I'm pretty sure I've never ever written anything positive about Brett Favre on this website. I'm just not a fan, essentially for three reasons: (1) Favre extended his career past its natural limit (or so I thought) to break the career passing records of my favorite player of all-time, Dan Marino; (2) the media lauded Favre far far beyond what his on-field play warranted; (3) the annual Favre Retirement Show got old several years ago. Past Interference doesn't dispute Favre's a great player. But surely the countless postseason meltdowns of the past decade should have clued everybody in that Favre's just nowhere near being a contender for the greatest quarterback of all-time.
But PI now admits that Favre's play in 2009 necessitates a reassessment of (some of) the negative words previously posted on this blog, at least in regards to reason one above. After observing Favre's play the last few years, especially down the stretch last year, a ton of people thought the guy was finished. And PI was among that ton. But that ton was clearly, emphatically, demonstrably wrong! Favre posted perhaps the best season of career, at age 40 no less. Dude shut up all the retirement advocates especially the Green Bay management team that got rid of him. Nobody can now dispute that Favre, even at 40, remains one of the league's best quarterbacks and that he was right and everybody else was wrong when he insisted he could still play. Favre knew Minnesota was the perfect destination for him and you have to give him credit, he shrewdly managed to work the system to make that happen.
More credit accured after the Vikings convincingly demolished the Cowboys in the divisional playoff round. Favre stood just one game away from returning to the Super Bowl for the first time in 12 years and a Super Bowl ring to cap a great season would have to put him back into the Best Ever conversation right?
I watched the NFC Championship with no real rooting interest but as the game went on PI began to gain new appreciation for Brett Favre. I couldn't help it. Despite taking tremendous punishment Favre kept making big third down throws. I guess the Saints strategy was to pound Favre into the turf but it wasn't working. Sure he was hurting but his team was dominating in yards and first downs. Watching Favre pick himself up over and over after another brutal hit while throwing great pass after great pass for another first down was truly unbelievable. What can I say? He earned PI's respect. Just an amazing performance for anybody. But this guy is 40! The only real problem was this strange football allergy they developed. Favre himself threw a pick but it should have been nullifed after a cheap shot on his lower leg. And despite all the mishaps Favre had the Vikes just shy of field goal territory as the game entered his final minute. His recent past was about to wiped from our collective memory. And then...
Well, we all saw it. The bad play calling, the 12-men-on-the-field-blunder, and then, the piece-de-resistance, Favre's pick. Despite his unmatched history of critical interceptions he might have topped himself with this one. An absolutely inexplicable throw. A horrible horrible throw. All he had to do was just stumble forward for a few yards and his kicker might have pulled it off. I don't believe any of Favre's prior season killers ever prevented a game-winning kick attempt. Nor did they come for a team that had never won a Super Bowl. A true never-to-be-forgotten-as-long-as-they play-football disaster for Minnesota fans. So what do we conclude? Is throwing horrible INT's at the worst possible moments something encoded in the guy's very DNA? Is that possible? Apparently he can't help himself. I just can't believe I didn't see it coming. I thought this time at least, at that moment, the Vikings had the mojo. That Favre had the mojo. He was still playing well. He knew what he had to do. And then he threw a pick anyway!
Favre suckered me. I thought he was going to pull it off! How did I not see it coming? I admired the grittness and the toughness, ignored the very real history and consequently never saw the inevitable ending coming. Favre's season ended the only way it could. If he wants to come back for another year he should come back but he's never going to win another Super Bowl. He can't overcome his fatal flaw. I should have known that. I blame myself.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Your 2009 Miami Dolphins: The Wrap-Up, Part I
7-9. Obviously a disappointment coming just one year after an 11-5, division-winning, ten-game turnaround season. But not totally unexpected. The 2008 team saw lots of things go their way, especially the injury bug. The team repelled it in 2008. I guess the normal thing to do here is to analyze the performance of each unit of the team and assign it a grade. But I refuse to do that. I don't feel qualified. I'm not any kind of personnel expert. I'm just gonna give my general impressions of what I saw this year. Quarterback's the one position I have the most to write about as I'm your typical football watching fan who mostly just follows what the QB is doing until he lets go of the ball. So I'll long-windedly address that position in this post and talk about the rest of the team next time.
