Tuesday, September 27, 2011

On Sports and Luck

Yes,the Giants victory over the Eagles was fun and unexpected, especially the performance of a Jersey boy named Victor Cruz, and the Jets loss was eye-opening, even if the handwriting should have been on the wall, but the nicest surprise for me occurred on Monday night when another Ryan brother coached the defense that shut down Santana Moss and the Redskins.

My fantasy opponent needed just 10 points from the Redskins Moss in order to send my team down to defeat. Moss is no stranger to the Boyz, of course, and, over the course of many years battling each other, Moss almost always had the upper hand, averaging about 15 fantasy points per contest. As the rest of my team had fared very well in Week 3, I looked with trepidation on my prospects for holding the pesky Skins wideout to zero touchdowns and less than 100 yards gained.

But Rob Ryan’s defense would concentrate on Moss that night. He would take away Moss for most of the game and, even when game conditions dictated that Shanahan’s Skins should concentrate on getting the ball downfield, they managed to do so only once or twice.

There’s no feeling better than winning the game you fully expect to lose. I had determined relatively early that my only chance in the contest relied on my opponent’s quarterback Aaron Rodgers either having a terrible day, which he never does, or throwing all his TD passes to my fantasy tight end, Jermichael Finley. As luck would have it, Rodgers threw all his 3 touchdowns to Finley. Go figure.

It didn’t hurt either that Buffalo had the day it had against the feared Patriots. My running back Fred Jackson continued his hard-pounding and elusive running while David Nelson, one of the Bills’ relatively unknown wide receivers, would gain 89 yards through the air. And Matt Ryan (you won’t see me calling him Matty Ice anytime soon) finally threw some passes to Julio Jones.

Drew Brees, my fantasy QB, ignored the fact that he was missing Marques Colston or that he was facing a newly rugged Texans defense. Mr. Brees just kept on keepin’ on. At any rate, big outputs from 3 or 4 players offset the total failure of my running back #2, one Javon Ringer from Tennesee and the paltry stats racked up by Hakeem Nicks, the Giants wunderkind whom the Eagles shut down only to watch Victor Cruz beat them.

Life is good sometimes. Just ask the Bills or Cowboys or, switching sports, ask the Tampa Bay Rays or St. Louis Cards. The unexpected can happen once in a while. The Bills came back from three TD’s down to Tom Brady’s Pats, picking him off four times in the process. The Cowboys and Tony Romo held steady against the rugged Skins and blitzed Rex Grossman into the big mistake of the game.

In baseball, Tampa Bay finally caught the Red Sox, the dream team of baseball going into the season, whose pitching went almost totally into the tank the entire month of September. The Cards still have a shot at what had been a sure wildcard for the Braves going into September.

The San Francisco Giants added Carlos Beltran but would have needed at least two more of him to prevent their unhappy demise. The Angels had a shot too for a while and still aren’t mathematically eliminated. So major league baseball is right at the forefront of sports fans’ imaginations going right into October. So much for changing the wildcard rules.

This just in. The judge trying the Mets bankruptcy case just ruled that that Pirate Picard, the snake lawyer representing the Madoff downtrodden, has to prove that Wilpon and Katz knew there was a fraud being perpetrated. That’s a huge win for the Wilpons.

I’m listening now to Mets fans calling Mike Francesa to complain that the Mets would be better off if the Wilpons were forced to sell, that it’s a setback for Mets fans that the Wilpons will prevail in this gigantic legal fight. It makes me sick. The Wilpons have been pretty good owners. They just haven’t been the brightest lights in the sky…..or the luckiest.

Think about the Mets collapses, the failures down the stretch of Glavine and Pedro Martinez, that brutal curve ball for a called strike 3 on Carlos Beltran. Omar Minaya could have been more prudent to be sure in his day but the Mets owners’ decision to hire him wasn’t that bad.

But Minaya had always worked for organizations with almost no money to spend. Minaya was like a kid in the candy store. Glavine and Pedro were too old. Beltran was just paralyzed. He should have been way more attentive.

