Two New Guys and an Old Guy

Two new guys and an old guy, that was pretty much the story Sunday in the NFL.

We got to see rook Matt Stafford lead a hungry team to a looooong-awaited victory over the hapless Skins, so embarrassing to the media, if not the team itself, that many sports shows seem to be calling for the ouster of their seemingly unbeleaguered head coach.

And our own Mark Sanchez, who faked the Titans out of their jocks and threw a little looper TD pass to his tight end, then he put his head down on a scramble and forced his way over the goal line. Then he stunk the joint out for a quarter or so as the Titans came back. No problem, Sanchez just didn’t let them take the game away, coming back to thread the needle to Cotchery on a slant.

And, then, we saw ancient Brett Favre thread the needle with two seconds left to a little-used wide receiver at the back of the end zone to beat a deserving young 49er team. We saw it once, we saw it twice, we saw it again and again, and I know I’ll be seeing some more of it before another Sunday blessedly appears.

Taking that last game first, I was rooting for the young 49ers. I’m just coming off a trip to their fair city, I’ve picked them to win their Division crown (so to speak, I never saw the crown but I’m sure it’s a heavily-bejeweled one, at least as valuable as those boxing championship belts), and I have to admit I’m rooting for Mike Singletary.

The Niners played those Vikings really tough for the entire sixty minutes, yes, including even those last two seconds. Adrian Peterson ran hard but didn’t really kill them, their offense was good enough to put some points on the board against a tough Viking defense, and every Niner seemed to be taking care of business, just as you’d expect from a Mike Singletary representative.

But they played the game a little too conservatively at the end, going three and out in those critical two minutes, leaving time for a grizzled old gunslinger to take a good team down the field. They relied on their defense, which had done the job over and over again all day long. But, when you do that, you leave the door open.

Favre snuck in the door. He completed passes to just about everybody, Rice and Harvin, Shiancoe and even Berrian to take them all the way down to the 32 yard line with just about 12 seconds left.

Then the big bad wolf blew the 49ers house in. The play was designed so that he could step up and then slide to his right, and he could fire a line drive that would be harder to defend. He stepped up and slid around and then threw long enough to eat up ten seconds on the clock as Greg Lewis snared that liner with just two seconds on the clock.

“You have nothing to be looking at the floor for!” Singletary shouted after the game. “You didn’t steal anything! You didn’t do anything wrong! OK? We’re going to get better! We’re going to get there! We will see them again in the playoffs, all right? You hold your head up!”

That Mike felt that was necessary is good enough for me. It had to be said. That team just played a great game. Another young quarterback, Shaun Hill, had thrown 2 TD passes to tight end, Vernon Davis. The special teams blocked a field goal attempt and returned it for a touchdown. The special teams did give up a TD on a kickoff though, and that big play alone could be blamed for the loss.

I really don’t like Favre. Giving credit where it’s due though, that was one great drive and one great play. Maybe nobody else in football does it just that way, not either Manning, not Brady, not Rivers, not Roethlisberger. His arm is back this year, and that’s really my biggest problem with him. He was perfectly happy to play last year for the Jets with a torn biceps. After all, he had to save his precious “never missed a game” record.

And really, all these woops retirements, and all the Green Bay-Vikings melodrama, in addition to ruining last season for the Jets. None of any of that sits too well with me. And the sweetest thing that happened last year for me was the Pennington and Dolphins thrashing of the Favre-led Jets to win a playoff spot.

But he was himself on Sunday. His arm is back. He’s still got the same head though and the Vikings will have to take the bad with the good. It might be enough to take them to the playoffs, especially the way Green Bay has been playing. And Chicago might have something to say about the finish as well. I’ll be rooting for anybody but the Vikings.

That the young Sanchez has been able to propel his Jets to the top of the heap in the AFC East, and beat the Pats in the process, is almost doubly sweet because he’s the guy replacing Favre.

Yeah, it’s been nice seeing a young whippersnapper run around and throw bullets and say all the right things too, unlike his ridiculous teammate Scott, But a swashbuckler isn’t exactly what the Jets may need. And that TD run, as much as I liked it, qualifies him as one.

But those USC quarterbacks ain’t too shabby, Carson Palmer and Matt Leinart and now Sanchez. You could see them hangin’ with D’Artagnan at the local pub. And Francesa says he’s “cavalier” with the ball.

Finally, you have to like a youngster who can light up an entire city, if just for a day, and that’s what Matt Stafford pulled off in Detroit. That Washington team he beat really isn’t as bad as it looked. Look for Detroit to win a few.

A Heart in San Francisco

This fine Friday is special. Why? Because I’m leaving town, bound for San Francisco, that city by the sea, but also home of the 49ers and baseball Giants and geez, whoever cared about those things before?