Alright, in 2008 the Dolphins got MVP-type quarterbacking from imported free agent veteran quarterback Chad Pennington. If you needed an adjective to describe Pennington than you could do worse than "oft-injured". In 2008 he stayed uninjured. In 2009 we got the "oft". But even when Pennington was healthy the team dropped all three games he started. So the organization might have been considering making a quarterback change anyway but once Pennington was relegated to the sidelines for the year Miami was forced to unwrap their 2008 2nd-round pick Chad Henne and thrust him into the starter's role. So how'd he do?
I thought he played fairly well all things considered. His stats aren't great but they're not bad at all for a first-year starter. What I saw in general was a QB with a strong arm, who can make tough throws when necessary, and who doesn't panic when a play breaks down. Sure he made obvious mistakes but Henne didn't go the Rob Johnson/David Carr route and hold onto the ball taking unnecessary sack after unnecessary sack. Henne ranked a solid 12th in sack percentage. Nor did he do the other worrisome thing a young QB will do, repeatedly force the ball into a crowd creating interception opportunities rather than throw the ball away or take a sack. Not that he never did these things. But to my eye he showed good pocket presence given his inexperience.
His TD/INT ratio was poor but nobody should make too much of that. The current Dolphins team prefers to run in the red zone and once Henne took over the team would make a special effort to limit opportunities to throw interceptions in scoring position. The more important stat to look at I think is interception percentage. And there Henne ranked 23rd. Not great but just a hair behind the Mannings, Carson Palmer and Matt Ryan. And well ahead of the disastrous numbers of a Jamarcus Russell, a Matt Sanchez, or a Josh Freeman. You can't say Henne had an INT problem last year. It was the same story with his yards per attempts. Again ranking 23rd. Below average again but given his inexperience and the team's desire to play conservative football it's understand something to build on. It should also be noted that the Dolphins played an extremely difficult schedule in 2009. That's got to be factored into any evauation of Henne. And the super-smart guys at Football Outsiders do factor that into their year-end QB ranking and they've got Henne ranked 17th for the season. The middle of the pack. Not bad for a first-season. Check out just how much better he played than 2009's other QB newbies Mark Sanchez, Josh Freeman and Matthew Stafford. And Henne wasn't that far behind Second-year starters Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco.
The FO rankings have Ryan 13th. In 2008 he was an incredible 7th in his rookie season. Miami passed on Ryan to take Jake Long and when Ryan lit up the NFL right away you had to wonder if that would be one of the organizations all time draft-day blunders. Jake Long looked solid as a rookie but you never want to pass up a franchise QB if you don't already have one. You just don't. Miami's been lookoing for one for a long time now. But Ryan regressed in his second season, Henne showed promise, and Long made the Pro Bowl. So for the moment PI can scratch the "Jake Long over Matt Ryan: Dear God Why?" entry off its list of future blog posts.
Maybe Henne's most impressive feat were the three fourth quarter comebacks he engineered. Henne led a game-winning drive in all three. It might not sound like a lot
but if you can do that every year for 15 years you're up there with some all-time greats. We can't say yet if Henne's the long-term solution at quarterback. But I certainly saw enough to say it's more of a possibility than it was one year ago. Progress!
The true disappointment at QB in 2009 was the play of Pat White. Miami drafted him to be a major cog in its Wildcat offense. But all we got was a minor ineffective cog. He missed on all five of his passes and averaged only 3.9 yards a carry on his 21 rushing attempts. With a QB back there running the offense with the supposed threat of the pass the Wildcat should be even more dangerous. But with White so useless on offense the team had to keep running the Wildcat almost exclusively through Ronnie Brown and when he went out for the year they simply scrapped it when neither White nor Ricky Williams could properly execute it. White cost Miami a second-round pick and it's too soon to write him off but we didn't see one thing yet to justify the pick. So the in-season trade for Tyler Thigpen looks pretty shrewd. He showed real ability in 2008 and some more in the 2009 finale. As I said in my last post, he might be the viable backup the team needs.