Their latest decision on a GM was a great one. Sandy Alderson is like the anti-Minaya. He doesn’t act without careful study. He’s surrounded himself with good people, not drones. He understands that Reyes is a Mets frontispiece. He brought in Collins. Together, Alderson and Collins have brought in young talent, have shuffled the right pieces and have positioned this Mets team for the future.

What a way to end the baseball season. Not only are we provided with wildcard races down to the wire but now Mets fans can visualize their appearance in a playoff series somewhere along the road. They can also think about shorter fences and lower walls. The “half-full” crowd can even dream about a successful return of Johan Santana.

The sky’s the limit for the Mets (but that sky has been defined as from 100 to 120 million dollars). Still….

This fellow will never minimize the significance of luck. Luck shot down the baseball Giants, luck shut down Santana Moss for me, luck crippled the Red Sox and Braves in September; luck may have just saved the Wilpons in bankruptcy court even as it had abandoned them for much of the 21st Century.

They say people make their own luck. “They” can sell that bit of nonsense elsewhere.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Musings of the Fall

Okay, the Week 2 NFL action is over and now we have additional perspective, but, if we had absolutely no perspective after Week 1, does one more game played qualify as an event worthy of contributing true perspective? I would say NOT!

Take the Giants, for example, please. They looked awful in their Week 1 loss vs. the Skins, a team I had termed “low so many years”. Then the Rams came to town after having had a fairly successful (for them) opener against the Eagles. (Well, it had been close for most of three quarters anyway). It wouldn’t have been surprising under those circumstances if the Rams had managed to beat the Giants.

Of course they didn’t. The Rams fielded what was perhaps the worst set of receivers I had ever seen on any field anywhere. In fact, I could expand my meaning somewhat to say that kids in the street playing “association” football have better hands. They played some of the worst football I’ve ever seen.

So, in the face of such great incompetence, you could have expected the G-Men to have looked pretty good. But they really didn’t. They just managed to survive against an incredibly inept team, one riddled with injuries and woefully short on talent seemingly everywhere.

So what does that tell us? Well, it tells me that the Giants still can stink out the joint, against anybody. They did manage to run the ball a bit. That was somewhat heartening, I guess. In truth though, the only truly good thing was their pass rush. Their secondary still seems clueless and their passing game was only just good enough to enable them to run the ball.

The Jints probably won’t face Michael Vick next week, a very good thing, but it hardly matters. The Eagles can beat the Giants with Vince Young or Mike Kafka at QB. The Eagles are chomping at the bit. The Giants spit the bit in Week 1 and haven’t grabbed hold of it since. That’s what happens to a team that doesn’t sign its best players.

As good as GM Reese had been in his first season, that’s as bad as he did this year. Losing Kevin Boss and Steve Smith to free agency was just unconscionable. Losing Eli’s center (and friend) was almost as bad. Their replacements just haven’t got it. Those guys couldn’t really be replaced. Talk about penny-wise and pound foolish.

But why belabor a point. The Giants stink. Coughlin stinks. Reese really stinks and even good ol’ Eli stinks. Who woulda thunk it?

Now the Jets are a much happier story. They signed everybody they needed. When the Giants abandoned Plaxico, the Jets came up with a contract for him. The Jets worst receiver is better than the Giants best, at least this past Sunday. The Jets have already won a game they should have lost. The Giants can only relax when that clock strikes zero.

But no team I’ve seen so far can say they have all their bases covered. The Eagles, for example, managed to lose to the Falcons Sunday despite their 10-point lead when Vick went to the sidelines. They’re supposed to be a dream team. If that’s true, it’s a bad dream indeed.

Ok, so I forgot about the Pats. Actually, I’d love to forget about the Pats. They may have some weak spots too but, if so, they’re not so immediately obvious. Unless you can call a two tight end offense a weakness, the Pats seem awesome.

But all of the above is based on two weeks performance. The only things I’m really sure of are that the Jets will be happy as clams and the Giants will look like the smiley face upside down.

