Poor refereeing marring NFL action

by | Oct 26, 2008 | NFL Random Thoughts

There were several exciting, tightly-contested games during week eight of the NFL season but poor officiating continues to affect outcomes.

In Philadelphia, with 2:22 remaining in the fourth quarter, Atlanta had pulled within six points of the Eagles and was receiving a punt with a chance to go on a tying drive. Instead, a punt allegedly bounced off return man Adam Jennings and the Eagles recovered. Two plays later Brian Westbrook iced the game with a 39 yard touchdown run.

I didn’t see the play, but according to media accounts, Jennings never touched the punt. According to ProFootballTalk.com’s Mike Florio, who was on Fox Sports Radio at the time, Jennings in fact was waving teammates away from the ball. But the Falcons were out of challenges so they could not dispute the call despite its game-changing nature.

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Picks delayed this week but “Best Bets” debuts

by | Oct 25, 2008 | NFL Gambling

My brother usually posts our picks and he’s got mine sitting in his inbox. He’s also made his so they’ll be posted, I’m told, sometime on Sunday.

But the picks will be delayed as he has taken a bit of a long weekend to celebrate his wedding anniversary.

We’ve been picking every game against the spread this season, though as mentioned in his post last week we both realize that’s sort of a ridiculous feature. It’d be a damn rare week where either of us ever felt strongly enough about all of the point spreads that we’d bet on every game.

So I’m going to debut yet another gambling feature to this site this week: Andy’s Best Bets.

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Now I understand why they suspended Winslow

by | Oct 25, 2008 | NFL News

When it was announced that the Cleveland Browns had suspended Kellen Winslow for revealing his staph infection issues and voicing displeasures about how the team handled the situation it seemed to me that either the team was being thin-skinned and overreacting or there was more to the story.

Now it appears that’s true, as the Cleveland Plain-Dealer has a story today saying Winslow committed “profane verbal abuse of a club’s public relations member in the locker room” following last week’s game against Washington.

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Browns suspend Winslow

by | Oct 21, 2008 | NFL Breaking News

On Sunday after the Cleveland Browns lost to Washington Kellen Winslow Jr. went public with details of the medical issue – a staph infection – that kept him out of the team’s game a week earlier.

He said he was upset with the team because it wanted to keep the infection quiet and blamed him for not wanting it revealed, and saved particular venom for general manager Phil Savage for not calling on him while he was hospitalized.

“I heard from [head coach] Romeo Crennel and I heard from my position coach [Alfredo Roberts] when I was in the Clinic. I heard from my teammates. But I never heard from the main man – Phil Savage – and that really disappoints me. Sometimes I don’t even feel a part of this team,” according to an Associated Press story posted at www.nfl.com (and linked to above).

On Tuesday the Browns issued a statement announcing that they have suspended Winslow without pay for one game.

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Fantasy ramifications of Williams in Dallas

by | Oct 18, 2008 | Fantasy Football

So Jerry Jones unloaded four draft picks and sent them to Detroit in exchange for wide receiver Roy Williams. Will owners of Williams get an immediate kick for their fantasy football dreams?

Immediately, the impact is more likely to be an improvement for guys like Terrell Owens and Marion Barber who will have another weapon to take pressure off of them. Defenses will have to spread their coverages more evenly against Williams leaving those two and Jason Witten more space to roam. They can’t double-cover everybody.

There are a couple other issues that will prevent Williams from having a huge immediate impact himself. First, he has to learn the offense. Sure, they can draw up four or five plays for him to run or tell him to go deep and he might get lucky and catch a couple long ones, but he’ll need to know the entire playbook before he can maximize his contribution.

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