Alright, in 2008 the Dolphins got MVP-type quarterbacking from imported free agent veteran quarterback Chad Pennington. If you needed an adjective to describe Pennington than you could do worse than "oft-injured". In 2008 he stayed uninjured. In 2009 we got the "oft". But even when Pennington was healthy the team dropped all three games he started. So the organization might have been considering making a quarterback change anyway but once Pennington was relegated to the sidelines for the year Miami was forced to unwrap their 2008 2nd-round pick Chad Henne and thrust him into the starter's role. So how'd he do?
I thought he played fairly well all things considered. His stats aren't great but they're not bad at all for a first-year starter. What I saw in general was a QB with a strong arm, who can make tough throws when necessary, and who doesn't panic when a play breaks down. Sure he made obvious mistakes but Henne didn't go the Rob Johnson/David Carr route and hold onto the ball taking unnecessary sack after unnecessary sack. Henne ranked a solid 12th in sack percentage. Nor did he do the other worrisome thing a young QB will do, repeatedly force the ball into a crowd creating interception opportunities rather than throw the ball away or take a sack. Not that he never did these things. But to my eye he showed good pocket presence given his inexperience.
His TD/INT ratio was poor but nobody should make too much of that. The current Dolphins team prefers to run in the red zone and once Henne took over the team would make a special effort to limit opportunities to throw interceptions in scoring position. The more important stat to look at I think is interception percentage. And there Henne ranked 23rd. Not great but just a hair behind the Mannings, Carson Palmer and Matt Ryan. And well ahead of the disastrous numbers of a Jamarcus Russell, a Matt Sanchez, or a Josh Freeman. You can't say Henne had an INT problem last year. It was the same story with his yards per attempts. Again ranking 23rd. Below average again but given his inexperience and the team's desire to play conservative football it's understand something to build on. It should also be noted that the Dolphins played an extremely difficult schedule in 2009. That's got to be factored into any evauation of Henne. And the super-smart guys at Football Outsiders do factor that into their year-end QB ranking and they've got Henne ranked 17th for the season. The middle of the pack. Not bad for a first-season. Check out just how much better he played than 2009's other QB newbies Mark Sanchez, Josh Freeman and Matthew Stafford. And Henne wasn't that far behind Second-year starters Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco.
The FO rankings have Ryan 13th. In 2008 he was an incredible 7th in his rookie season. Miami passed on Ryan to take Jake Long and when Ryan lit up the NFL right away you had to wonder if that would be one of the organizations all time draft-day blunders. Jake Long looked solid as a rookie but you never want to pass up a franchise QB if you don't already have one. You just don't. Miami's been lookoing for one for a long time now. But Ryan regressed in his second season, Henne showed promise, and Long made the Pro Bowl. So for the moment PI can scratch the "Jake Long over Matt Ryan: Dear God Why?" entry off its list of future blog posts.
Maybe Henne's most impressive feat were the three fourth quarter comebacks he engineered. Henne led a game-winning drive in all three. It might not sound like a lot
but if you can do that every year for 15 years you're up there with some all-time greats. We can't say yet if Henne's the long-term solution at quarterback. But I certainly saw enough to say it's more of a possibility than it was one year ago. Progress!
The true disappointment at QB in 2009 was the play of Pat White. Miami drafted him to be a major cog in its Wildcat offense. But all we got was a minor ineffective cog. He missed on all five of his passes and averaged only 3.9 yards a carry on his 21 rushing attempts. With a QB back there running the offense with the supposed threat of the pass the Wildcat should be even more dangerous. But with White so useless on offense the team had to keep running the Wildcat almost exclusively through Ronnie Brown and when he went out for the year they simply scrapped it when neither White nor Ricky Williams could properly execute it. White cost Miami a second-round pick and it's too soon to write him off but we didn't see one thing yet to justify the pick. So the in-season trade for Tyler Thigpen looks pretty shrewd. He showed real ability in 2008 and some more in the 2009 finale. As I said in my last post, he might be the viable backup the team needs.
Your 2009 Miami Dolphins: Week 17
The pain of the Dolphins' disappointing season has finally subsided, finally allowing PI to return and chronicle it's bitter ending. However, illness prevented me from watching all but the final minutes of the Week 17 finale so I don't have much to offer. I do know that for the third week in a row the Dolphins came out flat, got way behind early, made a huge comeback to get back in the game, and still lost. If they could have won two of those games they make the playoffs. (And made my preseason 9-7 prediction look Brilliant!). Instead, the season's bookended by 0-3 losing streaks, the team finishes four games worse than last year, they're only the third-best team in its division, and we're all left to wonder if we should be optimistic or pessimistic about the team's future. I'll have some thoughts on this soon, but needless to say the regular season ended far less happily tha it did just one season ago.
