The Book of Eli
The Super Bowl is over. That’s it … the last game. As they say in Hollywood, “That’s a wrap.” Now there is a BLACK HOLE in sports for the next six months. There is a little sports nirvana the first weekend of March Madness. That first weekend of the NCAA tournament is a great sports weekend. But it’s too early to discuss March Madness.
Super Bowl. That was a great game. There was some dead time without much scoring, but watching the Patriots and Brady and Belichickenhead sweat was priceless. Loved it. It’s one of the three Super Bowl outcomes I love. Number one of course is the Steelers winning the Super Bowl. Number two is the Steelers losing the Super Bowl … I mean, if your team can’t win it, you still want them in it. Number three is the Patriots losing the Super Bowl, if for no other reason than the supreme idiocy of the people that evaluate and love the Patriots. For instance, take this assessment I heard I don’t know how many times leading up to the Super Bowl:
“The Giants are better on defense and about as good on offense, but the Patriots have Bill Belichick and QB Tom Brady, so they can beat the Giants.” What were people thinking? Frankly, if you think about it, the reason the Pats are losing is BECAUSE of Belichick. He is a stubborn egomaniac, who has put together an all-Smurf team, and it was evident during the Super Bowl.
As I have told you all along, they have limited wide receivers. All that talk about two Tight Ends … they are still TEs and if you play defense to take away the middle of the field and the TEs, you are left with Danny Woodhead, Wes Welker and Deion Branch to stretch the field and make plays.
So the Pats had two weeks to prepare for the Giants. I guess the Giants didn’t have two weeks to prepare for the Pats horrible defense and terrible receiving corps? And didn’t Belichick have two weeks to prepare for the Giants last time? The Pats need talent. I said before the season the Pats were done. I am surprised they got as far as they did. But they have nothing left. Belichick has four more draft picks next year in the first and second rounds, and they will get nothing for those picks same as they always do. THAT is why they can’t beat great teams.
They had a weak schedule and lost to just about every team with a winning record they faced. Oh, they beat Joe Flacco. Wow. That is quite an accomplishment. But the Pats have no skill players. No defensive ends, no CBs. Belichickenhead’s stubbornness is killing them. Every coach gets outgrown by the game. Even the great ones. They can’t seem to evolve. Look at Chuck Noll, Tom Landry, Don Shula … all great coaches, but at some point the game passes them by, unless they evolve and turn their offense and defense over to new age coordinators and ideas.
But the Patriot Way thing is taking down Belichcik like the Flex Defense and the Marino offense eventually killed Landry and Shula. Evolve or perish. That is where the Patriots are now.
Eli. The Book of Eli has been rewritten. I still don’t trust Eli from day to day. But when you look at him in the clutch, you have to give it to him. He has great playoff games. Now, he will pass 20 interceptions in I the regular season, but in the playoffs, he turns it up. Statistically, he’s better than Peyton, who it turns out is the classic regular season hero. But when teams turn up the heat in the playoffs, Peyton fades. I never gave Eli credit for handling pressure, but he wins the big games.
In other news, Jets WR Santonio Holmes and QB Mark Sanchez are going to “work on their relationship.” What are they are going to do, spend a weekend fishing together? Give me a break. What are these two, married? That team is a hideous mess and they are even talking about bringing in Peyton Manning to play with Holmes! Hah!
Holmes hates his QB and was benched during a game the Jets had to win to make the playoffs, and he’s a general miscreant to boot. But the Jets just kept him on the roster and just paid him another $15 million in guaranteed roster bonuses. Ridiculous!
Former Arizona Cardinals QB Kurt Warner says emphatically that Eli Manning is not a Hall of Famer, because Eli isn’t consistently good. Now, I agree with the inconsistency observation, but if you can win two or three super bowls AND perform excellently in every playoff run, not even counting all the other wins he is putting up, maybe he should be in. The hilarious thing is Warner had 4 great years and some other years he was benched more than once and didn’t play more than 6 games. Warner shouldn’t even be thought of for the Hall of Fame but they are talking about him because of his STORY and 4 great years. Screw that. Warner should just sit down, eat his rubber chicken dinner and shut up.
That said, Eli does lack a certain flash, the dude’s got no personality. He’s like a tube sock with the two big blue stripes. It’s there, you need it, it gets the job done, but it’s awkward … and a little embarrassing.
The Steelers hired Todd Haley as their Offensive Coordinator. Haley? I don’t know about this one. I really don’t know enough about Haley as an offensive coordinator to comment on that. When he was with the Cards, they had Warner and were wide open offensively, but Whisehnunt was calling the plays. When he was with the Chiefs, they had Matt Cassel and he is a DUD. So, the jury’s out on this one. He is a Parcells guy and that doesn’t make me happy, but Sean Payton was a Parcells guy and look at his offense.
I know this: he’s not much when it comes to his personality … a brooding, self-involved asshole as a person. We’ll see about his coordinator skills. One thing I do like is that he will put Big Bum Ben “Rotten” Roethlisberger back in his place. Ben had too much leeway hopefully those days are over. Maybe that is why the Steelers went outside the organization to shake things up.
Ricky Williams retired … again. He must have completed construction on the RickeyWeed Dome, a covered marijuana forest on his estate. And have you ever seen a player that a team traded away 8 players for amount to so little? Ricky was a bust. He ran for 10,000 yards, the most insignificant 10.000 yards in NFL history.
Former Patriots and Jets RB Curtis Martin made the Hall of Fame. Why? Martin was a good dependable back. Hall of Fame? I don’t see it. When the NFL starts using stats only, as Major League Baseball does, the Hall of Fame will be filled with a bunch of players that put up huge numbers because they were around forever, but weren’t dominant players. Former Indianapolis Colts QB Kerry Collins and former NY Jets OB Vinny Testaverde threw for a boatload of yards because they were around for a long time, but are they Hall of Fame material? No.
Oh, and Brady’s wife Gisele Bundchen was upset that the receivers dropped so many balls. She couldn’t believe that could happen … and with her extensive football knowledge.
Maybe Brady’s wife knows what I know: it’s Belichick’s fault, him and his whole 4-foot tall Ooompa Loompa WR corps, and in the Super Bowl … how embarrassing. And I see Edelman didn’t even step on the field at Cornerback.
“American Idol” is back. And instead of being good singers, everyone is determined to make it by telling sob stories and crying every 2 minutes. And it’s getting old fast. If I hear, “This is my last chance,” “I don’t have any health insurance” or “I need this for my family” one more time, I’m gonna vomit. It isn’t your last chance … try getting a job.
Winning “American Idol” is not anyone’s birthright. If that is your career plan, you need to have your parents kick your dumb ass out of the house. Don’t whine to me about health insurance or providing food for your baby when you don’t want to work a real job because “music is your dream and the only thing you want to do.”
It would be great if we could all be be filthy rich and famous, and not punch a clock every day at McDonald’s, the bank or on a construction site. But the fact is that ain’t reality … and frankly, the majority of people crying all those sob stories don’t have enough talent to host a karaoke night. But if they did, at least they would have a job until they realized their dream of having singing career was just that: a dream … a pipe dream. Get a job.