Baseball fans can be happy that the wildcard races in both leagues have become true races. As this is written, our Mets are trying to put a damper on the Cardinals post-season hopes. And not only that but Cohen and Darling are interviewing GM Sandy Alderson as to the future of the franchise. Most notable from that talk was that October will be dedicated towards keeping Jose Reyes.

But the Cards and Giants are catching the Braves and the Rays are doing likewise with the Red Sox. With just about 8 or 9 games to go, these wildcard races will be going to the wire. The Rays, however, have much the worst of the schedule (and are now losing to the Yankees 5-0), but the Red Sox’s decline seems to just keep going of its own momentum despite the opponent.

If pitching truly does determine pennant winners, the Rays have a real shot but the Braves can pitch with the best of them, albeit not lately. The Cards may be the toughest of the National League bunch with Pujols and Berkman in the lineup and the best fans anywhere. The Cards just pulled ahead of the Mets in tonight’s game in their bid to remain just 3 games back of Atlanta who won tonight.

It always makes me a little sad when the baseball season winds down. It may be because it’s a harbinger of worse things to come, colder weather, the end of summer, barbecues and the Jersey shore. But it also marks the end of daily games in a sport that is played out day after day for 162 games. The NFL plays 16 games in 17 weeks and that’s all she wrote. We look forward to hype only for 6 days out of every 7.

All that inactivity would be broken up in normal years by NBA basketball. This year of course will be anything but normal as the owners and players dig in their heels. So it’ll be college basketball only and, if you’re a Seton Hall or Rutgers fan, there just won’t be much to think about. That’s assuming the Big East remains unchanged, a highly unlikely prospect right now.

Oh well, at least Curtis Granderson may still get MVP.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

We Need Some Perspective

Perspective, it’s a hard thing to find and even harder to keep. That’s what I’ve been thinking in the wake of Sunday’s NFL openers. I know the NFL is perennially hard to figure but this year could be more ridiculous than most seasons. Maybe it’s the shortened pre-season….but I don’t really think so.

The most strikingly surprising game to me, I suppose, was Sunday night’s Jets-Cowboys game. I had expected the Jets to cover whatever deep routes the Boyz would run and do a pretty fair job of stopping their running game too. I had expected a low-scoring game, one that the Jets would squeeze out in the end using their running game behind that terrific offensive line.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, on just about every count, except that the Jets did manage to win. But, winning the way they won is almost inconceivable. Could the Jets repeat that late-game performance on any other Sunday?

No way. Gimme a break, a blocked punt for a touchdown followed almost immediately by a “gimme” interception ? And then a long, long field goal, given the circumstances, to win the game in regulation. In what other game will that Jets safety Leonhard stop Jason Witten on the 2-yard line only to have the opposing quarterback then fumble the ball away on the one?

Everything I thought was so was not. The Jet offensive line was, all in all, non-existent in the first half. It was the old “weakest link in the chain” ploy used by the Cowboys to put a big rush on Mark Sanchez. But the Jets couldn’t “ground and pound”. It was LaDainian Tomlinson and pray for rain for the better part of the second half. Thank God for “LT”. (We all know he’s not LT but WTF)?

I must throw a bone here for Mark Sanchez. Except for that unfortunate fumble that put seven on the board for the Boyz, Sanchez was great. Who can throw on the run as accurately as he does? Who can avoid the rush as he did and find all those different receivers downfield, both throwing from the pocket and, once again, on the run.

While I’m giving out bones, how about Plaxico? He didn’t do anything spectacular, I guess, but just Plax being Plax was plenty good enough. The same could be said for Santonio Holmes being himself. That’s some receiving corps the Jets possess, especially when you add Derek Mason into the mix. But will that kind of game put Rex into the grave before his time?

Primary running back Shonn Green was not Shonn Green, or maybe he was just Shonn Green with no blocking. Look out, Shonn! Here comes another big hit. If the run game doesn’t improve in a hurry, this season could really get strange.

Think “Cardiac Cards”, if anybody but me can remember that far back. When you think about it, the Jets do have the personnel to be that kind of a team. And that kind of game can be really entertaining. But “ground and pound” it’s not.

