Wheat
Philosopher
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Saw this on the other board, thought it was hilarious. Thought you guys would also. Had to cut some stuff out so it was small enough to post. But, who cares about his daughters field hockey?
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2005/writers/peter_king/09/05/mmqb.predictions/index.html
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2005/writers/peter_king/09/05/mmqb.predictions/index.html
Preseason awards and predictions
Football is a low priority, but it's time for 2005 picks
Posted: Monday September 5, 2005 12:06PM; Updated: Monday September 5, 2005 12:12PM
STICKING BY MY SPRING PICKS
Patriots RB Corey Dillon ran for 1,635 yards and 12 touchdowns last season.
Elsa/Getty Images
I'm not switching my spring predictions very much. I'm still picking New England to beat Minnesota in Super Bowl Extra Large (XL, get it?) in February.
AFC East: New England, Buffalo, New York Jets, Miami. I'm tired of picking against a coach as smart and thorough as Bill Belichick with players as mistake-free as New England's. I like Buffalo's defense. The Jets are the best team in football I pick to not make the playoffs, but I think the Bills' running game and defense will trump them. Miami will struggle horribly on offense.
AFC North: Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Cleveland. I believe the Steelers' running game will still be good, whatever the fate of Jerome Bettis and DuceStaley. Baltimore's stalwarts are aging; can they be really good for 16 games? I have my doubts. Cleveland is going to have another depressing season.
AFC South: Jacksonville, Indianapolis, Tennessee, Houston. The Jags morph into this era's no-name defense. The Colts are still really good. Tennessee edges Houston because of one reason: a healthy Steve McNair versus DavidCarr.
AFC West: San Diego, Kansas City, Denver, Oakland. The Chargers start to build New England-type depth. Kansas City improves markedly on defense, but not enough to beat the Schottenheimers. Denver tires of JakePlummer's streakiness. Oakland plays a dozen 38-31 games, losing eight.
Wild cards: Buffalo, Indianapolis.
AFC Championship, at Foxboro: New England 30, San Diego 13.
NFC East: Philadelphia, Dallas, New York Giants, Washington. The Eagles have to be the deepest team of our time, though a quarterback injury would be a killer. DrewBledsoe's going to be better than people think -- good enough to get the Cowboys to the playoffs. The Giants could win anywhere between four and nine, depending on Eli Manning; I'll give them seven. Washington will play Jason Campbell at quarterback by Halloween. He's JoeGibbs' guy.
NFC North: Minnesota, Green Bay, Chicago, Detroit. The Vikings play as well on offense as when Randy Moss roamed the tundra, and they're better on defense with Fred Smoot covering everything that moves. I don't trust Green Bay's defense, period. I like the Bears' D a lot, so much that Chicago could pass Green Bay if Kyle Orton is competent. Detroit will be the best last-place team in football, but that won't count for much when Steve Mariucci is being judged after the season.
NFC South: Carolina, Atlanta, New Orleans, Tampa Bay. I buy the hype on Carolina. Love 'em a lot, though they'll be physically beaten by the six rugged division games. The Falcons will have to play great to match what they did last year, but I need to see an improved passing game to vault them over Carolina. Poor New Orleans. And poor Saints. How can you be great as itinerants? JonGruden's going to blow several gaskets this year. His defense, not the offense, will fail him.
NFC West: St. Louis, Seattle, Arizona, San Francisco. The Rams will be as good offensively as they were four years ago. Seattle has its moment of truth with Matt Hasselbeck this year, and it may not be pretty. Arizona might have had the most discouraging offensive preseason of any team in football. I don't think that should be a gigantic factor because the preseason isn't important, but it means something if your offense was pitiful to begin with. The 49ers have two years of rebuilding to go.
Wild cards: Dallas, Atlanta
NFC Championship, at Minneapolis: Minnesota 20, Philadelphia 17
Super Bowl XL, at Detroit: New England 31, Minnesota 15
I can't pick against the Pats. I think they're still hungry or at least motivated to do the little things they have to do to win. They can't afford an injury to Corey Dillon or Brady, and they will miss the leadership and underrated playmaking ability of Bruschi. But what this team does, which is the envy of every NFL team, is play efficiently and wait for the opposition to beat itself. And that's what usually happens. When they struggle, Bill Belichick is not afraid to fire people if that's what he has to do; he did it last year with special-teamer Shawn Mayer after a two-touchdown win at Buffalo. The kicking teams played poorly, and Mayer, a key cog on special teams, got whacked, sending shivers through the locker room. The message: You'll get cut if Beliichick is unhappy with your play, even if we're on an 18-game winning streak -- which they were at the time.
