Tag: sports

Do you doubt the narrative

As I said, it’s old school versus new school; it’s all about the quarterbacks, or perhaps, what the quarterbacks symbolize.

For Super Bowl, Focus Is on Passing, Perhaps of a Torch

There was a sense of farewell to each conversation. Manning even used the past tense when asked what he had said, answering that he told Brady and Belichick that it had been an honor to compete against them.

It was an interlude that might have summed up an epoch of N.F.L. playoff football, a period that the 39-year-old Manning is about to leave behind.

Manning’s next game, fittingly in the 50th Super Bowl, will be contested in a new pro football era, and the proof of that will be found on the opposite sideline, where his counterpart on the Carolina Panthers will be the new-age quarterback Cam Newton…. The contrasts between the quarterbacks will be the main story line.

“Fittingly.” It’s all about the narrative and the predictive programming, in the end:

“I still don’t get why he has to (be criticized). And maybe there are some people out there who are concerned with who he is, which I think is terrible. I really do.You think in this time, this day and age, it would be more about who he is as an athlete, as a person more than anything else. Hopefully we can get past those things.”

“Hopefully”, the Lacedaemonians said.

Championship Weekend

I’m going to go with the conspiracy theorists. New England over Denver, because Brady is the better representative of the Old School NFL. Carolina over Arizona, because Cam Newton is a better representative of the New School NFL.

Then New School NFL over Old School NFL for the 50th Anniversary Super Bowl, thereby symbolically denoting the transformation of America into the New America. Predictive programming calls for Carolina.

One could, of course, reach the same conclusion simply by comparing teams, but it’s more fun to prognosticate The Game of Pigskins via the NFL Narrative.

Yes, Green Bay should have gone for 2

ProFootballTalk considers Mike McCarthy’s decision to settle for overtime:

Three days later, the sports world continues to buzz about the epic Packers-Cardinals playoff game. And one of the many questions that continues to bubble up from time to time is this: Should the Packers have gone for two after scoring on a :00 Hail Mary pass?

In hindsight, absolutely. But if coach Mike McCarthy had opted to go for two and if his team had failed to convert, he would have become a pin cushion for criticism in the aftermath of what would have become his team’s latest failure in a playoff game. Apart from the fact that coaches who do the conventional and fail get a pass while those who do the unconventional and fail don’t, a McCarthy decision to go for two would have been directly responsible for the fifth straight failure to get to the Super Bowl despite having one of the best quarterbacks of the Super Bowl era on his team.

It’s not hindsight. It was the obvious thing to do. In 2015, the Packers went for it 6 times and scored the conversion 4 times for a 66.7 percent success rate. The league average was 47.8 percent.

But Mcarthy’s decision is even worse than the statistics indicate. The Packers were underdogs. The underdog should ALWAYS go for the winning two-point conversion. I was at a Vikings-Cowboys game in 1995 when the Aikman-Smith-Irvin Cowboys were the defending Super Bowl champions and the dominant team in the league.

The Denny Green-coached Vikings managed to tie the game with 30 seconds left. It was a chance at a huge upset; the Cowboys were clearly the better team and the only reason we were in it was due to a very rare Emmitt Smith fumble. The two-point conversion was our one shot at winning the game.

But like Mike McCarthy, Denny Green choked, and played to continue the game rather than to win. Sound familiar?

The Cowboys won the coin toss and needed
just five plays to win the game. Smith broke through a huge hole on the
left side and outran safety Charles Mincy to the end zone just 2
minutes 26 seconds into overtime. 

The players can tell when their chickenshit coach isn’t even trying to win, and they play accordingly.

Divisional Weekend, Day 2

Carolina is certainly off to a fast start. It’s not looking good for the Seahawks, given that the Carolina defense is better than the Vikings defense that held them to 10 points.

Interesting to see Cam Newton giving thanks right before the first snap of the game too. Who says a sanctuary must be indoors?

Mailvox: cold consolation

This one is for all the Minnesotans:

Ole and Sven die in a snowmobiling accident, drunker than skunks, and go
to Hell.

The Devil observes that they are really enjoying themselves. He says to them “Doesn’t the heat and smoke bother you?

Ole replies, “Vell, ya know, ve’re from nordern Minnesnoowta, da land of
snow an ice, an ve’re yust happy fer a chance at varm up a little bit,
ya know.”

The devil decides that these two aren’t miserable enough and turns up
the heat even more. When he returns to the room of the two guys from
Minnesota , the devil finds them in light jackets and hats, grilling walleye and drinking beer.

The devil is astonished and exclaims, “Everyone down here is in abject
misery, and you two seem to be enjoying yourselves?”

Sven replies, “Vell, ya know, ve don’t git too much varm veather up dere
at da Falls, so ve’ve yust got at haff a fish fry vhen da veather’s dis
nice.”

The devil is absolutely furious. He can hardly see straight. Finally he
comes up with the answer. The two guys love the heat because they have
been cold all their lives. The devil decides to turn all the heat off in
Hell. The next morning, the temperature is 60 below zero, icicles are
hanging everywhere, and people are shivering so bad that they are unable
to wail, moan or gnash their teeth.