One game is a poor indicator of future performance in the NFL though, especially in a season with an abbreviated pre-season. Did any running backs have a big day? Not really. Four backs exceeded 20 fantasy points for the week (which is, after all, pretty analogous to real live performance). They were the Chargers’ Mike Tolbert, the Eagles’ LeSean McCoy, the Bengals’ Cedric Benson and the Bears’ Matt Forte. All those teams won.

There were several other 100-yard rushers though, most notably Darren McFadden’s 150-yard tally for the Raiders. So, all in all, the teams that truly wanted to run the ball were pretty successful at it. Those teams showing less commitment in that regard were correspondingly less successful. Our New York Giants could very well be put in that category.

And the Giants could be put in another category as well. If there were an award for “most uninspired”, the Giants could have been right at the top of the list. I couldn’t even watch them. I didn’t expect them to stop the Redskins and they didn’t disappoint me. That they would do so little on offense was a surprise. That their offensive line would be dominated was shocking.

The Giants show every sign of being an unhappy team, a team that’s not having a good time, so much so that they really don’t care much whether they win or lose. And you can put this year’s version of Eli Manning on the top of the list of the truly uninspired. Ahmad Bradshaw carried 13 times for 44 yards. Manning was 18-32 for 268 yards and just one INT but it was a huge one to put it mildly.

But are the Redskins much better than we thought? Were the Bills much better too? How about the Carolina Panthers?

The Bills were really bad at stopping the run last year. The Chiefs, their opponents, had a bigtime rushing game featuring Jamaal Charles, another fantasy wunderkind. Of course it was the Bills and Fred Jackson who piled up the rushing yards. The Chiefs did almost nothing in any phase of the game. Ryan Fitzpatrick, the Bills quarterback, was phenomenal . Are the Chiefs as bad as they looked? They were a playoffs team last year. Are the Bills that good?

Another vastly disappointing team was the Atlanta Falcons. Their QB, Matt Ryan, ballyhooed last year as “Matty Ice” and armed this year with the addition of a supposedly Superman wide receiver, Julio Jones, did nothing through the air, relatively speaking. He certainly didn’t target his rookie much.

But worse than that, the Falcons coaching staff didn’t seem to understand their predicament. They played a very conservative game when the situation demanded some verve. They showed nothing. Matty Ice was the most timid player on the field.

I know one thing. Drew Brees was himself. Was Cam Newton himself? Can we expect that terrific performance to continue?

We need some perspective.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

September Is Looking Good

Oh good, it’s not raining.

And the Yanks are fielding their irregulars for the day after late-night game with the Orioles. It’s Nunez leading off, then Martin, Swisher, Arod, Andruw Jones, the rook Montero, then Laird, Golson and Pena. So far, Arod looks good and Montero got caught lunging at a low and away slider. But there’s more fun in store with that 7 thru 9 lineup….Laird, Golson and Pena, whew!

It should be interesting to see what A.J. Burnett gives up today. So far it doesn’t look good. First baseman Laird just muffed an easy grounder to give the Birds another run. It could be a long day.

The Mets took one in unusual fashion last night from the Marlins. Parnell failed as a closer yet again, giving up two runs to allow Florida to tie the game at four. It took 3 more innings of work to finally win it 7-4. Pagan, Bay, Evans and Reyes combined to score three big runs in the top of the 12th to win it.

Not that any of these heroics mean anything, but, what the hell, it is still baseball. Nominally.

The big stir for me today is the NFL opener tomorrow night between the Saints and the Packers, the super Bowl champs against the champs of two years ago. There’ll be Saints rookie running back Mark Ingram to check out in his first real game and, of course, Drew Brees and Aaron Rodgers. Sounds good.

The Football Giants can’t get a break, unless you count bones. Now their linebacker Goff is gone too. He’ll join the rookie corner who went down after about one play in pre-season and the other 2nd-year LB Clint Sintim on the DL. And let’s not forget Terrell Thomas.