I also have faith the coaches, even without last year's coordinators, will figure it out. Belichick's a nut for continuing education. Last year he spent a day at the Naval Academy -- the Naval Academy, for crying out loud -- studying the running game. He was impressed that a team that was often outmanned physically could run the ball so well. He spent a couple of days with then LSU coach Nick Saban swapping defensive stratagems. This year, he spent an hour or so on the spread offense with Urban Meyer at Florida. The point: When Belichick was a coaching novice, he picked the brains of smart coaches around him. Now that he's won three Super Bowls, why would he change his modus operandi?
The Vikes? Pretty simple. I think they've done enough on defense to win, finally. I think they'll go 5-1 in their division, 3-1 against non-conference AFC North foes and win home-field through the NFC playoffs. That will enough to beat the Eagles and Panthers.
Now for the awards.
MVP
OK, I'm not picking Jake Plummer this time. I cannot tell you how much guff I've taken for picking the Snake the past two years. Boomer Esiason has made a cottage industry out of tormenting me over the Plummer pick. I am going to be very boring here. I don't see how we won't have a repeat winner, with our societal love of stats.
1. Peyton Manning, QB, Indianapolis. The only way he doesn't throw for 40 touchdowns and 4,000 yards is if he gets hurt, which, in seven full seasons, has never happened.
2. Daunte Culpepper, QB, Minnesota. You win 12 games, you save your coach's job, you throw for 3,800 and you do it all without Randy Moss ... well, that's going to get you a whole lot of MVP love.
3. Julius Jones, RB, Dallas. You knew I had to do something crazy here. This guy will be the Dallas offense. He'll run for 1,689 yards, propelling the Cowboys to a wild-card game and edging Jake Delhomme, the only other player to get any votes in the Associated Press MVP vote of media folks, for third place.
Offensive Rookie
1. Kyle Orton, QB, Chicago. Sometimes you catch lightning in a bottle. When I saw the 6-4 Boilermaker throw in training camp five weeks ago, I said, "Who is this kid?'' What a wing. I applaud Lovie Smith for making the tough call here and burying Chad Hutchison, a limited and mechanical player. Orton is Mr. Potential, strong-armed, confident and smart. He won't have great numbers. He'll struggle early, but I think the advantageous schedule late this month (Cincinnati, bye, at Cleveland) will give him time to catch his breath and learn his craft with coordinator Ron Turner. Having Muhsin Muhammad catch 83 balls, some of them thrown in different area codes, will help.
2. Cadillac Williams, RB, Tampa Bay. I've got to think he'll gain the most yards of the three top backs.
3. J.J. Arrington, RB, Arizona. Hasn't had a great camp, but he's still going to be a 1,000-yard back.
Defensive Rookie
1. Derrick Johnson, LB, Kansas City. I've seen him practice twice and he has the best speed for a linebacker I've seen since Lawrence Taylor. I think he's going to be not good, but great.
2. Demarcus Ware, LB/DE, Dallas. Sportswriters tend to vote for the flashy guys who make big plays when it comes to awards. But it's possible -- in fact, likely -- that at the end of the year the Dallas coaches will think Chris Canty, their fourth-round, two-way defensive end, will actually be their best defensive rookie on the team. For what Dallas needs, a stout presence up front, Canty will come up big. But Ware will be the outside rusher Dallas hasn't had since Charles Haley's cameo role a decade ago.
3. Corey Webster, CB, Giants. I remember Nick Saban telling me in Miami camp what an incredibly gutsy kid Webster was. He had, basically, a drop foot last year, and would get it taped up so he could limp around on the field for LSU. Webster wasn't nearly the player he could have been with his customary speed, but he played because he's a gamer. "Before he got hurt, he was a top-10 pick,'' Saban said. "I can tell you that if the Giants hadn't picked him, he wasn't going to get by us in the second round.'' What's impressed me watching him in the preseason is his fearlessness against proven receivers and his excellent hands. He'll get some picks, which the Giants need after being only plus-4 in turnovers last year.
Coach
1. Mike Tice, Minnesota. If he gets his team atop the NFC, he wins in a walk.
2. Jack Del Rio, Jacksonville. If he beats the Colts, he gets lots of votes.
3. Andy Reid, Philadelphia. If he can guide his team through the Terrell Owens-infested waters, he should work at the U.N.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"That kid grew up so far out in the country, he had to go toward town to hunt.''
