Tag: sports

RAMS-SEAHAWKS

It will be interesting to see if the Vikings were wrong and Sam Darnold does have what it takes to win a Super Bowl. While I wish him well, I am skeptical, and even if he does lead the Seahawks to two more wins and gets a ring, I don’t think the Vikings would have been able to do the same this year if they’d resigned him due to all the injuries on the offensive line. I tend to think Stafford and McVey are good for one more ring together, but the Seahawks definitely have the defensive edge.

BRONCOS-PATRIOTS

I think the Broncos will win even with their backup quarterback, mostly because I don’t believe Bo Nix is that much better than Jarret Stidham. Both of them are in a situation more akin to the 2000 Ravens, so as long as Stidham doesn’t try to win the game with his arm, the Broncos should be okay. Last week Houston would have won if CJ Stroud had never thrown a ball, so I don’t see why the Broncos D, who allowed 17 more yards and 6 less touchdowns than the Texans D this season, can’t shut down Drake Maye at home even more effectively than the Texas did on the road.

New England 10, Denver 7.

Mike Vrabel completely outcoached Sean Payton and Drake May out-managed Jarret Stidham. I think Payton lost the game when he a) didn’t kick the early field goal, b) didn’t run the ball on 4th-and-1, and c) tried to get cute by putting his backup quarterback in high-pressure passing situations. The touchdown they gave up was 100 percent unnecessary and I completely blame the coaching staff for not telling Stidham to either throw the ball away right away or take the sack.

That’s one area where defensive coaches are much better than offensive ones. They don’t actively lose games the way the offensive smart boys so often do.

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What a great game last night. To be honest, although I’ve always been an NFL guy, for the last two years, the College Football Playoff has been much, much more entertaining than the NFL playoffs, despite the many close games in the latter, mostly because watching CJ Stroud throw interceptions and Caleb Williams lobbing blind moonballs from 30 yards behind the line of scrimmage is less entertaining than two college powerhouses trading knockdown punches.

Indiana was the better team, but that Miami defense was downright ferocious. Miami missed a field goal in the first half, but Indiana should have put the ball away before giving Miami its last chance; false-starting inside the opposing 10 on 2nd-and-1 was very surprising coming from such a well-disciplined team. I wasn’t surprised by the blocked punt, as it looked like they were getting close on the two previous punts, but I was surprised by Fletcher’s 57-yard TD run.

I very much appreciated the way in which Cignetti was coaching to win, as both the end of the first half Hail Mary and the decision to go for it on 4th-and-goal from the five instead of kicking a field goal demonstrated. He made it very clear that Indiana was playing to win the national championship, not avoid losing it.

Anyhow, there are some serious problems with the new system, especially the way players who are talked into going into the portal find themselves in limbo when no one picks them up. But in general, and no matter how much I dislike the oversized power conferences and the decline of traditional conferences like the Pac-10 – which is its proper name, not the Pac-8, the Pac-12, or the Pac-2, although the latter was pretty funny – the various changes have definitely been very good for spurring more interest in what has become a much more competitive game.

Ironically, the first college game I ever attended was when Indiana played Minnesota in Minneapolis in 1976. The Gophers won, 32-13. And in the fifty years since, I would not ever have believed that Indiana would win its first national championship before Minnesota won its eighth.

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I cannot believe the Baltimore Ravens fired John Harbaugh. What he did with Lamar Jackson bordered on the miraculous, although Jackson certainly merits credit for being far more coachable and more willing to work on improving as a quarterback than anyone ever imagined possible.

Harbaugh will have another head-coaching job within two weeks, and quite possibly before the end of the weekend. The Ravens aren’t going deep into the playoffs with Lamar, in fact, they may not see the playoffs again while he is their quarterback.

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That was quite the comeback. I still don’t think Alabama deserves to be there, but they certainly showed they’re better than they looked against Georgia in the SEC championship game.

Meanwhile, Texas A&M-Miami is 0-0 at the half.

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Every man over the age of 40 is going to be backing the Colts for the rest of this season:

Stuck at EverBank Stadium, and waiting for a new charter home with mechanical issues sending the team plane in for repairs, Colts coach Shane Steichen and GM Chris Ballard were staring down a quarterback situation in apparent disrepair.

Starter Daniel Jones, already playing through a fractured fibula, had sustained a season-ending torn Achilles hours earlier, in what became a blowout loss to the Jaguars. Then, in the locker room postgame, rookie sixth-rounder Riley Leonard—who’d put together an admirable, hope-provoking three quarters—revealed to coaches the pain he felt in a knee that he tweaked during the second half.

Former first-rounder Anthony Richardson, who underwent orbital surgery in late October after a freak accident with a resistance band, was already shelved with no timetable for return. Veteran Brett Rypien was stashed on the practice squad. The Colts, quite simply, were long on problems and short on answers at the game’s most important position.

“What about Rivers?” Steichen asked, in the bowels of the stadium.

Ballard, taken aback, responded, “Would he do it?”

And thus began a wild 48 hours that brought eight-time Pro Bowl quarterback Philip Rivers, a veteran of 17 NFL seasons, back to pro football after a five-year retirement.

Success, needless to say, is unlikely. Joe Flacco may have come off his couch and played quite credibly to hold down the fort for Joe Burrows, but he’d only been out for a few months. Rivers has been retired for FIVE YEARS.

That being said, the fact that he’s been coaching and working out with pre-draft QBs does mean that he’s been mentally engaged with the game and knows he can still throw it. As for the rest, well, let’s hope we get to see for ourselves.

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ITEM: 16 23 163 69.6 7.1 3 0 21 4 129.2

ITEM: Daniel Jones fell to the turf in Jacksonville with an apparent Achilles tendon tear in his right leg. The Colts are in a mess because sometime on Monday an MRI is expected to confirm Jones suffered the season-ending injury and needs surgery.

The Vikings are 5-8. The Colts are 8-5. JJ McCarthy will likely be available for the last four games of the season. Daniel Jones will not be. It’s now possible, if not necessarily likely, that the Vikings will finish with a better record than the Colts.

Those of us who have been metaphorically murdering Kwesi and openly wondering if KOC had completely lost both his quarterback-whispering abilities and his marbles must admit that despite all of the travails of this season, their joint decision to roll with Nine instead of Darnold, Jones, and Rodgers might not have been quite as completely insane as it looked last week.

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