Contrast Manning’s reported behavior with Brady’s when he was injured. No wonder Brady ended up with more Super Bowl rings. He was the better quarterback because he is more of a team player.
If this is indeed the end for Peyton Manning, it may be even uglier than we thought.
While the product on the field has been difficult to watch (nine touchdowns, 17 interceptions), it has apparently extended off the field, too.
According to NFL Network’s James Palmer, with Manning not playing this week due to what the team is calling a left foot injury, the future Hall of Famer has not even been near his team or coaching staff this week.
Manning “hasn’t attended any practices or meetings this week and hasn’t had a single conversation about Sunday’s game plan with Brock Osweiler,” according to Palmer. Mark Haas at CBS Denver has reported the same.
Everyone has assumed that Peyton Manning would become a successful OC or head coach someday due to his high football IQ, but I wonder if his personality won’t sabotage him there too.
This is your weekly NFL Open thread. Big game in the NFC North today. Skol Vikings!
UPDATE: All Day does it again! 30-14 over the Vikings West (seriously, Del Rio, Tice, and Musgrave?), and AD ties OJ’s record for the most 200-yard games with six.
Today should also definitively settle the Manning-Brady question. Brady is better. Great finish in New York.
Holm easily won Round 1, bloodying Rousey’s face with stiff left hands and oblique leg-kicks that slashed through her opponent’s fearsome, furious frontal attacks. Rousey got in one takedown — her signature move that has won her several fights within the first minute — and Holm promptly wriggled out, then caught Rousey with a stinging punch to the face and a left elbow across the right cheekbone.
But it was the beginning of Round 2 that was to be the end of Rousey’s perfect 12-0 record. Still woozy and bloodied from the first-round beat-down, Rousey endured a number of stiff punches and kicks — most, again, to the face — as she tried to chase Holm around the ring, hoping to suck the taller fighter into one of her devastating submission holds.
That’s when Holm’s swinging left leg strike caught Rousey in the neck and sent her teetering to the mat: Holm fell with Rousey to deliver a flurry of finishing hammer punches to the face, but by then she was beating on an already unconscious Rousey.
The kick that ended Ronda Rousey’s perfect 12-0 record.
To paraphrase Rousey herself, I wonder how Ronda feels being beat by a woman for once? Tell us again how you’d beat Floyd Mayweather, Ronda…. I told you the woman was nothing but corporate feminist hype; now even those without any experience fighting know that she’s a fraud.
I had no respect for Rousey whatsoever because she is a liar, a charlatan, and utterly sans class. She showed no respect for her sport, no respect for far superior fighters, and no respect for her fellow female fighters either. Few athletes who have been so completely humiliated have merited it more.
On a technical note, these all-offense, no-defense fighters who rely on quickly overwhelming their opponents often surprise everyone with how completely they lose because their offensive dominance usually masks an inability to defend themselves. Once they meet a fighter they can’t simply overwhelm, they don’t tend to have a B option. Counterfighters tend to be the more complete fighters. I’ve bolded the relevant notes below, with my observations in italics.
Round 1: Holm offered up a touch of the gloves and Rousey didn’t take her eyes off her, refusing the gesture. Holm standing right in the pocket ready to engage, but it’s Rousey who gets off the first shot. Holm lands with a combo that stops Rousey for a brief moment in her tracks. No full-on blitz by Rousey yet, as she has done lately. [She was afraid of walking into a defensive jab from a superior boxer.] Another stiff left from the challenger finds a home, as does the oblique kick. Rousey with a right that stuns Holm and they clinch. To the fence and Rousey fires off several knees. Holm pushes back and Rousey unloads, but so does Holm. It’s likely Holm has hit Rousey more times through two minutes than she’s been hit in over a year. Rousey takes her down and is working for an armbar, but Holm defends and survives the first ground exchange. [This is likely where Holm won the fight. The grappler was counting on getting the striker to the ground quickly.] Back to the kick goes Holm and she circles away. Another kick finds a home and a straight left by Holm lands. Rousey’s face is starting to turn red from the straight shots, as she’s not moving at all. She’s just eating these shots. [She can’t close and she couldn’t finish when she did. No Plan B.] Holm loses her mouthpiece and we have a break. Holm with the clinch and she takes Rousey down, quickly getting back to her feet. Rousey looks desperate, chasing after her and she’s breathing heavily. Exchange of knees from the two, but Holm is all over her. [By this point, Holm knew she was in control of the fight. She’d figured out that Rousey had no defenses.]
