And now, for my less anger-fueled post of the evening...

Whatever happened to the QB sneak? This is easily the best way to get first downs in short yardage situations, yet I think I have seen it once this whole football season, high school, college and pro combined. Seriously, if it's because you don't want to injure the quarterback, toughen up. I rarely have seen a QB hurt on a sneak.
Case in point: I was covering the Michigan Tech-Northern Michigan game this weekend, and Tech had just come back from a 20-point fourth quarter deficit. It was 34-27 (due to another missed PAT, but that's another topic for another post), and the Huskies had first and goal at the 2-yard line. They had been running the ball well for the whole last stanza, so I don't blame the coach for trying to run the ball in. But if you run a QB sneak, there's no way you don't get at least a little yardage. Run it four straight times, and you're golden. Seriously, there's no way Northern stops four straight QB sneaks with two yards to go.
The Packers are awful at this as well. If it's third and one, hustle to the line, snap it and just have Favre fall forward. Boom, first down. I have rarely seen a d-lineman over the center against the Packers all season, tell me why that wouldn't get at least one yard?
So, in conclusion: QB Sneak on third or fourth and one, good. Slant pattern in same situation, bad. Halfback dive with small running backs in same situation, ugly.

Kevin McHale: Worst GM Ever

ANTOINE WALKER??????? I'LL BE SURPRISED IF WE SCORE 50 POINTS IN A GAME NEXT SEASON!

Kind of sad when you look to a football game to save your weekend...

First off, I'm not that distressed about the Bears loss. We hurt ourselves, we're still 4-1 and in first and although I really hate losing to Chicago, I'll get over it. However, my main qualm is that Mike McCarthy had a big hand in losing the game. Yes, Favre threw Urlacher a freebie, Jones fumbled away a blowout and penalties killed us. But the play-calling and the time-management in the second half was outright abysmal. I'm not calling for his head or anything close to that, he's done a great job so far, he just had a terrible game.
Calling a run on 3rd and 7 when you're one of the best passing teams in the league is AWFUL. I know he wants to establish the run, but you can't go away from what got you to 4-0. There's no way you should go from 340 yards in the first half to barely eking out a first down in the second half. The last drive was painful to watch, Favre shouldn't be making three shotgun signals in the hurry-up offense (that could be blamed on Favre). You can't continually go underneath for five yards when trying to get a lot of yardage. What happened to the slant? That was killing the Bears all first half long, yet we threw maybe two the entire second half.
The worst call may have been challenging the Bears first down on that last drive. There's no shot at getting that call overturned, and that timeout is worth gold in either stopping the Bears offense or giving your own offense time to score.
Now we just have to heal up, fix some mistakes and pass all over Washington next week. 5-1 heading into the bye week is still absolute prime position.

OK, the disrespect needs to end

We still shouldn't have been the underdogs, that was about as ridiculous as the play of our defense is.

Quit yer whinin' Pads fans

I must say that I was rooting for the Rockies to win last night, but it didn't really matter to me that much. With my beloved Twinkies out and the hated Yankees in, it's time to focus my attention to more important things, such as football and hockey. So I'm not really biased when I say that Padres fans reallllllly need to stop complaining that they got screwed out of a win last night.
Yes, the tape appears to show that Holliday did not touch the plate, but the camera angles are not exactly crystal-clear in their evidence. Plus Padres manager Bud Black said "It looked to me like he got it," after the game. Plus the Rockies could have a similar complaint about a Garrett Atkins "double" that may have been a home run in the seventh inning that may have rendered the whole extra innings useless.
Plus III: Trevor Hoffman wasn't exactly looking like he was on his game, the sac fly was his one out in the inning. Who's to say he wouldn't have collapsed further and given up another run to the Rockies?
I'm sorry you missed the playoffs, but it's time to man up, hug it out and look forward to next year.

Pack Attack!!!