The devil smiles and heads for the room with Ole and Sven. He gets there
and finds them back in their parkas, bomber hats, and mittens. They are
jumping up and down, cheering, yelling and screaming like mad men.

The devil is dumbfounded, “I don’t understand; when I turn up the heat,
you’re happy. Now its freezing cold and you’re still happy. What is
wrong with you two?”

They both look at the devil in surprise and say, “Vell, don’t ya know,
If hell iss froze over, dat must mean da Vikings von da Super Bowl.”

It occurs to me that one of the many casualties of the cultural rape of the West is Sven and Ole jokes. Sans a familiarity with Christian culture, there is no joke there.

No one will ever be this cool

88-year-old Minnesota Vikings head coach Bud Grant took the field.

In a short-sleeved polo.

In -9 degree weather.

This is still only my second favorite Bud Grant story. The best was when a reporter asked him what he thought about how things were different for coaches now, how they get paid a lot more money, and have more endorsement opportunities.

When the reporter asked if Bud thought he would have liked to have had a Bud Grant cologne, Bud looked at him in total disbelief, as if he was trying to decide between kicking the guy off of his porch or shooting him.

NFC Wildcard

I feel surprisingly relaxed going into the Seattle game. Whatever happens, I’m entirely confident that the Vikings defense isn’t going to lay down like it did when its three best starters were out, and it’s going to be fun to watch one last game that will be like they were in the days when I went to games at the Old Met. The one I remember most was a Monday Night Football game when we beat the Steelers, 17-6. That would have been 1976, and although it was early October, I remember it being a pretty cold night. But I was happy: vengeance for Super Bowl IX!

Still, as much as I hate to admit it, the Vikings probably did the right thing by going with the covered stadium. It’s so cold that tickets are going for as little as $45; people are a lot less willing to sit out in the freezing cold for four hours than they were back in the 1970s. Let’s face it, the value proposition has changed over time. Sitting at home watching a 12-inch black-and-white screen is very different than kicking back and taking in the game with a massive HD widescreen. And can be damnably cold in Minnesota in January.

Needless to say, my brother and a few of my friends are there; they opened TCF with Favre’s last game and they’re closing it today. Skol Vikings!

In the other game, I would be surprised if Washington has any real trouble with Green Bay. I thought the Redskins were crazy when they drafted both RGIII and Cousins in the same draft, but it is a QB-driven league, and someone in the Washington front office clearly recognized that two bites at the apple are better than one. And even if a player looks like the real deal in his rookie year, that’s not necessarily the case.

In other NFC news, Cam Newton’s description of the Carolina huddle cracked me up:

C Ryan Kalil – “He’s like the dictator.”

LG Andrew Norwell – “He’s the yeller.”

RG Trai Turner – “He’s the finisher.”

RT Mike Remmers – “He’s the panicker of the huddle.”

LT Michael Oher – “He’s the grandfather of the huddle. He’s a Scrooge. He doesn’t want anybody to play around, no matter what the score is.”

FB Mike Tolbert – “He’ll say a corny joke every now and then, and he has like a 20 to 30 percent chance of making people laugh. But it’s just the thought that counts.”

TE Greg Olsen – “He’s the overseer. He listens to the plays and he’s like, ‘No, no, no, that’s not right. It can’t be even, it has to be odd. I can’t zoom, I can’t motion that way because – no Cam, that’s not right.’”

WR Devin Funchess – “Has no clue what the hell’s going on.”

WR Philly Brown – “He’s cool.”

WR Ted Ginn Jr. – “He’s always exhausted.”

WR Jerricho Cotchery – “He’s just the meditator. The Jerricho that you see scoring the touchdowns is going to be the same Jerricho that you see pregame.”

Of course poor Ginn is always exhausted. They send him on fly patterns as a decoy for everything from an off-tackle dive to a halfback screen pass.

UPDATE: Seattle 10, Minnesota 9. Unbelievable. Zimmer coached a fantastic game and you could even say that the Vikings deserved the victory, but you simply can’t expect to win if your kicker is going to choke on a 27-yard field goal.

NFL Wildcard Saturday

Wow, Brian Hoyer was as bad as I have seen an NFL quarterback play in the playoffs. I couldn’t believe they put him back in after the half. Except for the opening kickoff, KC looked as if they were on cruise control the entire game.

Cincy’s defense looks NASTY. And McCarron looked pretty good in both games I saw him play. Given that defense, he doesn’t even have to do all that much for the Bengals to win anyhow.

Recognize!

The PFT Poet sums up a sterling end to the 2015 NFL Regular Season, with the Vikings back in their rightful position atop the NFC North and AD in possession of his third NFL rushing title.

The Historic Minnesota Vikings Dynasty officially began on this day.

Oh glorious, historic Minnesota Vikings.

We have the best team in NFL History….

The Decade of Dominance is officially here, you heard it hear first.

We will cruise throughout the playoffs for a historic Super Bowl victory, in the most glorious fashion.

We just took the Green Bay Packers title away…for good.

By the time Mike Zimmer retires and wins over 7 Super Bowl Trophies, the Lombardi trophy will be renamed “The Zimmer Trophy.”

Let the purple and gold confetti fall.

Recognize Greatness.
Recognize History.

Recognize your historic Minnesota Vikings.

Preach, preacher!