A Half Empty Outlook

Wow, it’s August 18th already and the baseball season is winding down. Professional football action is right on the horizon. And professional basketball will never again be played in our lifetimes. The U.S. Open for pro tennis is one of my personal favorites (not that I’m a tennis player but I like to play) and do I really have soccer in my sights? Well, no.

Yeah, yeah, I know, I forgot hockey again. Oh yeah, and there’s the Triathlon swimming controversy and drugs in biking and a whole bunch of other stuff but really, how many things can you concentrate on at once?

Anyway, I don’t really have a point but if I did want to make one, it’d be along the lines of what the hell are you doing swimming the friggin’ Hudson River if you’re concerned about injuries? There’s all sorts of stuff floating around in the water. That just two died of heart attacks is pretty good, I’d say, under the circumstances.

What other points need to be made? Let’s see, the friggin’ Port Authority is right up there on my list. Let’s make it impossible to travel. Let’s charge people road licenses, after all, the NFL manages to charge for seat licenses. Let’s build more tunnels and make bridges higher so we can get humongous ships into Port Newark.

Oh yeah, and another concern of mine, still waaay before pro sports of any kind, is that friggin’Christie is a hair from the Republican presidential nomination. I mean, he’d get things done but would they be the right things? Would he have thought things through? I don’t know.

And Obama is stinkin’ out the joint.

Okay, okay, I know I should be worrying about more socially irrelevant things like the friggin’ Mets, for one good example. Yesterday, they torched the San Diego Padres in San Diego for a really impressive win in a hostile environment (yeah, I know, it was only Kansas City), and how nice was It to see David Wright finally play like a superstar?

David’s 3-run homer was impressive enough against a tough Matt Latos but then his fielding gem was even better. I mean, he was in the moment, recognizing that he’d never make the play at first while watching Cameron hustling around third base, that his best choice and doable too was to step up and nail Cameron before he could get back to the bag.

Angel Pagan is doing everything after months of doing not so much. There’s the big kid Duda too and Justin Turner and hard-workin’ Thole and Pridie and those young pitchers….and the continuing saga of Jason Bay. I guess I’ve already given up on Jose, either coming back immediately or long-term too. The bankruptcy proceedings overhang everything….

Meanwhile, the Yankees took back first place from the fear-ed Red Sox. Y’know, it’s easy for even me to root for them this year, as an underdog, not just to the Red Sox, but to the Phillies also, if the Bombers should be fortunate enough to ever get past the Red Sox in the ALDS and ALCS. And a lot of these Yankees are damned good baseball players.

Take a look around the diamond. Start at first base….watch Teixeira play the position…..holy shit!! On to second base, there’s Robinson Cano who sometimes seems to have a magic wand over there in the hole. Shortstop? Derek Jeter is playing like a young guy. Uh-oh, third base is a little shaky right now, I suppose, but a guy named Arod can at least still swing the bat.

Outfielders? There’s Curtis Granderson contending for MVP honors and that smilin’ plugger Swisher and the crazed left fielder with the blazing speed and pesky at-bats. Yeah, and Posada can still play in spots. Will he make the playoff roster?

And the crazy pitching staff is kinda’ interesting too, right now a struggling CC and a bunch of question marks in Burnett, Colon, Garcia, Hughes et al. Of course, sometimes those guys will come through, and if they do, the relief corps is dynamite…..not just Rivera, who can be forgiven his recent lapse, but Robertson too, and now the long-awaited Soriano. ( Does anybody else wonder that they’d sign another Soriano after the first one)?

So I’m obviously rooting for both New York teams, solid underdogs both, for the Yanks because of the pitching questions and for the Mets because they have this friggin’ cloud hangin’ over their head. Tomorrow there will be another ruling that will be appealed either way. Oh yeah, and then there’s the friggin’ mediation still plodding along…..

All this baseball drama is perfectly complemented by the anxiety about the football season, the Giants seemingly having done nothing while the Jets and especially the Eagles dominate the headlines with signing after signing, and what about the friggin’ Patriots?

Balanced against all these willy-nilly signings is the stability of the Giants organization, and their almost Steeler-like affinity for Football 101, running the football and playing solid defense and a guy who can throw too, with protection (and hopefully those line-changes will work).

Listening to GM Gerry Reese, he’s not worried. Yeah, they have no proven slot receiver and no tight end that you could really call a complete tight end, and oh yeah, the #1 draft choice got hurt on the first day of camp, but still, there’s that pass rush and Jason Pierre-Paul and a Tuck and a Umenyiora, who’d play hard if we give him more money.

I don’t know. I’m a half-empty kind of guy, I guess. But that 2007 team that won the whole shebang wasn’t expected to do great things. And the guys that helped a lot that year were brought in by Gerry Reese. But geez, their defense really did stink last year.

And I’m happy for Plaxico. I think it’s great that he’ll be a Jet and already I’ve heard one of those SNY crazy people predict 55 catches for him this year.