Before the preseason started, I was mildly optimistic about this season for the Pack. I knew we'd have a pretty good defense and an OK defense, and probably end the season 8-8 or 9-7, maybe squeaking into the playoffs. Now I'm not one to put too much stock in preseason games, but Green Bay has looked fairly impressive so far. A couple injuries are worrisome, but nothing that will cripple their season (as long as Donald Driver isn't out for the season).
The defense is going to surprise some people. I think they'll have a top-5 defensive corps this season, and if the Pack does well this is where it will start. The D-line is not incredible, but Aaron Kampman is excellent and the interior guys should clog the middle fairly well. The linebackers should dominate, A.J. Hawk had a great rookie season and Nick Barnett is an absolute beast. I always knew Barnett was good (and vastly underrated), but he has helped shut down Maurice-Drew and Taylor tonight against the Jags.
The secondary should make opposing teams a little less likely to pass as well. Al Harris and Charles Woodson is a fearsome duo at the corners and Nick Collins should continue to grow into a great safety. I'm not a big Marquand Manuel fan at the other safety position, so I hope the awesomely named Atari Bigby continues to impress and overtakes Manuel.
The offense is where I start to get concerned. The O-line is set and should improve markedly over last season now that a few guys have some experience. However, the lack of a running game could be what holds Green Bay back this season. Brandon Jackson has looked OK this preseason and should be good in a few years, but I'm not sure about him being a starter yet. Vernand Morency looked above average in a few games last year, but who knows when he'll come back from injury (kind of ironic since that's the reason we let Ahman Green go, that and his awful fumble-itis).
If Favre can control his Rex Grossman-like urges to just huck the ball two miles in the air, I think the pass game should be fine. James Jones appears to be the best draft pick we made, as he has looked mighty good so far, Driver (if healthy) will give Favre 90 catches and Greg Jennings gives them a great deep threat. But if teams begin focusing on the pass because we can't run the ball, we're in deep trouble.
So a cautious optimism comes over me as the season quickly approaches. The highly-criticized Green Bay draft isn't looking so bad now, is it naysayers? Anyway, I cannot wait for the NFL to really begin so my Sundays will be booked solid rooting for the Packers and my various fantasy football players. Hopefully the Badgers will be on TV enough that my Saturdays will be booked solid as well.

Griffin, Vick and Sprewell

Yesterday I heard the sad news that former Timberwolf Eddie Griffin had died. It did shock me, but the fact is that in the past five years, the only reasons he ever was in the news for were negative. Griffin was constantly in trouble with the law, and either he a) had an unfortunate accident, b) was driving carelessly or c) decided life was too much to handle anymore. I would hope it was a, but the truth is I'm guessing it was b or most likely c.
When he first left Seton Hall after a year, I thought it was a bad idea. He was extremely talented, yes, but he had maturity issues and was not going to be the next superstar. When the T'Wolves picked him up after he was in the league for a couple years, I wasn't sure what to think. It proved to be a bad experiment, yet one that Kevin McHale would not give up on. Even after Griffin was arrested, the Wolves gave him a healthy contract extension. But he rarely played, and when he did he just didn't look that interested in the game.
So finally, Minnesota cut him. And 6 months afterwards, he was discovered in a car wreck after being hit by a train. I wonder if the Timberwolves kept him around all those seasons not because of his basketball prowess, but because they knew he was so self-destructive. It's hard to say whether anything could have ever turned it around for Griffin, and that's why it's such a heartbreaking story. Yet another case of too much, too soon for a kid barely out of adolescence. So rest in peace Eddie Griffin, I'm sorry nobody could help you out of your tailspin and I hope you have found peace wherever you are now.


Onto more off-the-court/field news. There's no question what Michael Vick did was horribly, horribly wrong. He definitely deserves prison time and at a long ban from football. But I think people's love of dogs in the U.S.A. is causing them to overreact a bit. I don't recall this amount of outrage over anything any athlete has done in my lifetime, whether it be drugs, rape or even murder. When Rae Carruth murdered his pregnant wife, there wasn't this much villainization. True, Carruth is nowhere near Vick's caliber nor the face of the NFL, but still. Have fans become so desensitized to everything else that it takes something new like this to get their ire up? I guess the saying "you look like I just shot your favorite pet" becomes oddly fitting for NFL fans these days.
Vick also lied to a lot of people, claiming that he was innocent and that his name would be cleared, which adds another nail to his coffin. So I guess an overreaction is not necessarily a bad thing, it just should be used in every case like this. Hopefully Roger Goodell's regime will start putting the scattered pieces of the NFL image back together (this may not be the right time, but I'd like to point out that eight months before Goodell started cracking down, I wrote a column about how it was time to clean up the NFL. Coincidence? I think not.).


And to end this entry on a lighter note, Latrell Sprewell's yacht, "Milwaukee's Best," has been repossessed. Now I'm not one for laughing at people's misfortune, but as a Timberwolves fan, the irony of this happening is delicious. The $5-10 million per year he made in the NBA may be enough to feed his family, but not enough to pay off his luxury yacht. I bet he wishes he would've signed those $5 million mid-level exception contracts that teams were offering him, I guess it's no longer "a level beneath which Sprewell would stoop or kneel!" (an actual quote from his agent).
Football really needs to start.