If I had to find a bright spot in the loss to the Steelers, I suppose it would have to be the play of third-string QB Tyler Thigpen. From what I saw of him back in 2008 he showed some potential while playing for a terrible team. And he showed a little more of it against the Steelers in the Dolphins' finale. Of course potential doesn't actually mean good and Thigpen thwarted his own comeback story with a killer of an interception that essentially cost Miami the game. But Thigpen showed a lot more in one half of football than we've seen from Pat White all year. With Pennington's future in question and White yet to show anything (more in my next post on this) Miami needs a viable backup to Henne next year. Thigpen might be the man.
If I had to find a bright spot in the loss to the Steelers, I suppose it would have to be the play of third-string QB Tyler Thigpen. From what I saw of him back in 2008 he showed some potential while playing for a terrible team. And he showed a little more of it against the Steelers in the Dolphins' finale. Of course potential doesn't actually mean good and Thigpen thwarted his own comeback story with a killer of an interception that essentially cost Miami the game. But Thigpen showed a lot more in one half of football than we've seen from Pat White all year. With Pennington's future in question and White yet to show anything (more in my next post on this) Miami needs a viable backup to Henne next year. Thigpen might be the man.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Happy New Year
I can't write up the post mortem on the Fins 2009 season just yet with one game still to be played but barring a miracle the Dolphins are about to do something unique in their history: play an entire decade of football without notching a single postseason victory. Disappointing. Very disappointing. (Also unique: five different coaches in the decade.) But let's be optimistic, at least these last two seasons were an improvement on the two before them. So with hope for the future Past Interference wishes everybody a Happy New Year.
Indianapolis Colts: 14-1
Finally. We now know that once again another NFL season will end with the 1972 Miami Dolphins remaining the only team in NFL history to finish a season undefeated and untied. After an incredible 14-0 start the Colts fell at home to a mediocre New York Jets team, proving once again just how difficult it is for any team to go undefeated. Don Shula and those old Dolphins players presumably breathed sighs of relief, popped champagne corks, and partied like it’s January 14, 1973.
What? Ok, I know. It’s not that simple. It's what I hoped would happen before the game. But I just wanted the Colts to get beat. Instead, as everyone knows, leading 15-10 Indianapolis coach Jim Caldwell made the curious decision to bench several of his starters including Peyton Manning. Once that decision was implemented the game turned. The second stringers were no match for the Jets and so the Colts went down for the first time this year. The CBS cameras fixated on Peyton Manning’s face while he stood on the sidelines watching his team lose its first game of the year. Hmm. How can I describe it? Well, he didn’t look too happy about it! The fans weren’t happy either. They furiously booed their home team. It was incredible theatre. You could just see how badly Manning wanted to be back in that game. He was clearly pissed.
Now the Colts made it clear weeks ago this might happen. They said they’d rest their stars once the team wrapped up the top-seed so we shouldn’t have been surprised. But I sure as hell was surprised! How could you not be? Who turns their backs on a shot at a perfect season? Bill Polian kept saying a perfect season wasn’t one of the team’s goals. No duh. Who goes into a season expecting to do undefeated? But once it’s there how do you not go for it? The ’72 Dolphins wrapped up their division (teams weren’t seeded back then) in week 10! But they kept playing like every game meant something. I thought for sure the Colts would do likewise. I’m kind of glad they didn’t because I know how much the perfect season means to Shula and his ’72 team. But what the Colts did just makes no sense and Tom Jackson summed it up in one word on ESPN right after the loss when he said he respects Polian but what the Colts did made him “uncomfortable”.
That’s exactly how I felt. To see Manning on the sidelines looking like that. And Wayne, Clark, and some of the other guys didn’t look to thrilled either. Manning knows his football history. Actually, even the dumbest player alive probably knows how special a perfect season would be. A championship’s great but 19-0 would be remembered forever. For Manning personally a perfect season could well earn him consensus “greatest QB of all-time” status. Not now.