-- Dallas coach Bill Parcells on first-round draft choice Demarcus Ware, who grew up in rural Alabama.
FACTOID THAT MAY ONLY INTEREST ME
One of the fun things about doing a package for the current Sports Illustrated (the pro-football preview, on sale now!) on the NFL playbook was to understand some of the weird lingo you always hear around NFL teams. Like the numbering system. Some teams have plays that might be called something like, "Scat right zoom, heavy 329.'' I've been hearing these numbers forever, and I knew they referred to the pass routes the receivers would run. And I knew what some of them meant. The ''9,'' for instance, is the universal language for a "go.'' Not all teams run offenses with this numbering system. The West-Coast teams do not, subbing words for the numbers. Philadelphia's players would look at Donovan McNabb quizzically if he called a "329'' in the huddle. "Just another way to teach players,'' offensive coordinator Brad Childress said. "It doesn't mean one way is better. We use words, and some teams use numbers.''
I asked Jedd Fisch, the precocious young offensive assistant working at the right hand of Ravens offensive coordinator Jim Fassel, to go through the numbering system for me. What each number means:
1. Flat route out of the backfield.
2. Five-yard slant.
3. Ten- to 12-yard square-out.
4. Fifteen-yard in-cut.
5. Eighteen-yard comeback.
6. Twelve-yard curl.
7. Twelve-yard corner (receiver breaks at 12 yards and heads for goal-line pylon).
8. Twelve-yard post (receiver breaks at 12 yards and heads for goalpost).
9. Go.
Let's say there's a standard two-wide, one-tight-end formation on the field, with one wideout spread left, the tight end next to the right tackle and the other wideout spread right. If the quarterback calls a play that includes "329,'' it means the wideout split left runs a 10- to-12-yard squareout, the tight end runs a five-yard slant back across the formation and the wideout split right tries to jiggle then speed past coverage by sprinting straight downfield.
Just thought I'd expand your X-and-O horizons a little bit on the eve of the season.
AGGRAVATING/ENJOYABLE TRAVEL NOTE OF THE WEEK
The scope of Hurricane Katrina, for those of us not particularly meteorologically minded, was amazing. On Wednesday, I flew from Texas to New England. We flew to the south of the storm, which was at that time over western New York. But the wind along the East Coast buffeted the 737 so much that we landed like a ping pong ball in Boston. This was when this storm was nothing, relatively speaking, and it still made our plane bounce around like a marionette. And I thought: I will never, ever "ride out'' a storm if smarter people than I tell me to evacuate someplace.
STAT OF THE WEEK
Brett Favre needs a 266-yard passing day Sunday against his old quarterback coach, Steve Mariucci, in Detroit to become the third NFL player to throw for 50,000 yards.
Ten Things I Think I Think
Rookie linebacker Kevin Burnett (right) participates in a drill with running back Julius Jones at Cowboys training camp.
AP
1. I think the Dallas defense is going to be good enough to put a scare into the Eagles. Not to beat the Eagles, mind you, but concern them. Former Giant CarlBanks went to the Cowboys camp to work with the linebackers and I thought he'd come back raving about the rookie Ware. He liked Ware. He loved KevinBurnett, the versatile 243-pounder who can play inside and outside. I think Banks saw some of himself in Burnett, a guy who can play the run well and has a good enough first step around the corner to be a 10-sack guy too. Not this year, but sometime in his career. For all the love thrown Ware's way -- deservedly, I might add -- remember Burnett was the 42nd pick in the draft and the third Dallas draft pick. This is shaping up as a very, very good draft for the Cowboys.
2. I think I'm not exactly sure what this means, but it's just an observation on the state of the relation between the Patriots and the Red Sox in Boston. I picked up the Globe when I got to Boston on Wednesday and this is what I saw in the coverage between the defending baseball and football champions:
•Patriots. About two-thirds of a page of coverage. One writer. One story starting on the front page of the sports section on defensive coordinator Eric Mangini speaking for the first time, a Patriots' notebook inside sports, then a long paragraph in the feature section on the team's preseason charitable dinner.
5. I think the Eagles, believe it or not, are still open to paying Terrell Owens his $7.5-million option bonus next March and keeping him. Andy Reid told me the other day it's in the 2006 budget. Not to say they'll do it if he's divisive this year, but they're at least open to it.
6. I think I learn a lot from listening to Sirius NFL radio.
