Monday, November 17, 2008

0 comments MMQB: Peter Wishes Upon A Star Edition

It's getting to be near the end of the pro football season and if there is anything you can count on, it is Peter King growing less and less lucid week by week. I think by November rolls around he is dreaming of Thanksgiving turkey, Christmas food, and the beginning of winter when he can hide his gut under a thick red and blue striped sweater.

This week Peter falls in love with the Titans and the Giants all over again.

2. I really want to see a Titans-Giants Super Bowl.

I really don't want to see a Titans-Giants Super Bowl.

How great would it be for the Giants to face an 18-0 team in the Super Bowl for the second straight year?

Since they are an upper Northeast team, for you that would be great, but for the rest of the country who are not Giants fans, this would be horrible.

We wanted the Titans to prove they could come back against a tough team on the road, and the Jags will have to suffice; Tennessee, down 14-3 with 25 minutes to play, rode three Collins touchdown passes to the win in Jacksonville.

What a comeback! I wonder if Peter realizes 25 minutes is nearly the entire second half? Not to take away anything from the Titans here but they had nearly the entire second half to score and catch up to the Jaguars. It's not like they were down 11 points with 5 minutes to go.

The Giants don't seem to have a weakness right now. Do you see one? I don't.

David Carr is their backup QB. That is a big enough weakness for me.

There can be no more questioning of Collins, who has thrown one interception in the past 21 quarters and taken four sacks in the last 34 quarters. He's an efficient winner, the perfect quarterback for a team with a great offensive line and solid running game and brass-knuckle defense that's going to play low-scoring game.

I think almost any quarterback in the NFL would be the perfect quarterback for a team with a great offensive line, a good running game and a good defense that is not going to give up a lot of points. If you gave a quarterback all of that, then that would be a pretty successful team.

I think the defense for the Titans is the real key here, not Kerry Collins. I don't see why Peter King keeps heaping praise on to Kerry Collins. The Titans defense gave up zero points in the second half on Sunday and have been incredible all year. Sure, Collins has his moments but right now any quarterback who tried not to do too much could win games for the Titans.

In the NBC viewing room, I've been yelling at the TV all year: "Don't take Jacobs out! What are you doing!''

How he stays so neutral I will never know.

I use to think the Patriots were Peter's favorite team and I still do, but the Giants are really creeping up on the Pats in Peter's heart I think.

The Giants would have to pay Jacobs the free-agent $7 million a year if he were to win a rushing title this year -- and he certainly could if that were the goal here.

I would disagree on this. I think Brandon Jacobs is a great running back but I also believe the system the Giants have in place is perfect for him. I think he would get injured or wear down as a back who carries 300 times a year. I have no proof of this, other than the fact he is a large man and this is what I think.

7. Tony Romo's a hero.

Tony Romo is a hero. Not only is he the first quarterback to play in the the Pro Bowl who looks like he is retarded but he also saves elephants from human poaching in his spare time and dates Jessica Simpson so she is not single and running loose in the world. He is someone we should all look up to...as soon as he wins a playoff game.

The problem with forecasting this group is so much can change in the next two months, but the one thing we do know is that, barring an upset, Cassel would be the first true free-agent quarterback with an intriguing upside and a strong full-season résumé and no tags on him in years. Maybe ever.

EVER! Unless you want to count Drew Brees in 2006, which I will because I had personally zero questions about his shoulder. You could also count the NFL quarterbacks like Rich Gannon who ended up being great QB's but not getting much attention in free agency.

That would not fit Peter's point though and that point is that Matty Iccccccccccccce 1.0 is awesome. The Patriots are nothing without him. What had the Patriots done before Cassel got there?

I am looking for the first "Tom Brady is a great QB but does anyone realize the Patriots have a good team even without him" article. I just hope it is well written.

And doesn't it stand to reason that in this season when Carolina isn't playing great but is getting a few breaks, and Detroit is playing like crap and getting no breaks that the 235-pound would win a wrestling match against the 280-pounder?

I am going to play homer for a second. Carolina is not playing great, yet somehow managed to run for 260+ yards yesterday and are 8-2 and 6-0 at home. I would not count that as "not great." If the Giants had done that, Peter would have led the column off with a story about the Giants running game and not 11 of his opinions. If Peter saw that game yesterday then he would know Detroit did not play like crap, though the Lions are horrible. I am not sure what kind of "breaks" Carolina is getting that other teams in the NFL are not, I am sure there are some but I know playing the same division as Tampa Bay is not a break. We will never find out what "breaks" they are getting though because it is never specified.

