AHHH PLAYOFFS!

Sorry for this post to shammgod (the 11-5 pats should be good enough for playoffs, and matt cassel’s 57 yard punt in the wind was epic) and capitalsports (maybe next year? naaah…probably not for the redskins), but the eagles and the chargers somehow made the playoffs!

IIGGGLEEEES!!!

The eagles needed tampa bay to lose to the awful oakland raiders. Oakland was also traveling  to raymond james stadium, and tampa bay was 13 pt (i think) favorites in this game. TB eveneven pulled ahead of the raiders 24-14. Somehow jamarcus russel (well..it was really michael bush) led the raiders back and they stunned the bucanners.

The eagles then needed either the vikings or the bears to lose. The giants’ backups held things down for a while (although i think tavaris jackson did a pretty good job of that for them) but the vikings eked out a 20-19  win). I think that had some of the worst clock management I’ve ever seen…and naturally, it came from brad childress, a disciple of andy reid. The vikings converted a third down with over a minute. Even though the vikings had 1 timeout remaining, they failed to advance the ball any further, and let their division title, and playoff hopes rest on a 50 yard field goal attempt. Granted, ryan longwell is pretty good, and the vikings play in a dome, but settling for a 50 yard field goal attempt? Weeeeaaaaak.

The bears came through though with a loss to the houston texans. Andre Johnson absolutely beasted with 10 receptions, 148 yards, and 2 touchdowns. Too bad he did nothing for me last week in my fantasy championship game. Garbage.

Capital talked a little bit about the absolute beatdown the eagles laid on the cowboys. Everything was clicking for the eagles, and the crowd was in a frenzy after fans learned that this game was suddenly a playoff play-in game. The eagles d forced 5 turnovers, harrasing tony romo all day. Brian Dawkins, all 35 years of him, had a beastly game, forcing 2 fumbles that were both returned for touchdowns. Mad props for weapon x, who came out ready to play and really iced the game for philly.Thanks to that beatdown, the eagles are somehow in the nfl playoffs, despite sitting at 5-5-1 following a loss to baltimore and mcnabb’s halftime benching. That tie ended up being great for the eagles – a loss to the bengals would have instead given the last playoff spot to tampa bay.

The chargers managed to be in an even worse spot when they were sitting at 4-8. Denver pretty much had the divison locked up. Yet, a timely run by the chargers and some disappointing losses for the broncos resulted in a play-in game on sunday night. The chargers came through with their own blowout win, demolishing the broncos. Phillip Rivers outplayed his new rival Jay Cutler. LT looked like the LT of old and Sproles and Hester chipped in with their own touchdowns. A trendy preseason pick to represent the afc in the superbowl, the chargers sneaked in to the  last spot, and will now host the colts next weekend.

And I gotta close with this video, in case you didn’t see any of the highlights of the eagles’ huge win.

Hey Stevie Franchise

What goes around comes around buddy. 1999 doesn’t seem so long ago.

Why Deron Williams is like Tim Duncan

If you want, watch this highlight by this girl from Tennessee. It reminds me of all Deron Williams highlight reals. Some good passes, but really boring and stupid and all stuff I could do (against worse competition of course, but come on it’s a highlight reel!). Sometimes he will do an ok dunk which is mildly interesting. I vote from now on all Deron Williams highlight reels be written as “highlight” reels. See what I did there? With the quotations? April McDivitt’s highlight might be better than Williams.

Oh My Goodness!! Look at these two Deron Williams “killer crossovers”!! YAWN. I’ve split DOUBLE TEAMS with more flash. Again, worse competition, but remember: I SUCK AT BASKETBALL.

In conclusion, Deron Williams = good, Deron Williams flashiness = terrible.

Big D as in Disaster

The infamous fumbled snap

How could this have happened? Another Dallas embarrassment and the  pre-season Super Bowl favorites miss the playoffs. The media has turned this team into one of the most overrated ever, and it comes right down to the key players on the Cowboys roster:

Tony Romo only has 3 turnover-free games in his entire career (39 starts). In his 3 games this season without any picks, he combined for 6 fumbles. For whatever reason, he has never won a game that counts for anything important, and has lost as many (if not more) games for the Cowboys than he has won.

Is it the O-line causing all those turnovers? Well, almost the entire unit went to the Pro Bowl last year… but clearly, they’re overrated too. Constant penalties from Flozell Adams and difficulties consistently being able to run the ball keep this unit from being elite.

