No team in football would be more justified in drinking the kool-aid in a mass suicide than the Miami Dolphins.
A number of reasons first brought this all-too-morbid but all-too-realistic thought into my twisted brain Monday night, primarily when Ricky Williams's epic three-minute comeback took a faceplant into the sloppy playing surface of Heinz Field.
Williams' desperate resurrection by the 0-11 Dolphins turned out to be nothing more than the 284th season-ending injury the team accrued this season. They've got more rookies and practice-squad fodder and undrafted free agents playing games against teams that tear them a new asshole every Sunday than a Satanist at an evangelical rally, and the lack of experience is all too easy to spot by now. Going into Week 13, I'm pretty sure the combined age of the Dolphins' entire starting lineup is still younger than Brett Favre.
Preceding Williams on Miami's' 200-page manuscript of injuries this season was quarterback Trent Green suffering a blow to the head from a 400-pound linebacker who was charging like a rhino after the ball carrier and happened to step on Green in the process. As you can imagine, that didn't end very well.
I know they wear helmets in football, but if you watch the replay on this injury, it actually makes you fall over a little bit.
Before that was Ronnie Brown tearing his ACL after he posted 4 games in a row of 100-plus yards and looked like the only Miami Dolphin who had a pulse. His total of 4 rushing touchdowns is probably the highest that number is going to get for the rest of the team until sometime in mid-2009.
This trifecta of terror for the ill-fated Miami team - nightmarish injuries to Williams, Green and Brown - isn't the end of their problems, though. Linebacker Derrick Pope unknowingly acted on the feeling that the rest of his team no doubt shares when he recently told espn.com his reasons for checking himself into a hospital.
"I didn't feel well and thought I needed medical attention," Pope said.
Is anyone really surprised that right after this, linebacker Zach Thomas suddenly developed migraines?! This can't be a coincidence.
And then, in what was clearly a definitive act of throwing in the proverbial towel, head coach Cam Cameron dished away top wide receiver Chris Chambers to the San Diego Chargers for a 2nd-round draft pick, a 10-pound bag of beer nuts and a $25 Starbucks gift card.
Cameron might as well have gone on national television after that trade, waving a white flag and reciting Ed Harris's "Fuck you! Fuck the lot of you, fuck you all!" speech in "Glengarry Glen Ross" to the press and leaving in a whirlwind of blind rage that would've made Denny Green blush.
The Dolphins are screwed, pure and simple. The fact that they still have yet to take a trip to Foxborough to take on the Patriots 2 days before Christmas is probably the most depressing thing about their dismal season thus far, because the Patriots dropped 49 points on Miami in their last meeting, IN MIAMI. I think Roger Goodell should just step in and make up some kind of mercy rule on the fly before the Dolphins end up like Apollo Creed in Rocky IV.
Meanwhile, I'll be at home tonight, trying desperately to convince my cable company to suddenly acquire an option to add the NFL Network into my monthly plan. I'm sure all 40 people who get to watch the Packers/Cowboys game tonight will be talking about it for weeks.
Sigh.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
an introduction...a recap of a brutal 1-yard standoff...another successful Sunday
Right when the St. Louis Rams began a last-ditch drive into the Seattle Seahawks' territory in the final minutes of Sunday's action, the possibility of another tragic 4th-quarter collapse loomed dangerously close.
Apparently, Rams backup quarterback Gus Frerrote had other ideas.
He bobbled a 4th-and-goal snap at the Seattle 1-yard line, which gave Seahawks defensive end Daryl Tapp just enough time to swoop around half of the Rams' depleted offensive line like a heat-seeking missile and charg into Frerotte as if he was Slobodan Milosevic's house.
It ended up being the final play in an almost unbearably-intense few minutes in an admittedly ugly Seahawks' victory, but as they say - in this league, a win is a win.
Let's look at this for a second. The Rams went on a 2-game win streak before meeting an untimely end at the hands of Matt Hasselbeck and co., and after losing their previous eight games, the city of St. Louis finally had something in professional football to cheer about again. Hell, espn.com even went so far in pre-game analysis to say that if the Rams won this game, "they would have a clear shot at clinching the NFC West."
A St. Louis sports columnist even pondered this possibility. It was then that I realized something in Steven Jackson's hair was probably being used in a mass hypnosis ritual by the city of New Orleans in the same voodoo spell that was the only explanation for the first half of the Saints' 2007 season.
When I read such inexplicable praise for the Rams, it was a kind of out-of-body experience. Did the Seahawks suddenly plunge to a level of unfiltered Suck in the eyes of the nation over the course of one simple week? A week when they pulled a hard-fought comeback victory against the Bears? A week when Patrick Kerney played like he was chasing a lumbering beast of a quarterback with 10 times the skills of Rex Grossman? (Whose only similarity to a "beast" of any kind ends with the name "Rex.")