Also, I would expect the 235 pounder to win that match because he is in great shape, 23 years old and is a linebacker, while the 280 pounder is over 30, was not playing a week ago, and is a quarterback. Jon Beason should win that battle everytime.

That's my one homer moment, thank you for indulging.

The Fine Fifteen

My favorite part because it makes no fucking sense.

1. New York Giants (9-1)
2. Tennessee (10-0).

No sense.

OK. I've learned my lesson. No more picking against the Titans. Tricky stretch coming up. The Jets at home on Sunday, followed four days later with a trip to Detroit.

What a tricky time of year! A home game against a team playing over its head and then have to face a winless team. Tough times for the Titans.

Oh and by putting them #2 in his shit poll, he is picking against the Titans.

3. Indianapolis (6-4)

I just don't see how a team that has gotten lucky in a couple of games can be ranked this high. Maybe Peyton Manning is a better lover than we all thought.

9. Carolina (8-2). Quietest 8-2 team in recent NFL history.

Please keep them quiet.

Peter also called them "suspect" which is fine. I am not sure what they have done to be suspect in his mind, other than lose two games on the road. Semi-Homer moment #2, and I am done for the year.

Offensive Players of the Week

Brett Favre, QB, New York Jets. The numbers don't matter. They never matter in classic Favre games.

Read this sentence in the voice of a 13 year old girl. It is much funner that way.

Larsen's an older-than-he-seems 24, having taken two years away from the University of Arizona for a Mormon mission in the middle of his freshman year. So blocking Keith Brooking and tackling Michael Turner in the same game isn't exactly real-world tough to him.

If there is anything that prepares a football player for the NFL, it is a Mormon mission trip. Those two years of tackling humans and forcing them to convert to Mormon or blocking them from leaving the church is much like tackling and blocking football players.

Wait...this isn't what happens on Mormon mission trips? Then this comparison makes no sense...and Peter always makes sense. ..life now has no meaning to me.

But Watson, getting tackled at the Jet 22 after catching a pass from Matt Cassel, never had the ball touched. He simply dropped it, and the Jets recovered.
Instead of the game being 24-20 with 25 minutes to play and the momentum clearly on New England's side, Watson coughed up this huge chance. The Patriots, despite rolling to a 269-yard second half, never could pass the Jets.

Peter goes all "Easterbrook" here and blames one fumble by a player 5 minutes into the second half for the team's loss. What is the deal with Peter King saying "25 minutes left" like that is a short period of time? The game is barely halfway over. The Patriots inability to win the game was not caused by one fumble, I am sure a lot of other things happened as well.

Of course, I would not know, I don't have NFL Network.

MVP Watch

2. Peyton Manning, QB, Indianapolis

Great comebacks against Minnesota and the Texans but this seems a bit high. You know what screw it, let's just name Peyton the best QB of all time.

This brings me to my real point. What ever happened to Chris Long? Peter had a huge crush on him and talked about what a great player he is going to be. 32 tackles and 4 sacks. What a stud. He was drafted before Matt Ryan. If Peter was not in massive love with Chris Long, he would bring this up.

Not putting Drew Brees in the top 5 of the MVP race is just plain ignorant. You would have to include him for the same reasons you would include Manning.

Factoid of the Week That May Interest Only Me

and the entire New England area.

It's funny how you judge drafts sometimes. Look at the top of New England's draft in 2007, for instance, and here's what you see:

Round 1 (pick acquired from Seattle): DB Brandon Meriweather.
Round 1 (28th overall): Traded to San Francisco.
Round 2: Traded to Miami.
Round 3: Traded to Oakland.
Round 4: Traded to Oakland.
Round 4: OL Kareem Brown.
What a dud draft.


Not a very good draft, I would agree.

Upon further review:

It was part of the plan to have a shitty draft! Only the Patriots could be so shitty intentionally.

The Patriots used some of those picks to get Moss and Welker, which was a very good job by them. Peter has a great point up until here:

And Meriweather, second on the team in solo tackles, has been a good developmental defensive back.

He is a good developmental defensive back. That is not exactly what you want from your first round draft pick and the Patriots could have had LaMarr Woodley among other players. I know he is being positive about the draft but calling a first round pick who is not a QB a "developmental" pick is not a compliment.

