washington (31 )

1-2 Record (9 teams): Philadelphia*(3), Atlanta *(8), Chicago *(14), Arizona (20),  Jacksonville (24),  Seattle* (25), Denver (29),  Cincinnati (30),  Carolina (32)

0-3 Record (5 teams): Miami (15),  St. Louis (16), Indianapolis* (19),  Kansas City* (23),  Minnesota (26)

The fact that half the playoff teams from last year are in the losing record category and that there are teams like Detroit, Buffalo, Oakland, San Francisco, and Washington clearly exceeding expectations means the NFL once again has achieved is goal of parity, or in other words making almost every team equally lousy.

8 ) The NFL has competition

Until further notice, the SEC will be treated by Dubsism as a professional football league.

About J-Dub

What your view of sports would be if you had too many concussions

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