The Seahawks are better than that. They play the game, get it done, and look increasingly formidable as the weeks progress. Figuring out a weird offensive strategy throughout the first 8 games of this season was of course the major plight tugging at the edges of Mike Holmgren's moustache, but - amazingly enough - once Shaun Alexander suffered 18 more injuries in five minutes of playing, something suddenly clicked when he was taken out of the equation.
The offense looks fierce with Mo Morris starting at tailback, Leonard Weaver becoming Mack Strong Incarnate, Hasselbeck throwing long bombs that could sail halfway to Japan. The Seahawk defense looks even more ferocious, with a trio of linebackers leading the charge that would probably survive a week without weapons in a forest full of man-eating grizzly bears.
As safety Deion Grant said to a reporter recently, "it's just a matter of all the pieces coming together."
The victory against the Rams should hopefully silence the silly surge of hope in St. Louis that their Rams even had a snowball's chance in Hell of stealing the division away from the Seahawks - with or without the use of voodoo from Steven Jackson's dreadlocks that make him resemble Arnold Schwartzenegger's title nemesis from "Predator."
This Sunday in Philly is looking to be the Seahawks most daunting game to date, with the exception of the Steelers game we won't talk about. The unlikely Eagles gave the undefeated Patriots a run for their money on national television, IN NEW ENGLAND, this Sunday, and even though the jury is still out on whether they can outplay themselves to death for two consecutive weeks, it's going to be a battle on both sides of the field.
I'm calling it "Bird Wars Part 1" - with following games against the Cardinals and Ravens assuming the titles of Part 2 and 3. (Does the NFL think of these things for columnists to use when they figure out teams' schedules every year?!)
And let's hope for another McBadd sighting during the game. More meat for Kerney & co. to feast on is always a fun thing to watch.
Apparently, Rams backup quarterback Gus Frerrote had other ideas.
He bobbled a 4th-and-goal snap at the Seattle 1-yard line, which gave Seahawks defensive end Daryl Tapp just enough time to swoop around half of the Rams' depleted offensive line like a heat-seeking missile and charg into Frerotte as if he was Slobodan Milosevic's house.
It ended up being the final play in an almost unbearably-intense few minutes in an admittedly ugly Seahawks' victory, but as they say - in this league, a win is a win.
Let's look at this for a second. The Rams went on a 2-game win streak before meeting an untimely end at the hands of Matt Hasselbeck and co., and after losing their previous eight games, the city of St. Louis finally had something in professional football to cheer about again. Hell, espn.com even went so far in pre-game analysis to say that if the Rams won this game, "they would have a clear shot at clinching the NFC West."
A St. Louis sports columnist even pondered this possibility. It was then that I realized something in Steven Jackson's hair was probably being used in a mass hypnosis ritual by the city of New Orleans in the same voodoo spell that was the only explanation for the first half of the Saints' 2007 season.
When I read such inexplicable praise for the Rams, it was a kind of out-of-body experience. Did the Seahawks suddenly plunge to a level of unfiltered Suck in the eyes of the nation over the course of one simple week? A week when they pulled a hard-fought comeback victory against the Bears? A week when Patrick Kerney played like he was chasing a lumbering beast of a quarterback with 10 times the skills of Rex Grossman? (Whose only similarity to a "beast" of any kind ends with the name "Rex.")
The Seahawks are better than that. They play the game, get it done, and look increasingly formidable as the weeks progress. Figuring out a weird offensive strategy throughout the first 8 games of this season was of course the major plight tugging at the edges of Mike Holmgren's moustache, but - amazingly enough - once Shaun Alexander suffered 18 more injuries in five minutes of playing, something suddenly clicked when he was taken out of the equation.
The offense looks fierce with Mo Morris starting at tailback, Leonard Weaver becoming Mack Strong Incarnate, Hasselbeck throwing long bombs that could sail halfway to Japan. The Seahawk defense looks even more ferocious, with a trio of linebackers leading the charge that would probably survive a week without weapons in a forest full of man-eating grizzly bears.
As safety Deion Grant said to a reporter recently, "it's just a matter of all the pieces coming together."
The victory against the Rams should hopefully silence the silly surge of hope in St. Louis that their Rams even had a snowball's chance in Hell of stealing the division away from the Seahawks - with or without the use of voodoo from Steven Jackson's dreadlocks that make him resemble Arnold Schwartzenegger's title nemesis from "Predator."
This Sunday in Philly is looking to be the Seahawks most daunting game to date, with the exception of the Steelers game we won't talk about. The unlikely Eagles gave the undefeated Patriots a run for their money on national television, IN NEW ENGLAND, this Sunday, and even though the jury is still out on whether they can outplay themselves to death for two consecutive weeks, it's going to be a battle on both sides of the field.
I'm calling it "Bird Wars Part 1" - with following games against the Cardinals and Ravens assuming the titles of Part 2 and 3. (Does the NFL think of these things for columnists to use when they figure out teams' schedules every year?!)
And let's hope for another McBadd sighting during the game. More meat for Kerney & co. to feast on is always a fun thing to watch.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