Someday we may look at this draft as the one that propelled the Patriots to a second wave of championship contending, the way the 49ers look at the '86 draft (and trade for Steve Young).

Didn't the Patriots make the Super Bowl last year and go perfect until that point? I don't know when this second wave is supposed to come through but Moss is 31 and the Patriots are winning now and have been in Super Bowl contention every year since 2003 so this second wave is coming now. Or this is no second wave. Take your pick.

The Way We Were

Cortland Finnegan vs. Ronnie Lott

Which ever morons voted for Peter King to put this type of comparisons in his column need to be shot immediately. I don't even read this part because it is so useless. There could be a complete paragraph of idiocy and I would never know because I skip it. I think the idiocy is in comparing players who are in the league for 3-4 years to Hall of Fame players. It is a retarded game of "What If" and needs to stop soon.

a. If Jerod Mayo doesn't win the Defensive Rookie of the Year, there shouldn't be an award.

These awards mean nothing, so maybe there should not be an award. If you don't at least consider Chris Horton, Curtis Lofton, or a number of other players who have meant as much if not more to their team's defense, then you should not be able to vote for this meaningless award.

b. Two thoughts on the phantom holding call against Mike Vrabel that led to a late Jets touchdown instead of a late Jets field goal:

I did not see it but I am going to go ahead and say things like this happen a lot in football and never get mentioned in this column.

But don't moan about the call, Pats fans

says Peter King looking at himself in a mirror.

d. Pats: 6-0 when they win the coin toss, 0-4 when they lose it.

More Patriots trivia please! What's their record when you eat 8 hot dogs during the game?

i. "The Panthers had the day off. They hosted Detroit,'' Keith Olbermann said on Football Night in America.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, Keith Olbermann says is funny. When did he go from making sarcastic wisecracks to being a boring, annoying blowhard? I can't even watch his stupid fucking show on MSNBC or else I want to stab him in the neck everytime he leans into the camera to make another obnoxious point.

4. I think Terrell Owens needs to look at a tape of his game last night and ask himself why, in such a big game. he didn't catch the ball well. He drops the ball too much to be considered one of the all-time greats.

Really? Gregg Doyel doesn't seem to think so.

6. I think if I'm Andy Reid, I'm starting to think that when the Eagles are out of it, it's time to see Kevin Kolb. McNabb looks old. He can't move. Reid's got to see what he has for the future, but only when the Eagles are out of any realistic playoff contention. That hasn't happened yet.

Was it four or five weeks ago Peter King wrote about how it is unfair the NFC East can't put four teams in the playoffs? Now he is preparing for Kolb-time in Philly.

Here's what happens with Parcells: He makes it very uncomfortable to lose, and he takes great people and players like Jason Taylor, and if he deems them non-team-guys (fairly or unfairly), they're ostracized and purged.

Here is also what happens with everyone's hero Bill Parcells: he looks for other jobs while he currently has one, sometimes he looks for jobs while his team is in the Super Bowl, he lies and says he is retired until the highest bidder comes along, he sticks with a team until he gets bored and then leaves them for another team, and he has not won a Super Bowl since 1991.

d. Whoa, Terry Bradshaw. I respect your opinion about the Packers making a stupid decision about not bringing back Favre, but to say they'd be 8-2 or whatever with him? Have you seen their defense give up 154 rushing yards a game before Sunday? Sheesh.

Peter King thinks it is more 7-3 with Favre, but only because he would have so much fun out there (and of course look like a little kid with a smile on his face) he would throw 4 interceptions in one game.

10. I think these are my non-football thoughts of the week:
a. I've expressed my dissatisfaction with the increasingly imagination-stretching episodes of The Office, but one of the other two shows (along with Family Guy)

I don't know how The Office stretches Peter's imagination anymore than a cartoon with a talking dog and baby that has a European accent and attempts to murder his mother, but I would love to know.

A Buffalo win would give the AFC East one 7-3 team (Jets) and three 6-4 teams (Pats, Dolphins, Bills).

Oh, the tension all this mediocrity can lead to!

I want to go ahead and mention I hate that Fire Joe Morgan is no longer, it was weird to de-bookmark it, but to honest they had not posted anything to their standards in a while and I had started checking the site every week instead of every day. When it was good, it was better than I could ever even think of being though.

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