But Dallas has great pass-catchers right? TO consistently drops balls and gives up on plays, and has proven to be cancerous this year. The Roy Williams trade has been a monumental bust, and leaves Dallas with a top player from the worst team in NFL history and without their 1st, 3rd, and 6th round picks next year. Jason Witten is great, make no mistake about that, at least.

But Marion Barber went to the ProBowl last year as a backup, he’s amazing! No, not quite. He disappeared down the stretch this year and still doesn’t have a 1000-yard season in his career. He’s clearly not an every-down back, and needed Felix Jones to share carries with this year.

Onto the defense. The best player on the team, by far, is Demarcus Ware. If there’s one player on the team who actually deserves attention it’s him, and he led the defense to the highest sack total in the NFL.

Beyond Ware, it’s rough. Terrance Newman is supposed to be a top-5 corner, but consistently gets burnt by Santana Moss. Can’t explain it, but he usually is very good – not quite elite.

Roy Williams has finally be exposed, although those who understand football have known it for years.

The Adam Jones pickup was another bad decision. Suspended for part of the season and made all sorts of mental mistakes today. Like much of the roster, he created more drama than he was worth.

So why do I have the authority to say the Cowboys are a joke? Because I saw the Redskins implode in 2000 after making big-name free agent acquisitions of Deion Sanders, Bruce Smith, Mark Carrier, and others. The team was expected to advance deep into the playoffs and started 6-2, but injuries and other issues caused the team to fall apart like this year’s Cowboys. This created Dan Snyder’s image as a free-spending joke – a label that should now be applied to Jerry Jones. His meddling with the roster and day-to-day operations of the team only increases the drama surrounding the team. The Cowboys have extended their streak to 13 consecutive seasons without winning a playoff game (1996). In other words, even Arizona has won a playoff game since then, Michael Jordan had only retired once, and Space Jam had just come out. That’s a huge embarrassment for a franchise that is  constantly in the spotlight.

Do We Really Have to Go Over This Again?

Football players work hard. Football players are tough. Football players could beat you up. Most football players (exception: this guy) are stupid.

That last sentence might be unfair, but commercials like this one don’t help their case. I realize it’s probably not written by football players, but you can just see some 275 pound guy sitting on his couch thinking, “Yeah! Take that NERDS! You guys use “computers” but we do it on the FIELD! Or at least I did, 15 years ago. Now I’m too fat to go grab another drake’s coffee cake, which by the way are delicious.”

I love the last lines.

“Success is not calculated. It’s earned.”

Why the fuck would anyone think these two things were mutually exclusive?! Success is earned, yeah I pretty much agree with you (I’d argue a lot isn’t because it is up to chance, but that’s for another time). Success is most definitely calculated. You can calculate success. We do it often. Hey look! The dolphins have 11 wins and so do the pats! I just calculated that. Hey look! The Dolphins have a better conference record. I just calculated that too. And, hey look! Drew Brees threw for 5,069 passing yards. He’s probably better than Tavaris Jackson, who by all calculations, is sucky. Hey look! That coffee cake you’re about to eat has 130 calories in it! Maybe you shouldn’t eat it! And why would you buy the hostess copy cat version instead of Drake’s? Haven’t you learned ANYTHING in all your time sitting down thinking about deserts?!

Look people, this is stupid. Sometimes numbers (?!?!?!?!) are used in sports. The goal is to score more points than the other team in football. Those are numbers! Maybe this commercial is specifically speaking out against the BCS, but do you really want to go back to the way it was before? The press did whatever they wanted and put Notre Dame in every year. No. There’s a better way. Maybe only a mildly better way, but it’s still better.

I’m hungry.

Can I just say…

I fully expected the Lakers to win that game.

No one’s joinin the 95-96 Bulls for a while.

HEY

Merry Christmas from all of us here at We Talkin’ ‘Bout Practice!

Or Merry Christmas from 2 of us here at We Talkin’ ‘Bout Practice.

Nah, Merry Christmas from all of us, sorta.

Have a good December day everyone!!

They’ll Remember Your Twelve!!

So I’m pretty much quarantined in my own house right now, having a disease that wouldve almost certainly killed me 400 years ago. I realize you guys don’t care about this, but I’m just letting you know in case I pass out in the middle of this post or something.