Yes, folks, that same defense that gave up all those second half points to the Eagles last year, that same horrible excuse for a defense, will be right back this year. Oh well, at least they tried to fix things. It’s just that anybody who could have helped is hurt. I won’t even mention the offensive losses of Steve Smith and Kevin Boss. As things turned out, they’re both injured anyway. But you would be forgiven for forgetting the names of the guys playing middle linebacker and one of the corners.

But the Giants do have the advantage of playing against the Redskins, lo these many years low these many years. The current Redskins under Mike Shanahan feature Rex Grossman as its quarterback. Donovan McNabb is off in the wilds of the north and I hope Shanahan will be happy now. As he already divested himself of Haynesworth the Ugly, this is a Redskins team that might be very close to a Shanahan ideal, good running game, zone blocking, yada yada ya. But what about the Skins defense?

(Montero, the Yankee rookie who looked so bad in his first AB, just hit a long single to right to score two and tie the game up for AJ and the Bombers).

The Jets have had a lot more luck with just about everything. They return an offense that ‘ll be remarkably identical to last year’s, the exception being Plaxico Burress taking over for Braylon Edwards at wide receiver. On defense, they’ll probably wind up being less consistent than last year’s group, as veterans have been let go but big things are expected from two big bodies in Kenrick Ellis and Muhammad Wilkerson.

The Jets will be facing the Cowboys. Who knows where this score could end up? If you told me it’d be high-scoring, I’d believe you. If you said it’d be a scoreless tie, I could entertain that idea too. The Cowboys are just all over the place. Romo is back and he’ll be trying to find Jersey boy Miles Austin and the sometimes sensational Dez Bryant. They’ll score points for sure but their running game will probably be harder for this Jets defense to stop. Expect to see a lot of Felix Jones and Tashard Choice. Look for those two rookies. They may be on the ground a lot.

Meanwhile, back to baseball, the MVP race in the American League seems to be tightening. Curtis Granderson, Adrian Gonzalez and Robinson Cano, to my mind, could all stake a legitimate claim to the title but there’re still quite a few games to go. Cano especially seems to be coming on, and have you seen him play the field? It seems he’s a human highlight reel.

Who’ll be the playoff teams in each league? While the wildcard teams will come from the East in both the NL and AL, the only real question marks will be who’ll win the West . In the AL West Texas is still only 3 games up on the Angels while in the NL West, the upstart Arizona Diamondbacks are a full 6 games up on the World Series Champs SF Giants.

The D’Backs have the pitching to lock out the Giants, both on the starting and relieving end. Ian Kennedy, Daniel Hudson, Joe Saunders and Josh Collmenter are all well below the 4.0 ERA marker and they seem to finally have the lineup to back up that pitching.

Justin Upton is the closest thing to Curtis Granderson in the National League, batting .297 with 27 homers and 93 runs scored. Miguel Montero is perhaps the best hitting catcher in the NL while other role players such as Chris Young, Ryan Roberts and Willie Bloomquist keep on keeping on.

The Angels are looking old though, and despite some pretty awesome pitching, just don’t have the firepower to knock out the resilient Texas Rangers. The Rangers have just enough pitching to see themselves to the Promised Land, especially with their beefing up of the relief corps with Mike Adams.

September is looking good if you discount all the rain. The baseball playoffs should be riveting, especially those involving the Red Sox and Yankees. Let’s hope the Giants and Jets can keep the month interesting.

Thursday, September 1, 2011

A Good Draft, a Bad Irene

Imagine if you never had to see Mike Pelfrey pitch again……in your entire lifetime….Pelfrey-free….aahh.

But this won’t be about the Mets. After all, what can anybody really say? Just, please God, don’t make me watch any more Mets wheel-plays. And the latest highlight of the Mets fortunes was Jason Bay’s arm-less lunge for home plate with his arms pinned to the ground under his body.

The Mets won that one so Jason gets a pass, but it was the most ridiculous slide I’ve ever seen.

Enough said about the Mets. Even if David Wright had a really nice night and Tejada made the tough play he had to make to close the game out. It was like old times. Reyes was back smiling and Wright was playin’ energized and Duda came through with a nicely- measured swing to win it. I could really get used to watching baseball like that.

