The Pro Bowl, My Best Friend, and John Madden

I can't believe I put up that stupipd Pro Bowl post without finishing it. The whole reason I wrote about the game in the first place is because I have an actual Pro Bowl memory. You see, I exaggerated a bit when I wrote that no one cares about the game. I'm sure the players cared more once upon a time when they made very little money and worked off-season jobs. Winning meant a winner's share and every little bit helped back then. And besides the players, Past Interference actually cared! It's true. On January 20, 1974, a young me cared. My best friend Lewis and I watched with great interest. We were huge Dolphin fans and among those Dolphins on the AFC roster was my then-favorite player Bob Griese. I was excited. Nobody told me it was a worthless exhibition. The AFC's other Pro Bowl quarterback was Kenny Stabler. And to mine and Lewis' consternation AFC coach John Madden chose to play Stabler for the entire first half! Jerk! We couldn't understand it. Griese had just won his second straight Super Bowl. Stabler was a loser. What was going on? Obviously Madden, the coach of the hated Oakland Raiders, was playing favorites by giving all the glory to his boy the Snake while letting poor gallant Bob Griese waste away on the sidelines. And the AFC trailed at the half thanks to stupid Madden's decision to play Stabler and Stabler only. It made no sense.

Being clever little boys, Lewis and I took matters into our own hands and struck back the only way we knew how. We adapted the then-current Wrigley's Spearmint Gum jingle for our own purposes. The commercial may have hyped "Wrigley's Spearmint Gum, Gum, Gum" but two young budding songsmiths brilliantly repurposed it to say "Coach is very dumb, dumb, dumb". Funny stuff huh? As fate would have it, Madden played Griese for the entire second half. I suppose that might have been his plan all along but I'm sticking with my favoritism theory! Anyway, being the superior quarterback Griese led the AFC to a comeback 15-13 win and the hero of the game was another Dolphin, Garo Yepremian. He accounted for his team's points, kicking five field goals including the game-winner with 21 seconds left. Sweet. Truly we witnessed a football classic that day.

I searched YouTube in vain for that old 1974 Wrigley's commercial. But in the process I turned up something way better: a 90's Russian version of the commercial that has the same basic jingle! The collapse of communism just keeps on giving.

The Greatest Super Bowl of All-Time, Conclusion

At long last the conclusion to Past Interference's Greatest Super Bowl of All-Time series, just in time for the Super Bowl XLIV festivities (like we planned it). Here are PI's rankings of the ten best Super Bowls ever played. Click the links at the bottom of this post to read PI's deeper thoughts on each game.

(10) Super Bowl XXIII. San Francisco 20, Cincinnati 16. Montana.

(9) Super Bowl XXXVI. New England 20, St. Louis 17. If this is number one on your own list I won't argue. Personally, I'm still mad about how the Rams D played on that last drive because I wanted me some Super Bowl overtime.

(8) Super Bowl XXXVIII. New England 32, Carolina 29. Pure insanity. Tons of mistakes and penalties, yet action-packed and suspenseful to the final play. Nipple!

(7) Super Bowl XXXI. Denver 31, Green Bay 24. A very underrated game. Given their own unfortunate Super Bowl history combined with the NFC's incredible run of dominance in the big game, Denver's triumph here ought to be more appreciated. High-scoring and close all the way. What more do you want?

(6) Tie: Super Bowl XIII. Pittsburgh 35, Dallas 31. Super Bowl XIV. Pittsburgh 31, L.A. Rams 19. PI would love to go old school and pick one of these two for the number one spot but each game suffers from the same aesthetic fatal flaw, not going down to the wire. Each could have but the Cowboys just couldn't catch a break and Vince Ferragamo turned back into Vince Ferragamo in the 4th quarter.

(4) Super Bowl XXXIV. St. Lous 23, Tennessee 16. A slightly dull first half but a classic second half more than made up for it. You couldn't ask for a better fourth quarter. The Warner-to-Bruce TD bomb, the frantic final Tennesse drive and the fateful Jones' tackle still linger in the memory.