We shall see.

Wednesday Odds and Ends

So what can you expect on a Wednesday morning in New Jersey when it’s just Philly and Pittsburgh on the NFL horizon. (Yeah, sure, I know, it could be Arizona and/or Baltimore but a reasonable person shouldn’t expect it). Odds and ends is what I’m serving today.

By Wednesday morning, you’ve heard all you ever wanted to hear if you’re a Giants fan. How bad Eli was and how he can’t throw in the wind, and what if we had Plaxico, and how bad was it throwing to Hixon and Toomer, and why didn’t they let Jacobs run more, and what about the defense?

Yeah, I’ve had it with that. They lost. Get over it. They were lucky to have gotten that number 1 seed. They actually played their hearts out on Sunday but there are at least two factors in any football game. There is “heart” and the G-Men had plenty of that. But there is also talent and there wasn’t nearly enough of that.
So it’s up to Jerry Reese now, and I’m already hearing whines from the do-gooders that Plaxico shouldn’t be allowed to come back. Well, good luck with the union, fellas. And good luck finding somebody with those nice physical attributes combined with a knowledge of that somewhat-difficult offense. Good luck with Hixon and Toomer and Smith and Moss and Manningham too.

The Giants are kind of predictable in situations such as this one actually. They really hate over-paying for talent. So I wouldn’t count on Jacobs returning, unless the big fella is okay with taking less than another team might offer. Ward will probably come back, because, let’s face facts, he gained his thousand by following blocks for the most part.
As a third-down back, he failed in my eyes on Sunday, and probably for anybody who was really watching. (I understand G.M.’s really do watch the games). So, expect some changes in the running backs department. If both return, that’d be okay, better than okay maybe, but it still won’t get them to that brass ring (or the gold one encrusted with diamonds either).

On defense, they’ll need some help in the secondary, I suppose. Sam Madison, James Butler and a couple of others will be out there in one way or another. I’d love to see them draft a linebacker or two. This group doesn’t thrill me. The defensive line is signed except for Fred Robbins so they’re in great shape with Umenyiora, Tuck, Kiwanuka and Alford, the kid from East Orange. But I wouldn’t mind having one more.
Eli needs a backup too, and David Carr isn’t too bad in that department. It’s at running back where they are most vulnerable. Jacobs did entirely too much running east and west in that Eagles game. It seems he’s hell on wheels once he gets some steam up, but, alas, not before. So a team that recognizes his weakness can make sure he never really gets started, which is exactly what the Eagles did on Sunday.

So, I’d welcome another running back for sure. I’d like to see Ahmad Bradshaw get a real live opportunity. Then, if there’s another Adrian Peterson out there somewhere, I’d be happy to draft him.
But Jerry Reese has proven he’s some kind of personnel guy. In the NFL, that’s more than half the battle. What might hurt the Giants more than any of these player changes would be the loss of Spagnola as the defensive coordinator. At the very least, we can expect them to lose the first couple of games just learning the new defense.

Okay, enough about the Giants. The Jets are still pretending to interview candidates for their vacant head coaching position. I fully expect them to go with the biggest butt-kisser, that is, whoever can jump the highest when Woody says boo. Through Tannenbaum of course. That’s enough about the Jets, unless you want to hear some more about Bret Favre. I certainly don’t.
If you’re a reasonable gambling man, you’ve already lost your shirt on the friggin’ Arizona Cardinals. The other games were predictable, at least to a certain degree. There was Baltimore’s ridiculously strong and manic defense, and there was Donovan McNabb and a whole boatload of receivers. But Arizona winning against a strong playoffs team two weeks in a row was sumthin’ friggin’ inexplicable (and inexcusable too).

You had to feel somewhat for the Titans. They lost on some big turnovers, which is a tough way to lose. That Crumpler fumble as he neared the goal line was a real killer. Losing their best running back for the second half didn’t help much either. Jeff Fischer deserved better.
The upcoming Sunday games should be great ones though. Kurt Warner against Donovan McNabb, and those two great defenses going after each other in Pittsburgh. You’re pretty much guaranteed to see everything on Sunday, from heavy hitting to bone-crushing sacks to beautifully floated passes to diving catches in the endzone.

My guess is you’ll be seeing some pretty fancy field goal kicking too, in Pittsburgh because neither team can even get to the red zone half the time, and in Arizona because the Eagles are so bad at scoring from in close. The Eagles secondary is too good to expect many TD’s from that feared Cards receiving corps.
Had enough of the NFL? The Knicks are playing pretty well lately, and, speaking of odds and ends, you have to really start wondering about Eddie Curry (apparently). Other than that, though, they’re doing pretty well for a team that just shucked two of its best players. And Harrington’s from Jersey!

The Nets too are a very interesting team. It looks as if Brook Lopez is working out just fine at center, especially if Vince keeps busting his horns. If there’s anything wrong with the Nets, it’s that they can’t seem to find the right rotation.