I just watched a replay of the Jets-Giants exhibition game from Monday night. I thought it was bad the first time around. It was worse in Round 2. The Giants, who lost 17-3 to their Green rivals, looked ordinary at best. The Jets were just a little more impressive.

If it seemed to you that Eli Manning had no clue as to where his receivers might be going, join the club. If it seemed to you as if nobody ever came open for him, you’re not alone.

The Jets actually looked better defensively to me than they were last year. The offense needs a little work right now but that could be said of a number of teams. They can still run the ball, especially if Shonn Green stays healthy. Once again, their only fly in the ointment might be New England. The Pats will be a huge fly to swallow.

But most people here are just getting over the wrath of Irene, the raging waters, the dump from the sky. Trees down, power lines down, rivers swelling, politicians swaggering, and Weather-Channel scaring the life out of you every step of the way, but especially before the event . Irene was a big fat girl wagging her fatt butt all the way up the Jersey coast.

But I stood ready for her, pump ready for the onslaught. Around 2 PM on Saturday, the pumping began. But its little 1/6 HP heart couldn’t keep the waters below the 18” retaining wall between the garage and house proper, could it? Well, it pumped its little brains out for about 27 hours straight and saved our butts from a watery ending.

The power held up for me. There’ll be a generator in my future. The worst wind I got was as Irene was dragging her disgusting ass out of here. She was worn out by then, all that torrential rain for all that time having dragged the venom out of her. Her home invasion was finally over by mid-afternoon Sunday.

I’m thinking about giving my pump a name.

But right before the deluge, that would be Saturday morning, we had our fantasy draft. That was fun. Once again, I tested my QB-first strategy with a guy everybody seems to have forgotten about, Drew Brees. He had no running game last year at all and still managed to have himself a nice year.

But it’s all about risk. The first pick should offer the highest risk-reward. If running backs get hurt waaay more often than QB’s, how can you pick a RB first? There were four who loomed over the rest of the ball-carriers, Arian Foster, Adrian Peterson, Chris Johnson and, arguably, Rrrray Rrrrrice. In our new world of two-back systems, you could throw a blanket around many of the rest.

I should point out too that passing TD’s count as much as running TD’s in our league and QB’s fantasy scores vs. RB scores are always a lot higher overall.

Then there is the matter of variability, week to week adherence to a standard. Drew Brees is like a machine. The opponent doesn’t matter that much, he’ll score against Green Bay and Buffalo too. He won’t be a target like Vick or slide around a lot like Rodgers or have a Manning neck or a Brady benching in Week 13.

He’ll just be cruisin’ this year, handin’ the rock to Mark Ingram, making the play-action go. And there’ll be the same guys on the other end, Colston and Meachem and Henderson and Mohr. His line is good, his coach is smart and they like to score points….every week.

I could have had RB Jamaal Charles, as things turned out. He was one of the four leading the pack and perhaps my favorite among those. But will all of those four guys finish the season? Would Jamaal Charles have been the odd man out?

Anyway, my second pick was 21 overall and I still didn’t particularly like any of the running backs there so why not grab a top wideout? And if you could get yourself a Giant at the same time, why wouldn’t Hakeem Nicks be the logical choice? Then at 28 overall, there was Jersey-boy Miles Austin edging out DeSean Jackson and the possibly resurgent JET Shonn Greene. I see lots of catches in my future.

A lot of nice players disappeared from the board before my next pick. Fearing a run on tight ends, I jumped on Jermichael Finley, Rodgers’s favorite target most Green Bay days. I could finally select a running back so I jumped on Knowshon Moreno of the Broncos, who does a little bit of everything pretty much all by himself in Denver.

I may have actually taken a risk with Julio Jones, Atlanta’s multi-pick alleged wonder, but I still wasn’t sold on any particular RB. I did get a nice reliable guy in Fred Jackson of Buffalo, who got them his thousand yards last year and seems to be the star in lowly Buffalo. And, um, circle the wagons.

And Detroit will be my defense. Good Luck.