But the Giants’ve got the freak, Tim Lincecum, and Matt Cain, and that probably beats Sabathia and Burnet. And the Niners have a crazy old linebacker from Jersey named Mike Singletary, who’s been turning an annual pigskin joke into a real live football team.

Lincecum is 14-5 with 244 strikeouts in 207 innings, not too shabby I’d say for a team with no cleanup hitter, well, to be honest, they really have no hitter of any kind, leadoff, a guy to move the runner over, a real live number 3 hitter; you name it, the Giants don’t have it.

Why do they call him the freak though? Maybe it has something to do with being 5’11” and 170 pounds. Maybe it’s his weird delivery that features a whip-like release that ends up somewhere real close to his foot. Or maybe it’s just his demeanor, which is kind of laid back and unworldly, other-worldly?

Anyway, if they just had Lincecum at the top of the rotation, they’d be scary enough, but then there’s Matt Cain too. Now he’s only 13-6 with a paltry by comparison 155 K’s in 202 innings, but how many guys have a 2.71 ERA and 1.17 WHIP?

Oh, and there’s Barry Zito at 3.94 and Jonathan Sanchez at 4.16 and oh, yeah, they picked up an old retread (are there any new retreads) named Brad Penny from Boston, a city obviously not to his liking. But he likes San Fran real well apparently as he’s given up just 4 whole runs in 22 innings in 3 games in September.

Gone are the days when all anybody heard about was Barry Bonds, although they still revere him there, strange as that may seem to me. But then, there’s Giambi and Arod and McGuire and Sosa and about a hundred others. Of course, they liked Bonds before we knew about all those other guys. Maybe it’s having watched all those majestic drives into the water. That would probably do it.

As luck would have it, the Giants won’t be playing at home this weekend. They’ll be in La La-land, home of the Dodgers and, oh yeah, another freak named Manny Ramirez, who seems so much less freaky since his name appeared in the steroids-yes column.

Nevertheless, the Dodgers lead in the West by 5 over the Rockies and 8 ½ over San Fran’s finest. But they’re just 3 ½ behind the Rocks for the wildcard with 16 games left to play. And that will mean 6 more starts at least for Lincecum/Cain and a guarantee that the rest won’t be easy with Zito, Sanchez and Penny going.

The relief’s not too shabby either with Brian Wilson closing and Jeremy Affeldt setting things up. Wilson looks kinda freaky too, by the way, but he’s got 34 saves and a 2.69 ERA so whos going to make a big thing about hair.

So I won’t be seeing the Giants first-hand or experiencing the thrill of AT&T Park but I shall be feeling that buzz, a buzz you feel more in smaller and less cynical markets than New York, like Denver for sure and even Chicago for that matter.

The buzz will be that much stronger as the Niners are playing Seattle at home and both teams won their openers, but the Niners did it versus last year’s NFC Super Bowl team, the Arizona Cardinals while Seattle just walked all over an overmatched Rams squad.

But it all started for these Niners against Seattle last year. That was Singletary’s finest moment for most NFL fans (but not Mike himself) as he benched his star tight end Vernon Davis at halftime and dropped his pants to make a point. And, since that game, his point seems to have been made.

“…cannot play with them, cannot win with them, cannot coach with them. Can’t do it. I want winners. I want players that want to win.” And since then, the Niners have won, going 6-3 since that game and since inserting Shaun Hill at the quarterback position.

Ya think that doesn’t inspire SF fans? I know it inspires me, and I’ll bet it inspired at least some of those players. (Davis is now a team captain). You sure can’t point to any one guy, or even any one portion of the team, as the reason they’re winning. They just seem to be eking out these team victories.

Defense is a good part of it though and the Cards found that out last week as Kurt Warner was harrassed into mistake after mistake. The running game is part of it too, even though they couldn’t run very well against the Cards. The passing game got them the win in that one.

But that’s par for the course for this team. Whatever it takes to win from week to week, they seem to come up with. They’re my pick to win that Western Division this year, and this game against Seattle should go a long way towards deciding that one.

It’s too bad they haven’t yet been able to sign their Number 1 pick in the draft, WR Michael Crabtree, even though their offer was said to be for 5 years and 22 million, 16 of it guaranteed. Even that enormous sum is apparently low-balling a Number 10 pick overall. They supposedly are trying to appeal to the player directly. I don’t hold out too much hope for that effort, and I’d rather see them spend that money on a more established wideout.

But even the holdout might eventually work to their advantage, especially if they can manage to beat up the Seahawks a little this Sunday.

Yeah, I’m looking forward to it , almost as much as that the Jets have taken the Pats and those G-Men the Boyz.