Another NFL season is ending. Ugh!
Some random thoughts while I try to figure out what to do with myself now that another NFL season is ending. . . .
Given my status as the No. 1 Andy-Reid basher, emailers love to troll me about the incredible success of KC coach in the past six seasons. One of the less profane fans asked why Reid got so much smarter after he left the Eagles. (After all, he won zero championships in 14 tries here.)
Isn’t the answer simple?
Patrick Mahomes.
Unlike Donovan McNabb, Mahomes knows how to run an offense, how to improvise the biggest plays with jump-passes and bold runs right to the first-down marker. He is the football genius on the Chiefs, not Reid.
Stop believing all of the pabulum by the adoring national media. Rose-colored commentary like that is designed for the gullible and the stupid.
Meanwhile, I can’t wait for two more weeks of the same fat jokes by Reid. And please, give us more commercials featuring Reid’s walrus mustache and rapier wit. That stuff never gets old.
Bravo to David Letterman, the retired talk-show icon who told all of the critics of the Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce romance to shut up. If there’s no place in football for a positive story about two people in love, then what is worthy of our attention leading up to Super Bowl 58?
Do we need more stories about media whore Rob Gronkowski’s latest bid for relevance, more bluster about the whiny San Francisco fans, more gushing testimonials about Patrick Mahomes?
Taylor Swift is the most popular entertainer of the past generation.
Travis Kelce is the greatest tight end in NFL history.
They are in love.
If this story bothers you, look in the mirror.
Staring back at you is a jackass.
As predicted here last week, the Eagles piled the manure high in their shameless news conference last week certifying the news that Nick Sirianni will return in the role of front-office puppet for one more season.
Any coach with an actual backbone would have done what Doug Pederson did four years ago when he told owner Jeff Lurie and GM Howie Roseman that he was through serving their dubious whims. Sirianni was stripped of all tangible powers, and his reaction was: Thank you so much for this big vote of confidence.
Now it’ll be Kellen Moore in charge of the offense and Vic Fangio running the defense. Michael Clay will continue to oversee special teams.
Nick Sirianni?
His primary role now will be the team’s culture – as if it weren’t obvious enough that his entire team quit on him during the collapse this season.
Only in the warped world of the NFL can a dunce like Sirianni hold down a head-coaching job while the best coach in history, Bill Belichick, remains unemployed.
Howie Roseman is the most polarizing sports figure in recent Philadelphia sports history. For me personally, his up-down history running the Eagles has me downright bipolar.
I hated him before I loved him when the Eagles won the Super Bowl in the 2017 season, then I hated him again when he drafted Jalen Reagor over Justin Jefferson, then I loved him when he put together the best Eagles roster ever in the Super-Bowl season last year, and now I can’t stand the guy again.
His refusal to acknowledge a blind spot in selecting linebackers was the low point of a depressing news conference last week. This season the Eagles got killed by intermediate passes against a talent-deprived, clueless linebacker corps.
But Roseman plans no changes in his evaluation of a vastly undervalued position.
“I feel like we’ve had a long history of success here building the team a certain way,” he said. “And I think maybe there are some preconceived notions that, at the linebacker position, that we don’t care who we play at linebacker. Again, our two Super Bowl teams over the last six years, the linebacker play was good from those guys.”
This is classic Roseman. He never answers the question of why the linebackers were so horrible this season.
Yes, Nakobe Dean was hurt – twice – but he is hardly a sure thing after two MIA seasons in the NFL. The rest were awful, a collection of retreads and waiver-wire rejects. If the linebackers were so good last season, why did Roseman let the two best ones, T.J. Edwards and Kyzir White, go?
How does Roseman’s boss feel about this?
Ha, ha. You expect to hear from owner Jeff Lurie after the worst collapse in Eagles history?
Not a chance. He would have to actually respect his fan base to do that.
The state of NFL network broadcast analysis has reached a new low this year, and the trend is down, down, down.
Cris Collinsworth makes every game he does on NBC unlistenable because of his high-energy ass-kissing, Tony Romo on CBS has (rightly) become a weekly pinata for critics of his lazy work, and Greg Olsen on Fox is a nonsense machine.
When Dan Campbell, on three separate occasions, passed up field goals in the process of blowing a 17-point lead in the NFC Championship game, Olsen questioned nothing. Go back and listen to the tape. He presented the options of going for it on fourth down or kicking the ball, but he never offered an opinion.
After it became clear that the Detroit coach had blown the game with his decisions, Olsen said Campbell did the right thing in all cases because it was consistent with the coach’s bold play-calling all season.
Do they give IQ tests before they hand out these broadcasting jobs?
Or is the deciding factor which ex-athletes can pander the best?
I will make a prediction about Tom Brady’s debut as the No. 1 analyst on Fox next season.
The GOAT will be an improvement over Greg Olsen.
So would an actual goat.