So why’d they do it? To avoid injury? Then why play Manning and the rest at all? And why’d they play the whole game in week 15 when they had the top seed already wrapped up? A player can get hurt on any play at any time. Even in practice. You can’t play scared. Or maybe you can. Just leave Manning in but call only runs and safe passes. The chances of winning are still way better than with poor Curtis Painter. If Caldwell just wanted more rest for his players then again why play them at all? One more quarter was the breaking point?
I can see the argument that taking an undefeated season into the playoffs makes it more difficult to win it all. All that extra pressure combined with the extra physical wear and tear coming every week from every team playing you like it’s the Super Bowl so they can knock off an undefeated opponent. A lot of people think the Patriots got worn down by the time of Super Bowl XLII. Maybe it happened to the ’72 Dolphins too. They led the league in offense and defense that year but in the postseason they trailed late in two playoff games and had trouble scoring in all three. And check out this excerpt from an article about the Green Bay Packers first and only loss of 1962:
Ok, so even Vince Lombardi thought trying to go undefeated could get in the way of trying to win a title. But so what? What do you do if you are undefeated, throw a game? Well you essentially could by resting starters during a tight game. But that just leads to a different problem. Now you’ve got a controversy dogging you the rest of the way. It’s the number one sports story right now: the Colts laid down and threw away a chance at a perfect season. They’re never gonna hear the end of it even if they win the Super Bowl. They threw away a ton of goodwill too. Fans everywhere were rooting for a perfect season to happen and for the game’s most popular player Peyton Manning to lead the way. Now you’ve ensured the reverse: fans rooting for the Colts to lose for angering the football gods by not putting their pedal to the metal and going for 19-0. Backlash! Yoou've got people speculating the Colts purposely lost to get the Jets or Texans into the playoffs and keep Pitsburgh and/or Baltimore out. The press has turned.
I don’t understand the thinking. What the Colts did makes no sense. It rubbed me and every other football fan the wrong way. To keep seeing Peyton Manning, a tremendous competitor, scowling like that on the sidelines denied a chance to do something nobody's ever done was just wrong. You know, this Colts team pulled out a lot more close games this year than you’d expect from a dominant team making a run at perfection. So now they’ve also lost their aura of invincibility if you will. And they can’t win for losing now. If they lose a playoff game everyone’s going to blame the loss to the Jets for killing the team’s momentum. If they win it all, everyone wonders what might have been.
Stupid Colts.
What? Ok, I know. It’s not that simple. It's what I hoped would happen before the game. But I just wanted the Colts to get beat. Instead, as everyone knows, leading 15-10 Indianapolis coach Jim Caldwell made the curious decision to bench several of his starters including Peyton Manning. Once that decision was implemented the game turned. The second stringers were no match for the Jets and so the Colts went down for the first time this year. The CBS cameras fixated on Peyton Manning’s face while he stood on the sidelines watching his team lose its first game of the year. Hmm. How can I describe it? Well, he didn’t look too happy about it! The fans weren’t happy either. They furiously booed their home team. It was incredible theatre. You could just see how badly Manning wanted to be back in that game. He was clearly pissed.
Now the Colts made it clear weeks ago this might happen. They said they’d rest their stars once the team wrapped up the top-seed so we shouldn’t have been surprised. But I sure as hell was surprised! How could you not be? Who turns their backs on a shot at a perfect season? Bill Polian kept saying a perfect season wasn’t one of the team’s goals. No duh. Who goes into a season expecting to do undefeated? But once it’s there how do you not go for it? The ’72 Dolphins wrapped up their division (teams weren’t seeded back then) in week 10! But they kept playing like every game meant something. I thought for sure the Colts would do likewise. I’m kind of glad they didn’t because I know how much the perfect season means to Shula and his ’72 team. But what the Colts did just makes no sense and Tom Jackson summed it up in one word on ESPN right after the loss when he said he respects Polian but what the Colts did made him “uncomfortable”.
That’s exactly how I felt. To see Manning on the sidelines looking like that. And Wayne, Clark, and some of the other guys didn’t look to thrilled either. Manning knows his football history. Actually, even the dumbest player alive probably knows how special a perfect season would be. A championship’s great but 19-0 would be remembered forever. For Manning personally a perfect season could well earn him consensus “greatest QB of all-time” status. Not now.