Aaron Rodgers=talented????

For at least the last year, I have been crowing about how horrible things are going to be for the Packers when Favre retires because heir-apparent Aaron Rodgers is a no-talent hack. Now I'm not going to say I'm not still extremely wary, but last Friday I actually saw evidence that Rodgers could be a halfway-decent player like he was at Cal. He showed mobility (????) and had himself a nice little game with an 18-27, 168-yard, one TD performance.

Again, this is just one preseason game against Pittsburgh's second-string defense, but at least it's progress. There was a play in particular that caught my eye, it was a third-and-11 or so and his line collapsed almost immediately. But Rodgers evaded a DE, outran another and found Ruvell Martin for a first down. He did almost the same thing on a TD that got called back at the end of the first half.

I guess I'll have to wait and see a couple more preseason games to make sure this isn't an aberration, but hopefully the Packers' future is a little more secure than I originally thought. Especially if Brandon Jackson also becomes a good player, because there's nothing like seeing B. Jackson in a boxscore again.

No KG and no Castillo make Zach...something something

Sadly, after moving to Upper Michigan I can no longer watch any of my beloved Twins' games. But lately, I'm not sure I really want to. The Indians and Tigers are GIVING them the division, yet Minnesota continues to score no runs and disappoint its fans. I seriously thought they could make another second half run, and I thought if it didn't happen it would be because of their pitching. But Scott Baker and Matt Garza have been fantastic, Santana's been his usual dominant self and Bonser and Silva give them a good start once in a while (but their inconsistency drives me up the wall).

The problem is Mauer, Morneau, Cuddyer and Hunter are struggling right now and nobody else in the lineup has a good batting average or any power to speak of. And you can't blame the Luis Castillo trade, either, as the Twins were struggling before the trade and Alexi Casilla has done a decent job taking his place. Who you can blame is Jason Bartlett, Nick Punto, Jason Kubel and the constantly hobbled Rondell White. Bartlett and Punto must have had career years last season, because they have both looked lost for the majority of the year. Kubel has been mind-numbingly inconsistent, especially with his power. He does well when he's swinging at the first pitch, but nobody has instilled that into his brain yet. And White hasn't been on the field enough to even be blamed much.

This does not bode well for the future of the Twins, as the Castillo trade aggravated pretty much the whole clubhouse, and may have sunk any chance of signing the other most popular player in the clubhouse (Torii Hunter) and/or Johan Santana. Now I have nothing against Terry Ryan; he has done a wonderful job with a mid-market team, has made some amazingly good moves and doesn't deserve the blame for letting David Ortiz go (people seem to forget that he was constantly hurt and didn't play that well when he was with the Twins). But the Castillo trade looks bad (they rid themselves of a lot of the clubhouse glue and got very little in return) and he hasn't taken any initiative in trying to sign Hunter, who has said he would take a pay cut if only they had actually taken the time to discuss a contract with him.

I already no longer care about one of the teams I used to like because of GROSS INCOMPETENCY by the GM (for my thoughts on the greatness that is Kevin McHale, feel free to go to my column "Kevin McHale needs to be shown the McDoor"), I don't need another team to add to that list. The pride of the Twins has always been their youth and their farm system, but that well may soon dry up if they have to keep calling up players from Rochester too early.

To tell you the truth, I'm not precisely sure how to fix the problem now, because the trade deadline has passed. Hopefully the Twins bats will come alive now and pass the free-falling Indians and Tigers, but if they end up in third and way out of the race at the end of the year, Ryan's going to have some tough decisions to make. Hunter may be getting older, but the last two seasons have been the best of his career. If he is let go and Ryan makes no offseason moves, Morneau, Santana, Nathan and Cuddyer may be less inclined to stay, which would not be good with a new stadium opening. Pohlad may have to open a little more of his very big pocketbook, but if it brings a deep playoff run or even a World Series right before the new stadium opens, it'll only bring more cash into his monster moneyclip.

So Mr. Ryan, you don't have to go Steinbrennering after this season, but emulating a team (at least a little) that has 26 championships can't be a bad thing. Bring Hunter and another big bat (and PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE get rid of Rincon, ever since his steroid suspension, he has had major problems. He's got a double-digit ERA in the last month, yet Gardy keeps using him), and you'll be golden.


On a side note, Rick Ankiel has three home runs in his first three games this season. If this story (for more on Ankiel, go here) doesn't make you smile, check your pulse immediately.