So anyway, after the Celtics won their 19th straight game, which amazingly is only the second longest winning streak in the NBA in the past YEAR, Kevin Garnett said this, “Unless you win it all, it’s pretty much steam in the air: You see it, and then it evaporates.”

I’ve talked about this outside of the blog a lot, I’m kind of surprised I’ve never written anything about it here. Basically, I completely disagree with KG. It’s the opposite. Winning a championship, while not really “evaporating” I guess, doesn’t guarantee you anything. Hey, quickly, do you know the winner of the Super Bowl in January 1976? Some of you might. Now, do you know the team that went 18-0 and were “chokers” and “losers” and lost all credibility of their perfect season because they didn’t even win the championship? I guarantee you more people know the second team. Sure it has a little to do with time (the 18-0 team was more recent) but I bet in 20 years more people will remember that Patriots team than the 1975-76 Steelers.

Even if I wasn’t a Patriots fan, I would recognize that going 16-0 is factors of ten more important than winning a super bowl. One team wins a superbowl per year. NO ONE had EVER gone 16-0 in the regular season.

If I had to choose right now between the Celtics going like 63-19 and winning the Finals, and the Celtics going 76-6 and losing in the playoffs, I would choose the 76 wins and not even give it a second thought. It means more, waaay more. And yes, I’ve been saying this from before the Patriots had their perfect run.

Sure, “the goal is to win championships.” Fine. I get that. But all sports are entertainment. Sports are fun. Being remembered is cool. Let me put it this way, would you rather be Vincent Van Gogh, who died when he was young and never had fame during his life, but is immortal through his paintings, or, like, Stan Lee (maybe a bad example, maybe you would rather be Lee. I guess a better example would involve a kind of crappy painter who made decent cash throughout his life).

Would you rather have been Phil Mickleson (before he won majors) or Steve Jones, the 1996 US Open winner who pretty much did nothing over the rest of his career?

There are more important things than winning championships. There’s immortality. When is another team going to go 16-0? Did anyone think any team would EVER approach the 95-96 Bulls, the relative consensus BEST BASKETBALL TEAM EVER ASSEMBLED? I’m not saying I think these Celtics can do it, but if I could choose, I would rather the Celtics be called the best team ever than have them win a championship. Now I understand you’re going to say that if they don’t win a championship than they can’t be considered. But really? Say they go 80-2, sweep through the Eastern Conference Playoffs and then lose in the Finals in 7 games. That team isn’t the greatest team ever?! I realize almost everyone disagrees with me on this, but 80-2?!?!?! Are you serious?!! That would be the greatest team ever. It just would be. And we’ve been over how fluky the playoffs can be (even in 7 game series). You can recognize a team as the best team even if they don’t win a championship.

This is the reason college football claims to have the “most exciting” regular season. If some college football team went like 14-0 through an SEC schedule and beat like USC, Ohio St, Oklahoma, and Texas in non conference, and then they lost to a stupid 2-3 loss eric crouch-like team in the championship game, (or a new college football playoff) that 14-1 team is probably still the best team. And will be remembered.

Doing something special that has never been done before is more important than winning a championship. You’re not just battling other teams, you’re battling time. You’re battling every team ever assembled. If you still don’t understand or agree with me, watch this clip (actually just watch it anyway).

Do you get it now? “No one’s gonna remember the Open five years from now, who won, who lost, but they’re gonna remember your twelve!!” The specific message of that movie is a little different than mine, but the broad idea is the same. Winning trophies just doesn’t mean as much as some other things. No one had ever won the US Open at 10 under (Tiger has since accomplished this). It was worth it to go for it. Maybe Icarus did the right thing.

Vince Lombardi once reputedly said, “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.”

Sorry Vince, but I think a holed up homeless guy from Boston knows a little more about the big picture of sports than you do.

Stuff

Hey everybody. Let’s play a game of fortunately/unfortunately!!

Too Easy

WNBA’s picture contest is down to its final two.  The one on the left is meh.  The one on the right is… wait, OMG.  First, take your mind out of the gutter.  Yeah, I know its titled “reaching in” but that doesn’t mean that… Oh man, just try to take your mind out of the gutter ok?  No?

You know what?  Nevermind.  I cannot say anything about that second photo.  I just can’t.