So why’d they do it? To avoid injury? Then why play Manning and the rest at all? And why’d they play the whole game in week 15 when they had the top seed already wrapped up? A player can get hurt on any play at any time. Even in practice. You can’t play scared. Or maybe you can. Just leave Manning in but call only runs and safe passes. The chances of winning are still way better than with poor Curtis Painter. If Caldwell just wanted more rest for his players then again why play them at all? One more quarter was the breaking point?
I can see the argument that taking an undefeated season into the playoffs makes it more difficult to win it all. All that extra pressure combined with the extra physical wear and tear coming every week from every team playing you like it’s the Super Bowl so they can knock off an undefeated opponent. A lot of people think the Patriots got worn down by the time of Super Bowl XLII. Maybe it happened to the ’72 Dolphins too. They led the league in offense and defense that year but in the postseason they trailed late in two playoff games and had trouble scoring in all three. And check out this excerpt from an article about the Green Bay Packers first and only loss of 1962:
Lombardi, however, was actually seen laughing in the dressing room as he told the press after the game, "You didn't think we were going to win them all, did you?" He let the team know that the loss was a great reminder of the importance of teamwork and of not ever being overconfident.
Ok, so even Vince Lombardi thought trying to go undefeated could get in the way of trying to win a title. But so what? What do you do if you are undefeated, throw a game? Well you essentially could by resting starters during a tight game. But that just leads to a different problem. Now you’ve got a controversy dogging you the rest of the way. It’s the number one sports story right now: the Colts laid down and threw away a chance at a perfect season. They’re never gonna hear the end of it even if they win the Super Bowl. They threw away a ton of goodwill too. Fans everywhere were rooting for a perfect season to happen and for the game’s most popular player Peyton Manning to lead the way. Now you’ve ensured the reverse: fans rooting for the Colts to lose for angering the football gods by not putting their pedal to the metal and going for 19-0. Backlash! Yoou've got people speculating the Colts purposely lost to get the Jets or Texans into the playoffs and keep Pitsburgh and/or Baltimore out. The press has turned.
I don’t understand the thinking. What the Colts did makes no sense. It rubbed me and every other football fan the wrong way. To keep seeing Peyton Manning, a tremendous competitor, scowling like that on the sidelines denied a chance to do something nobody's ever done was just wrong. You know, this Colts team pulled out a lot more close games this year than you’d expect from a dominant team making a run at perfection. So now they’ve also lost their aura of invincibility if you will. And they can’t win for losing now. If they lose a playoff game everyone’s going to blame the loss to the Jets for killing the team’s momentum. If they win it all, everyone wonders what might have been.
Stupid Colts.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Your 2009 Miami Dolphins: Weeks 15 and 16
Wow. Two devastating defeats back-to-back, all but ensuring no repeat visit to the postseason for the Dolphins. Strangely, after having problems all year finishing games after strong starts, the team now has come out flat two weeks in a row, gotten way down early, and had to furiously fight to get back in the game but fall just short both times.
The Tennessee was the "shoulda won" game. Six times on the Titans side of the field in the first three quarters and they settle for three field goals while turning it over three times. Three was the magic number. Vontae Davis appeared to be in good position on both of Justin Gage's two TD catches but he never made a play. Miami finally caught a break when Jeff Fisher bizarrely decided not to use any of his three time outs at the end of regulation when the Fins were backed up at their own two. Miami got the ball in first in OT but Henne badly overthrew his pass to Bess, the Titans intercepted it, and when the refs tacked on that terrible unnecessary roughness call on Camarillo (how the hell was he supposed to know the untouched defender wasn�t getting back up to advance the ball?), the Titans were in field goal range even though they couldn't advance the ball any further. It was nice to see Miami fight back to tie the score after being down by 18, but all that effort ended up going to waste.
