Re: TMQ: All-Unwanted All-Pros

"Last season, Jersey/B cornerback Darrelle Revis was one of the league's top performers. But since he was rewarded with a big bonus check for skipping much of training camp, Revis seems to be celebrating by taking the 2010 season off. On Sunday, he basically stepped out of the way of the Bears' Matt Forte at the 3-yard line, as Forte scored a touchdown. Later, Revis was singed for a touchdown catch by Johnny Knox of Division II Abilene Christian."

While he's absolutely correct about Revis' "effort" on Forte's touchdown run (he gave Forte a less than half-hearted shove when he could have made the tackle), he is making stuff up about Revis being singed for a TD by Knox. Knox's first TD was when he was covered by Dwight Lowery and his second TD was against Antonio Cromartie. Maybe he thinks Revis was burned on the first TD because he was on the same side of the field, but on that play he was covering Greg Olsen, who was lined up outside. Knox was in the slot and was not Revis' responsibility.

Re: TMQ: All-Unwanted All-Pros

Who better to be an All-Unwanted MVP than a guy named Grimes?
Grimes, undrafted out of Division II Shippensburg, lives in an apartment over a bowling alley and under another bowling alley.

Re: TMQ: All-Unwanted All-Pros

Tramon Williams should be first team. No way I'd take any of the other first team DBs over him based on this season.

Also, since when is BJGE a FB? Considering that TMQ likes to emphasize non-glory positions it seems like he is squeezing an extra RB onto the roster in the FB slot.

Re: TMQ: All-Unwanted All-Pros

Strange to see more Redskins in the "current team" column than in the "waived by" column. I'll second the shout-out to Lorenzo Alexander, who outplayed Haynesworth this year by a factor of inverted salary ratio.

Re: TMQ: All-Unwanted All-Pros

Panera Bread sucks.

Re: TMQ: All-Unwanted All-Pros

So...he derides the NFL for granting a guaranteed playoff spot to each divisional winner (and its logical outcome that every so often the winner of a bad conference will be let in with a subpar record). He then offers as a good counterexample the NCAA mens basketball tourney...that also gives out guaranteed spots to conference winners. I am confused... How often is the winner of the Patriot conference more deserving than the first teams out in the ACC, Big-12/10, and Pac-10? I know... we just need to include 64 (err...68 teams) in the NFL playoffs then we will be sure to do it right.

Re: TMQ: All-Unwanted All-Pros

"With Indianapolis needing a win to keep alive its playoff hopes, the Colts..." is probably better said "With the outcome of the game having no effect on Indianapolis' playoff hopes, the Colts..."

Re: TMQ: All-Unwanted All-Pros

"Mike Westhoff called the worst-designed fake punt in football history...Nobody was fooled... The pass fell incomplete.."

You can argue with the decision to run a fake at that point in the game, but the pass only "fell incomplete" because Smith dropped it, past the first down marker. The design was actually pretty good.

And does anyone have any doubt that if Smith held on and the Jets happened to win the game, Easterbrook would talk about "Fortune going to the bold", citing that as a "sweet play of the week"?

Re: TMQ: All-Unwanted All-Pros

"This season, he leads Atlanta in interceptions and is the team's No. 2 tackler; it's rare for a cornerback to be a top tackler."

Well yes, because if they keep getting tackle oportunities that usually means they keep letting people complete passes on them, which means they don't often stay on the field.

- Alvaro

Re: TMQ: All-Unwanted All-Pros

"I noted that for the past four years, Brett Favre's final play of the season has been an interception or a sack."

Sure! Except that Favre's final play of 2008 was an illegal forward pass, not an interception (although the one before that was an interception):

(:17) (Shotgun) 4-B.Favre pass short left to 29-L.Washington to NYJ 5 for 4 yards. Lateral to 4-B.Favre to NYJ 7 for 2 yards. 4-B.Favre pass incomplete short right to 89-J.Cotchery. PENALTY on NYJ-4-B.Favre, Illegal Forward Pass, 3 yards, enforced at NYJ 7.

But again... facts... way...

- Alvaro

Re: TMQ: All-Unwanted All-Pros

Easterbrook knows about football? If you say so. My time reading him led to insights as to why sports writers often love bad football - it's so much easier to write pseudo-smart snarky things about teams that make big gambles and chuck the ball down the field. It is a no lose proposition: if they gamble and win, he gloats about how conservative coaches are, if the gamble and lose, then he gloats about how the team failed. His "4th and go for it" crusade was part of a conventional wisdom, that has led to dozens of horrible decisions, in part because the two halves of the logic do not fit together. The steriod era was the era of teams that were masters of third and short, who could "get one yard when they need it." However that was also not the speed era of the present, where throwing offenses of rather average calibre could pick up yards in big chunks. So Easterbrooks common refrain about how few pass plays it took to overcome a punt's yardage, missed that the more teams go for it on 4th and something, the more often they will be stopped, since this isn't a power running era.

His other one, the anti-blitz crusade, was even more foolish, as many teams that bring more guys for pressure have continued to do well. It is also important to be able to blitz, to make the offense respect the blitz, in the same way that even Manning needs to have a running game, so that people will respect it on the play action pass. One doesn't need to blitz often, to get the effect. Easterbrook never compiled good numbers on either of these obsessions, merely cherry picked anecdotes.

The pretensions nicknames gave nothing back to the game, in the sense that they were merely jejune takes on logos, rather than clever send ups of the soul, or lack their of, of various organizations. Like many bad sports writers, Easterbrook was very good at predicting last week's game. But football, more than any other American sport, has difference every week injuries, preparation, match ups make comparison of records less useful than in baseball, where teams are less prone to injury, more statistical in nature.

Football outsiders has had its ups and downs, but at bottom, the writers here know players and football plays. One Words of Muth column will do more for your football knowledge than a season of Grog Leasterbrook, who writes badly on every topic he touches. Aaron and the other regulars here know players, not merely star players, but down the depth chart. They watch every game more closely than almost any other group not employed as scouting organizations. There are certainly things to criticize about the site and its writers, and they've been mentioned. But they are writing about football, as opposed to doing a gloss on entertainment.

You need to walk the walk, but Easterbrook doesn't even talk the talk.

Anyone writing during this last decade, the golden age of the Superbowl, and in the hey day of players who have revolutionized the game in the post-steroid era, is truly privileged. People are going to ask what it was like to watch many of these players live. Sadly, there's not an ounce of the speed, vivid motion, impact, or abandon in Easterbrook's prose, nor is there any real appreciation of preparation or execution. One would think from him that the offensive coordinator just called "run, short pass, trick play, kick, bomb" from a set of flash cards.

The trolls are crass, the outsiders can be stubbornly off the mark, the guy at advanced stats often misses the strategy of football, but all three are essential reading for the real football follower, where as Easterbrook can't even be useful to people who own a bird, or forgot to do a grocery run before going to the smallest room in their house.