by Andy | Dec 18, 2012 | 2012 season, NFL Random Thoughts
Wow. The Monday night season ended with a thud. After having a couple of decent matchups, ESPN was stuck with the Titans and the Jets last night and, though I didn’t watch a play, the highlights make it look like it lived up to its lack of billing.
How can the Jets keep tossing Mark Sanchez out there to watch him get destroyed week after week? The team still has at least a passable defense, but the offense is a mess. NFL Network has been running a poll asking if the blame should lay more with Sanchez or coach Rex Ryan. I would argue that it’s difficult to answer that question: Sanchez has been brutal but Ryan has stuck with him … not that I’m a huge believer in Tim Tebow or Greg McElroy at this point either.
I’m guessing Ryan is firmly on the hot seat (he was my number two coach likely to get fired in the preseason). It’s not as much a given that he’ll be fired as it is with Norv Turner and Andy Reid, but I’d say it’s a better than 50/50 proposition at this point.
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by Andy | Nov 28, 2012 | 2012 season, Hall of Fame, NFL Random Thoughts
Pride of Detroit wrote this week that Calvin Johnson is on pace to come within 20 yards of breaking the all-time single season receiving yardage record this year, which surprised me because it seemed like until a couple weeks ago he was having a somewhat down season compared with the number he put up in 2011.
As it turns out, Johnson is on pace for an 1828 yard season – just off the pace of Jerry Rice, who had 1848 in 1995. He’s just not getting in the end zone as much – he’s been tackled at the one yard line a ridiculous number of times – but he’s still having another monster year.
After seemingly taking a couple seasons to get acclimated to the NFL game after spending his college days at the wishbone stalwart Georgia Tech, Megatron has been on fire the last couple seasons. In 2011, he led the league in receiving yards with 1681, was second in touchdowns to Rob Gronkowski with 16 (Gronk had 17) and had 96 catches.
His stalwart numbers through the first six years of his career made me wonder how he stacked up with a couple of the league’s all-time greats. And yes, it appears as though these last couple amazingly prolific seasons have put Johnson right in the mix with the likes of Randy Moss and Jerry Rice, whose careers were compared on this site previously.
Barring injury, Johnson will eclipse Rice’s reception total for their first six years. Rice had 446. Johnson has 439 right now with five games left in the regular season for Detroit. He’ll likely fall just short of Rice in yardage, though he’s got a shot to catch him (7,129 with five games left to Rice’s 7,866). Rice’s 79 touchdowns through a half-dozen years has both Moss (77) and Megatron (53). (more…)
by Andy | Nov 16, 2012 | Hall of Fame
With the gay marriage amendment defeated during the election in Minnesota earlier this month, outspoken Vikings punter Chris Kluwe has found a new topic on which to opine: Ray Guy’s omission from the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
The arguments have gone both ways. He revolutionized the punter position. So he should be in. He’s just a punter, so he should stay out. He was great at pinning teams inside the 20 yard line so he should be in. His gross average wasn’t all that great so he should be out. As this Pro Football Reference blog post states, few players’ cases stir “as much passion and disagreement as Ray Guy.”
The topic came up again earlier this week when a Yahoo! Sports story featured the 62-year-old Guy, who now works at Southern Mississippi with former athletes from his alma mater, where he also helps raise funds. (more…)
by Tony | Sep 25, 2012 | 2012 season, NFL Picks
Nobody gave the Vikings a chance to beat San Francisco, not even Dan Zinski (@VikingAgeDan, @TheVikingAge), senior blogger at Viking Age Guy. “Honestly I thought they had no shot,” he says. “I’m not ashamed to say that. I figured they’d scrap through and maybe make it interesting before San Fran took control. I wasn’t ready for them just out-muscling the 49ers.”
But Zinski and the rest of the world were wrong. Minnesota beat San Francisco at its own game for what I believe is the upset of the season so far. I think the Vikings are still a year or two away from being a real contender, but Christian Ponder is giving the team’s fans reason for optimism. Zinski originally believed the Vikings were a four win team at best, but he’s revised his outlook, now giving the team a shot at 8-8.
“They should be in most games,” he says. “I’m still concerned about their defense and the lack of a deep passing game. But I’m becoming a Ponder believer and he has some legit weapons in Percy Harvin and Kyle Rudolph.”
Zinski joined Zoneblitz as the site’s celebrity game pick blogger for week four.
Week three was pretty brutal across the board, with my picks (Tony) edging Andy’s by one game (9-7 vs 8-8), while our guest blogger @moleandmeares finished 6-10 for the week. For the season, I’ve taken the lead, but we’re all separated by only two games:
|
Week Three |
Season Total |
| Tony |
9-7 |
27-21 |
| Celebrity bloggers |
6-10 |
26-22 |
| Andy |
8-8 |
25-23 |
Week four picks:
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by Tony | May 29, 2012 | 80's, By the Numbers, Hall of Fame
We’ve reached the dog days of the NFL–I consider myself a pretty big fan of the NFL, and even I can’t get that jazzed up about OTA’s. And it’s not just because my team went 3-13 last year–seriously, if you get excited about OTA’s, you might need professional counseling. Or you might be a Packer fan.
While there’s some great debate going on in our annual Hall of Fame thread, we’ve decided to fill the dead space with a series of posts that has been kicking around in my head for some time, and recently came back to the front of my brain when I heard a local radio host discussing the uniform number choice of a highly touted rookie (in this case it was hockey, but that doesn’t matter).
A few years back I bought a book that discusses, across all professional sports, who the best players to wear each number was. Of course, some of the numbers skew towards football (50-98, where fewer athletes in other sports wear numbers that high regularly), but I also thought some of the lower numbers tended to focus more on baseball/basketball than I would have expected.
So I figured we would start a series of posts discussing each number in the NFL (randomly) and who wore that number the best in the history of the league (we’ll gladly consider AFL, and even some CFL and USFL where applicable), and allow the fans to vote for who they think was the best.
The first number up is one that has had a significant tradition of star players: #81
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