They fell behind even further to the Texans in Week 16. 24-0? At home? That first half was a complete embarrassment. Way worse than the Week 15 embarrassment. I�ve praised Sparano several times for having his team come out prepared and motivated to compete almost every week so I'm at a real loss to explain what's gone so wrong so early two weeks in a row. Especially with the playoffs on the line. Again, there are positives: The defense coming up big in the second half; Lex Hilliard adequately subbing for Ricky Williams; and especially Henne getting his team back in the game. He�s not afraid to try to make a tough throw and he's only a first-year QB so you have to live with some mistakes. But it would have been nice to see a complete game at some point down the stretch from the whole team.
You know, I'm not one to blame officiating for a loss but you've gotta admit Miami�s getting jobbed way more than the average team this year. The worst this week was that obvious fumble by Chris Brown (recovered by Miami) ruled instead to be an incomplete pass even though Brown ran with the ball for three freaking steps. C�mon refs! And don't forget the ticky tack tripping call nullifying the bomb to Ginn that would have gotten Miami to within 10 with a whole quarter still to play plus all the momentum. The Dolphins just can't catch a break this year (literally in the case of Gibril Wilson who dropped the easiest interception opportunity he's ever gonna have).
My prediction of a 9-7 record was looking pretty good before the twin disasters of the last two weeks. Instead, as Dolphins� radio analyst Jim Mandich wrote after the Texans loss, "I'm sure when I open the phone lines this week for the talk show it will be 'Mad Dog, who are the Dolphins going to take with their first pick?'"
The Tennessee was the "shoulda won" game. Six times on the Titans side of the field in the first three quarters and they settle for three field goals while turning it over three times. Three was the magic number. Vontae Davis appeared to be in good position on both of Justin Gage's two TD catches but he never made a play. Miami finally caught a break when Jeff Fisher bizarrely decided not to use any of his three time outs at the end of regulation when the Fins were backed up at their own two. Miami got the ball in first in OT but Henne badly overthrew his pass to Bess, the Titans intercepted it, and when the refs tacked on that terrible unnecessary roughness call on Camarillo (how the hell was he supposed to know the untouched defender wasn�t getting back up to advance the ball?), the Titans were in field goal range even though they couldn't advance the ball any further. It was nice to see Miami fight back to tie the score after being down by 18, but all that effort ended up going to waste.
They fell behind even further to the Texans in Week 16. 24-0? At home? That first half was a complete embarrassment. Way worse than the Week 15 embarrassment. I�ve praised Sparano several times for having his team come out prepared and motivated to compete almost every week so I'm at a real loss to explain what's gone so wrong so early two weeks in a row. Especially with the playoffs on the line. Again, there are positives: The defense coming up big in the second half; Lex Hilliard adequately subbing for Ricky Williams; and especially Henne getting his team back in the game. He�s not afraid to try to make a tough throw and he's only a first-year QB so you have to live with some mistakes. But it would have been nice to see a complete game at some point down the stretch from the whole team.
You know, I'm not one to blame officiating for a loss but you've gotta admit Miami�s getting jobbed way more than the average team this year. The worst this week was that obvious fumble by Chris Brown (recovered by Miami) ruled instead to be an incomplete pass even though Brown ran with the ball for three freaking steps. C�mon refs! And don't forget the ticky tack tripping call nullifying the bomb to Ginn that would have gotten Miami to within 10 with a whole quarter still to play plus all the momentum. The Dolphins just can't catch a break this year (literally in the case of Gibril Wilson who dropped the easiest interception opportunity he's ever gonna have).
My prediction of a 9-7 record was looking pretty good before the twin disasters of the last two weeks. Instead, as Dolphins� radio analyst Jim Mandich wrote after the Texans loss, "I'm sure when I open the phone lines this week for the talk show it will be 'Mad Dog, who are the Dolphins going to take with their first pick?'"
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas
38 years ago the Miami Dolphins bested the Kansas City Chiefs 27-24 in what remains the longest NFL game ever played. 82 minutes and 40 seconds. I know a lot about this game. I know the Dolphins scored a TD to tie the game with just over a minute left in regulation. I know that all suddenly looked lost for Miami when Ed Podolak, having the best game of his career, returned the ensuing kickoff back 78 yards. I know KC kicker (and future Hall-of-Famer) Jan Stenerud, in the midst of the worst game of his career, then honked the 31-yard field goal try to send the game into overtime. The kicking follies continued--each team missed a FG try in the first OT period; Nick Buoniconti blocked Stenerud's try while Garo Yepremian couldn't convert a 52-yarder for the Fins. So on to double overtime where Miami made the big play that led to the end of the endless game. From their own 35 the Dolphins called a trap play that sprung Larry Csonka for 29 yards. A few more runs, a few more yards, and then Yepremian came in to boot the game-winner that silenced the stunned Chiefs home crowd.