FightLine scores the round 10-9 for Holm
Round 2: Rousey eats a shot right off the bat and a combo, as Holm is dominating this fight. Rousey completely whiffs on a strike and falls to her knees. She hurts her with a left and delivers a kick to the face and Rousey is out cold. Rousey was out cold and asking Herb Dean what happened.
Watch the video. It wasn’t even close. After a flailing attack ends up with her on her knees, Rousey exhibits a total lack of basic defense, as she failed to get clear before getting up and turning around. She blindly turned right into the kick, which is why she was KO’d on her feet.
After watching this, I would not only expect Holm to beat Rousey in a rematch, but I wonder if Rousey will even ask for one. That wasn’t an upset, that was a better fighter cleaning the clock of a tactically limited one.
Effective immediately we are suspending the publication of Grantland. After careful consideration, we have decided to direct our time and energy going forward to projects that we believe will have a broader and more significant impact across our enterprise.
Grantland distinguished itself with quality writing, smart ideas, original thinking and fun. We are grateful to those who made it so. Bill Simmons was passionately committed to the site and proved to be an outstanding editor with a real eye for talent. Thanks to all the other writers, editors and staff who worked very hard to create content with an identifiable sensibility and consistent intelligence and quality. We also extend our thanks to Chris Connelly who stepped in to help us maintain the site these past five months as he returns to his prior role.
There was no way the site was ever going to make money. It made sense as a means of keeping Bill Simmons happy, but there was no reason to continue it once they fired him.
I liked the idea, but it was too full of SJWs pushing the usual nonsense to bother sifting through it for the interesting articles. I quit reading it regularly long before the Sports Guy was ejected.
This would be it. And if you wanted to discuss the incredible end to the Michigan-Michigan State game, that would be understandable. While I have no doubt Harbaugh will somehow be blamed for not winning the game, I very much doubt the punter was instructed to do anything other than fall on the ball in case of a bad snap.
Football is not the only activity where trying to fix a problem that doesn’t need to be fixed is the best way to ensure complete disaster.
Now we know exactly what role the NFL’s in-house SJW, aka “Vice-President of Social Responsibility” is expected to fulfill. Unsurprisingly, it is to play speech police and nag the players for saying anything that a hypersensitive woman looking to be offended might find offensive:
After Cowboys defensive end Greg Hardy commemorated the lifting of his suspension with awkward remarks about Tom Brady’s wife and the unfortunate use of the phrase “guns blazin’,” different people had different reactions.
Cowboys fans and some of the media covering the team proclaimed that it was no big deal. Owner Jerry Jones downplayed the remarks in classic Jerry Jones style, reminding the world that Hardy won’t actually be taking guns onto the field, equating Brady’s value as a human with the attractiveness of his wife, and making an always-timely Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton reference.
Others weren’t happy with the comments. Once coach Jason Garrett made it clear that he’s in the group that finds the statements unfortunate, the issue seemed to be settled.
Through it all, the NFL said nothing. As of Sunday morning, the NFL has broken its silence, via comments from a league executive to the league-owned website.
“I couldn’t disagree more with Greg Hardy’s comments, and they do not reflect the values of the league,” NFL V.P. of social responsibility Anna Isaacson said. “We are working hard to bring attention to the positive role models many other players represent and also to continue our education with all members of the NFL family. . . .
“We spend a lot of time at the NFL educating our players on domestic violence and sexual assault. That’s what we control here, we control education. We control training, we control all the league does from a public perspective and public service, working with non-profit organizations. We can control that. So that everyone in the NFL family has the services and resources that they need if they need help.”
There is really only one appropriate response to Ms Isaacson’s comments, that being to quote the immortal Shinblade: “Who bitch this is?”
“League executive”? What a joke. The NFL should understand that it exists to entertain men and women who want to watch athletically gifted men play the game of football and that no one except SJWs gives an airborne rodent’s posterior about what opinions any of the players happen to hold about retired Victoria’s Secret models, dead actors, dead actresses, or firearms.
The NFL’s policy on player speech should be summed up in a single sentence: “Insofar as a player’s speech does not concern violations of the rules of the game, we have no position, pro or con, on anything that he might say.”