And the Mets lost the Derek Lowe sweepstakes. Go Tim Redding!! And what about Ollie?

Hooray for the Draft !

After watching about five hours of mostly boring baseball between the Yanks and Boston, then the Mets and Nationals, my mind began to wander. Surely, there must be something more exciting going on in the sports world. With the NBA playoffs still on the horizon, and little enough interest in that anyway, being that the Knicks and Nets have played themselves out of them, I suddenly remembered that the NFL Draft is April 26th, and, lo and behold, April 26th is next Saturday!

I find myself totally unprepared. But I look forward with relish to my annual exercise of figuring out who my New York teams will select. What do they need, will they draft for need at all or will they select the best player available? Will they trade up, trade down, make a last-minute trade? Will some of our favorite players find themselves in a different uniform this July? What players were lost or acquired in the off-season through free agency?

Surely, the Giants will just draft for need, the spanking of those "best team of all time" New England Patriots fresh in their minds. It's a good thing too, because the reward for their pluckiness is the 31st pick, not a position that would ordinarily yield a perennial All-Pro type of player. The Jets get the 6th pick, of course, for their alarming return to mediocrity or worse last season.

The Jets were truly deserving of their fate in 2007, it must be said. Mike Tanenbaum, the GM, destroyed the team's offensive line by playing hard ball with one of their best men in the trenches while Eric Mangini tried to disguise that stupidity by changing quarterbacks, implying that their offensive futility was due to less than inspiring play by Chad Pennington.

Of course, this was total nonsense, and I don't think Jets fans were fooled. Nor was Woody Johnson, I suspect, because the Jets came right out of the box and picked up the best offensive lineman available in free agency. In Alan Faneca, they now have one of the toughest, and reportedly meanest, guards in the NFL. That move alone buys that management team untold indulgences with me. In one fell swoop, they undid their foolishness and more. Everyone in a green jersey, on the field and in the stands, appreciated that one.

Then, as if to convince Jets fans everywhere that Christmas was still here, they picked up a giant of a defensive tackle in the person of Kris Jenkins, a poor man's Ted Washington, a run stopper extraordinaire, thus plugging up the huge hole in their defensive front. But they weren't done yet. They spent even more money on Calvin Pace, a 6'4" 270 pound linebacker, who should help stop the passing game as well.

With those moves, the Jets certainly went a long way in fixing their infrastructure, their core, if you will. One other glaring weakness last year, however, was at wide receiver. The Jets made their one good wideout, Laveranues Coles, happy by guaranteeing the last years on his contract. That still leaves Jeremy Cotchery as their only other decent wideout though, and I’ll be hugely disappointed if the Jets don’t get a couple of wide receiver prospects in this draft.

As the wide receiver prospects in this draft are generally not considered strong enough to warrant a number 6 pick, the Jets will probably try to make a move downward. They’ll pick up some extra draft picks that way, and maybe land a few good prospects. They’ll also relieve themselves of another big salary obligation.

The Giants did lose a great safety in Gibril Wilson to free agency, and, despite their successes last year in the playoffs and the Super Bowl, they do not possess great speed at the linebacker position. Indeed, that they were able to beat Dallas and New England with the existing linebacker group makes the play of that defensive line all the more remarkable.

The play of rookie TE Kevin Boss last year may make Jeremy Shockey expendable, thus either enabling a trade for a move up in the pecking order, or for the acquisition of additional picks. Dealing from a position of strength can be a wonderful thing.

Whatever position the Giants are able to negotiate, it would be hard to believe that they could draft better than they did last year. The Giants rookies were absolutely instrumental in the incredible Giants playoff run last year.

WR Steve Smith made crucial catches in just about every game, showing an ability to get open and elusiveness after the catch. TE Kevin Boss showed a great mix of speed and hands for a very big man. Number 1 pick Aaron Ross was everything that could have been expected at the corner, both in coverage and tackling ability. Ahmad Bradshaw added another dimension to the running game, Michael Johnson ably filled in at the safety spot and who can forget DL Jay Alford’s crushing hit on Tom Brady in the Super Bowl!

As the Giants got Bradshaw at the 250^th overall pick, it’s hard to believe that position really matters that much for what must be a great group of scouts. Six of their seven 2007 picks not only made the team but helped drive them to victory in the biggest game of them all.

With the injuries suffered by Plaxico Burress all year and with the age of Amani Toomer, the G-Men will also probably grab a wideout or two. But I would expect the higher picks to be spent on linebacker and safety spots.

One thing does worry me, though, and that would be the possibility of making the big mistake. The Jets especially seem to have a talent for it. I can still recall their trading two Number 1’s for Johnny Lam Jones, a receiver who couldn’t catch.

That mistake could be in the form of Chad Johnson, the very mouthy but talented wide receiver from the Bengals. Please, Jets geniuses, don’t make things any worse.