Like I said, I know a lot about this game. But I have no memory of it. I was a little kid at the time and maybe I watched it but if I did I certainly don�t remember. No, my interest in this game came from a book somebody once bought me for my birthday. Each chapter related the saga of how some NFL record was made. And you know what? It was riveting. Man, I wish I still had that book. I remember one chapter related how Bert Jones set the NFL record (since broken) for consecutive completions in a game. That chapter ended something like this: "Bert's father Dub Jones once scored 6 touchdowns in a game. But he only tied an NFL record. His son broke one". Oooh. Chills (haha). Another chapter had a very evocative title that's stayed with me, "The Day The Footballs Flew". That one was on the NFL's all-time highest scoring game, a 72-41 Redskins blowout of the Giants. Jurgensen vs. Tittle. Hard to believe that 113 point total has stood for over 40 years.
Anyway, the last chapter of the book was entitled "The Longest Day". I know now but didn't know then that the title came from Cornelius Ryan's famous book about D-Day (or from the movie based on the book). But it was a perfect title for the NFL's longest game and I must have read and reread that chapter dozens of times. Somehow it connected me to a now-legendary game that maybe I'll actually get to see one day. (When will the NFL open up its library already? I'll pay). The Miami Dolphins first postseason victory in franchise history.
It's a different world now. With cable and the internet there's just so much out there to see and hear and read about football. And you can get sick of it all pretty quickly. But back in the time of Miami's Christmas day double-overtime victory and for years thereafter if you wanted NFL entertainment outside of the games themselves, you actually had to take the time to sit down and read a book. I wish I still knew the name of the one that chronicled the NFL's Longest Day. And I really wish I knew who wrote the thing. But whoever you are nameless author of that NFL book that once meant so much to me, if you're out there somewhere, Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas.
And Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to any readers I have out there in the blogosphere. I appreciate anyone who takes the time to read what I write, especially you sptrfn (I'll attempt to address your "What If" scenarios in a future post).
Like I said, I know a lot about this game. But I have no memory of it. I was a little kid at the time and maybe I watched it but if I did I certainly don�t remember. No, my interest in this game came from a book somebody once bought me for my birthday. Each chapter related the saga of how some NFL record was made. And you know what? It was riveting. Man, I wish I still had that book. I remember one chapter related how Bert Jones set the NFL record (since broken) for consecutive completions in a game. That chapter ended something like this: "Bert's father Dub Jones once scored 6 touchdowns in a game. But he only tied an NFL record. His son broke one". Oooh. Chills (haha). Another chapter had a very evocative title that's stayed with me, "The Day The Footballs Flew". That one was on the NFL's all-time highest scoring game, a 72-41 Redskins blowout of the Giants. Jurgensen vs. Tittle. Hard to believe that 113 point total has stood for over 40 years.
Anyway, the last chapter of the book was entitled "The Longest Day". I know now but didn't know then that the title came from Cornelius Ryan's famous book about D-Day (or from the movie based on the book). But it was a perfect title for the NFL's longest game and I must have read and reread that chapter dozens of times. Somehow it connected me to a now-legendary game that maybe I'll actually get to see one day. (When will the NFL open up its library already? I'll pay). The Miami Dolphins first postseason victory in franchise history.
It's a different world now. With cable and the internet there's just so much out there to see and hear and read about football. And you can get sick of it all pretty quickly. But back in the time of Miami's Christmas day double-overtime victory and for years thereafter if you wanted NFL entertainment outside of the games themselves, you actually had to take the time to sit down and read a book. I wish I still knew the name of the one that chronicled the NFL's Longest Day. And I really wish I knew who wrote the thing. But whoever you are nameless author of that NFL book that once meant so much to me, if you're out there somewhere, Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas.
And Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to any readers I have out there in the blogosphere. I appreciate anyone who takes the time to read what I write, especially you sptrfn (I'll attempt to address your "What If" scenarios in a future post).
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