(3) Super Bowl XLIII. Pittsburgh 27, Arizona 23. I had a very hard time figuring whether this game should rank second or third. It wound up third based on what I thought was a slightly lower quality of play than in PI's choice for number two. Both the Steelers and Cardinals looked listless for long stretches of the game especially in the third quarter. The fourth quarter fireworks came as a real shocker precisely because Harrison's awesome first-half ending INT TD appeared as though it would be the only dramatic moment of the night. Luckily the Cards woke up in the 4th and the Steelers then roused themselves for a game-winning drive.

(2) Super Bowl XXV. New York 21, Buffalo 19. An exciting game from start to finish is a real Super Bowl rarity so appreciate it when you get it! Sure you could knock the paucity of truly memorable plays, but the high drama, the wild momentum swings, the heroic efforts on both sides, the true clash of styles, and the final fateful miss earn this easy honors as the best Super Bowl of the first quarter-century of the Super Bowl era.

(1) Super Bowl XLII. New York 17, New England 14. With a perfect season hanging in the balance the NFL owed us a game for the ages. And we got one: the game's drama matched the game's importance. The team's combined for "only" 31 points but with neither team capable of consecutive scores every score equalled a lead change. The tension kept building and building and building in a way that no other Super Bowl's ever matched. And Manning-to-Tyree? I didn't see the Immaculate Reception live but I'm grateful I saw this one. A magical NFL moment, a shocking upset, and, in my opinion, the Greatest Super Bowl of All-Time.

The Greatest Super Bowl of All-Time

Greatest Super Bowl of All-Time, Part I
Greatest Super Bowl of All-Time, Part II
Greatest Super Bowl of All-Time, Part III
Greatest Super Bowl of All-Time, Part IV
Greatest Super Bowl of All-Time, Part V
Greatest Super Bowl of All-Time, Part VI
Greatest Super Bowl of All-Time, Part VII
Greatest Super Bowl of All-Time, Part VIII
Greatest Super Bowl of All-Time, Part IX
Greatest Super Bowl of All-Time, Part X
Greatest Super Bowl of All-Time, Conclusion

You're talking about...the Pro Bowl?

We've seen and heard something in the last couple weeks that I can't recall ever happening before. People talking about the Pro Bowl. Yes, the Pro Bowl! That most meaningless of All-Star games. A game hardly anybody watches. A game hardly anybody cares about. Even the most diehard of NFL fans, like us at Past Interference, don't care about it. To belabor the obvious, nobody cares because: (1) Nobody tries; it's an exhibition; and (2) End of Super Bowl = end of football interest (until next season). Nothing to be done about reason number one but in a logical attempt to do something about reason number two the NFL (as you may have heard) moved the Pro Bowl from its usual spot, Hawaii, to a new spot, Miami, and from it's usual slot, a week after the Super Bowl, to a new slot, a week before the Super Bowl (8 commas in one sentence). Oh noes! The flood of negative reaction these moves produced might have fooled someone into thinking people now actually care about the Pro Bowl. But really, some people just need something to talk about, argue about and yell about. Yes, there's a small downside to the NFL's plan. Holding the game before the Super Bowl means the guys playing in the Super Bowl can't make the Pro Bowl. The absence of those guys plus the usual injury scratches left us with the ridiculous specatacle of a David Garrard taking snaps for a Pro Bowl team.

So anyway, sportswritersandtalkers ripped the NFL mercilessly for the Pro Bowl move. And guess what? NFL smart. Everyone else stupid. Pro Bowl TV ratings shot up 39% over last year! We got just as silly and meaningless a game as we always get but a lot more people watched this year's silly meaninglessness. Clearly we're starved for some football, any football, during the two week interval before the Super Bowl. Now the Super Bowl players who missed out and all of the participating players who would have preferred the Hawaii Pro Bowl experience have a legitimate gripe here. The move deprived them of something. Jim Florio of ProFootballTalk.com explained the dilemma best on a local radio show I heard. To paraphrase him, he asked "what is the Pro Bowl supposed to be? A revenue enhancer for the league (ratings) or a reward for the players (Hawaii)?" That's it in a nutshell. Where does the Pro Bowl go from here? Well, when you have 32 rich greedy bastards running the show I'm gonna guess money wins out in the end. So long Hawaii.

Favre: The Sucker Punch

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.

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.

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.

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.