You’ve seen it on crappy CW-type shows hundreds of times. Girl gets dumped, girl spreads rumors about the guy/the new girl behind their backs, everyone finds out and shuns the girl. Well, you probably haven’t actually because you’re a guy reading a sports blog and you don’t watch those kinds of shows. At least, you’d never admit to it. And if you did you would claim it was just to ogle the more attractive cast-members. But you probably get the idea.
The girl, in this case, is Brett Favre who continues to act like an overly hormonal teenage princess, first calling BFF Tony Romo and helping her through the trying times of a broken pinky, and now, apparently, calling the enemies of her Ex and spreading around embarrassing secrets about their playbook. I hear she was up all night talking to the Detroit lions. OMG can you believe it?
Seriously, what a douche. He’s definitely taken over for John Edward (the psychic, not the politician, although it’s actually an open question at this point as to whether John Edward or John Edwards is in fact the bigger douche, I suppose) as the biggest douche in the universe. Brett Favre should be helping the Jets. He should not be helping the Cowboys, and he should not be helping the Lions. Burning bridges is always a bad idea, but it’s a really bad idea when that bridge probably leads to a substantial income for life, fan worship, and a fawning press corps.
What's wrong with him? Is he just a weirdo? If he drinking again (again)? This behavior is simply bizarre.
Fortunately, Brett Favre’s gossip to the Lions does not seem to have hurt the Pack (possibly because he was gossiping with Matt Millen). In fact, the intended harm has boomeranged right back where it belongs.
I’d also like to note that Brett has not played two really shitty games in a row, and has, in general, been a downgrade from Chad Pennington.
Chillar Than You
One of the interesting things about football is that one player can have an enormous cascade effect, for good or ill, on everyone else. For instance, typically a strong pass rush will make defensive backs better by forcing the quarterback to hurry his throws. Defenses that have strong pass rushers need not employ top corners, however, should one of their pass rushers get hurt, that team will become much weaker everywhere.
Brandon Chillar was absolutely outstanding yesterday in an area where the Packers have struggled in the past: Coverage Linebacker.
Chillar made Dallas Clark miserable most of the day (most of Clark’s yards came on one deep ball on which Chillar was not the defender), and provided excellent run support and short-pass support, making several excellent open-field tackles. Chillar basically took away the flats and the short middle of the field, which allowed the corners to keep to their receivers, and allowed the Packers to maintain pass coverage even in their base defense.
The other big factor in the defensive domination of the Colts was physical play in the secondary. It’s common knowledge that the best way to deal with Marvin Harrison and Reggie Wayne (and Anthony Gonzalez as well) is to hit them and to disrupt their timing, but for that strategy to work the officials have to allow some leeway. The officials on Sunday flagged everything, but by and large they let the guys in the secondary play (with a few exceptions).
Everything came together for the Pack in this matchup. The offense played conservative, mistake free ball and watched the Colts screw up repeatedly. Aaron Rodgers looked like the calm veteran, and Ryan Grant wasn’t terrible (although his gross numbers were more a function of his carries than anything else. His YPC was still lousy).
The Packers will take some momentum into the bye week where they can get healthier before they take on the murderously tough Titans in two weeks.
Rays. Phillies. It’s on.
In what is sure to be an exciting World Series, and a ratings disaster for Fox, the Philadelphia Phillies will take on the Tampa Bay Rays, who overcame an enormous choke job to take game seven against the Boston Red Sox behind the stellar pitching of Matt Garza and a big base hit by Rocco Baldelli, he of the mysterious muscle/mitochondrial ailment.
This series will feature a ton of stars like Ryan Howard, Cole Hamels, Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, and the young stars of the Rays like Scott Kazmir, BJ Upton, Evan Longoria, and Matt Garza. In theory, this should be a highly entertaining series. It says a lot about baseball that geography is a bigger driver, ratings-wise, than is talent. National games almost always feature a New York team, the Red Sox, the Cubs, or an LA affiliated team, and therefore the highly desired “casual fan” is not exposed to these good players regularly. Football would never allow such a thing to happen.
Fortunately, we appreciate good baseball around here and know enough to know that Evan Longoria is not married to Tony Parker and is, in general, super-awesome at baseball. I’ll take the Rays in 7. It should be a good one.
The Badgers Are Now Double-Secret Horrible
I suspect that no one will watch them at this point, which explains the double-secretness. I can’t really even write about their QB situation without the risk of turning someone into stone. The defense can’t stop the run or the pass. It’s just a complete debacle.
So what gives? Is it recruiting? Coaching? Effort? Well…
1. Typically, teams that do not conduct a nation-wide search for a new coach do poorly. Bret might not be up to the task.
2. The QB recruiting has obviously suffered. You can win without a prototypical QB at Wisconsin. The best Wisconsin QBs tend to be runners more than passers (See: Bollinger and Samuel, and Stocco a little bit.) QB is super important, and can drag down a whole offense.
3. The Big Ten is changing. Illinois. Michigan. Northwestern. The Terrell Pryor Ohio State Team. Purdue. Indiana. These are teams that run some form of pass-happy spread with tricky, counter-style rushing attacks. Wisconsin has typically struggles with spread offenses, and the more the Big Ten goes in this direction, the more Wisconsin will have to change.
4. Maybe it’s just one bad year. Hey, it’s possible.
Iowa beat the Badgers badly, and I’m not sure there are specific lessons to learn other than this is a lost year. Alas.
Today’s HOTD is brought to you by Unibroue. Unibroue, that’s a funny name.
I wonder if, if the allegations are true, Favre broke any laws/rules. I mean, in any other company, you can't just tell a competitor trade secrets.
ReplyDeleteFavre is a woman scorned. He's been the enemy since he wanted to be a Viking.
ReplyDeleteBrett Favre is dead to me.
ReplyDeleteI think Favre needs to see a shrink.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, the psychic has to be a bigger douche than the politician. I mean, just claiming to be a psychic and giving people advice based on it is enough, but he makes piles of money off of it.
Finally, it was only double-secret prior to the Big Ten season when they had the high ranking. Now it is quadruple-obvious.