Category Archives: New England Patriots

Johnny Manziel, Michael Vick, New England Patriots, NFL, Nick Saban, Peyton Manning, Robert Griffin III, Seattle Seahawks, Tom Brady

The Notepad: No Huddle

When I was a younger man, and a much younger writer, I wrote a Sports Blog for a daily local around my hometown. Every so often, I would bust out what I deemed “The Notepad” – a wild, random mix of thoughts about sports that I had literally jotted down on a notepad. When I needed a column idea, I’d pull out that notepad and see if anything could be fleshed out into a full-blown opinion piece.
Usually, it couldn’t – but I found that I had enough nuggets of observation on those pages that I could piece them together in a way that provided a random-thought style approach to a piece. Like a list of jokes or one-liners a comedian deems unworthy of a full bit in his set, the notepad offered me the same freedom.
From time to time, I still jot things down – just usually on my iPhone. And since the beginning of the 2013 NFL season, I’ve had many thoughts. Since this Notepad is specific to football, we’ll call it the “No Huddle”.
–       I must repent. For years – and I mean years – I hammered Peyton Manning for his poor body language at certain times, most notably if a lineman dared to commit an untimely penalty or a receiver had the nerve to drop a pass that clearly landed in the basket. It drove me Lamar Odom crazy. Essentially, I felt that Manning was showing up his teammates in a very public way for imperfections. And then my man crush, Tom Brady, started throwing fits like a five-year-old at bedtime during the course of the first two games the Patriots played against the Bills and Jets.

Did I immediately want to ignore it and give Brady the benefit of the doubt I didn’t give Peyton? Of course. But I just couldn’t ignore Brady’s body language. Now, I won’t make a mockery of it the way Keith Olbermann did on his show last Friday, but I will say I’ve re-examined this whole thing and recognize that it must be incredibly frustrating for quarterbacks to work with young receivers. You spend a lot of time working and developing report with a player or a group of players and then circumstances, mainly business related ones, change the dynamic. Each year, as Brady, Manning and even the greats like Brett Favre, get further along in their career, they sense the time running out on the opportunity to stay or be elite. And when you’re breathtaking throws are dropped repeatedly, well, you start to snap like one might expect a mid-30s Hall of Famer to snap. Sorry for all the years I spent hammering Peyton for being rude.

That said…I have to admit Brady looks poor, and the reaction still leaves a bad taste in my mouth, no matter who it is apparently. Show some decorum out there, fellas. Bite that lip, save it for later.
–       If I hear another person complain about the noise in the Seahawks stadium – especially from a visiting team or their fan base – I’m going to vomit. Too loud for you? Stay home. You chose to attend the game. If you are a player, sorry your team’s fans can’t make it as loud in your home dome as Seattle’s 12th man does. Sorry the architect of your stadium didn’t intentionally work the design to showcase noise. This isn’t church or a library.
–       Tampa Bay players don’t like the strict rules of head coach Greg Schiano, eh? I don’t like how poorly they have played or how they gave the Jets a win in Week 1.
–       Is anyone else confused by the fines, suspensions and then redactions of those fines and suspensions? Remember that old NFL Films clip of Vince Lombardi asking, in effect, what the heck was going on out there? Well, let’s cue that up right about now. These fines or suspensions are theoretically levied after the league has reviewed the tape and made a judgment on what they deem a questionable hit, etc. So by and by, on Monday or Tuesday, the NFL sends out announcements on fines and suspensions. And then within 24 hours, they change them? Why? Didn’t they look at it and make a decision? Are they that easily swayed by the appeals of the players? How does that work? Is it the Shaggy defense: “It wasn’t me!”
–       Can we stop with all the talk about how Johnny Manziel has a future in the NFL? He’s not out of college yet, and our sample size on these new age QBs isn’t large enough to know if this is a reliable system or a short-term success. I like what Manziel did against Alabama and Nick Saban’s vaunted defense. It says a lot about Manziel that he can hammer Saban’s defensive plans for more yards and touchdowns than he did in their first meeting. And I’ve professed how much I enjoy Chip Kelly’s speed offense. I also like Russell Wilson, RGIII and Colin Kaepernick. Their abilities are amazing, and frankly, unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.
But so far, we haven’t truly seen sustained success. Michael Vick, the forefather of this style of play, has only played one, full 16-game season in his 11 years in the NFL: 2006. He’s had several 15 game seasons, but all pre-date 2006. Since returning in 2009, Vick has started over 12 games just once – in 2011.
RGIII shredded his knee in the playoffs 9 months ago. Yes, there have been advancements in medicine and rehab – but long term, will be last until he’s 35? Kaepernick’s started just nine games (not including the playoffs). I just wrote about not poo-pooing the fun style of play we’re enjoying a few weeks ago and now I appear to be doing it. That’s not my intent. My intent is to say, essentially, let’s just watch and see where this goes over the next year, two years before we say in the modern NFL, Johnny Football has a spot reserved as a starting NFL QB.
Final thought: Take how great Manziel was against Bama with a small grain of salt. In the 2008 SEC Championship Game, Tim Tebow threw for 216 yards and three TDs, then ran for an additional 57 yards as Florida upset #1 Alabama. And Tebow can’t even get the lowly Jaguars to give him a shot. Manziel is a different player than Tebow, but two things jump out at me: Saban’s defense is great, but can give up stats sometimes and many scouts are questioning Manziel’s arm strength. The difference is that Kaepernick, RGIII and Vick have pretty good arms – and legs.
–       Lots of injuries so far this season, but I don’t know if it’s any worse than in years past. Many pundits are pointing to the lack of padded practices during training camp and the season following the changes made during the lockout a few years ago as a reason, but aren’t there always injuries? I think we’re just dealing with a chasm between old-school players who are by-products of an era when hitting and full pads was all you did. And they think it’s cheapened the game a bit. But these some of these same players will or have complained about post-career health issues. Why can’t we admire how hard the game used to be while ensuring it’s safe to play in the future?
–       Ray Rice doesn’t think much of fantasy football, or those who troll his Twitter account to say nasty things about his early season statistical struggles. I love fantasy football, but I’m not one of these trolls who thinks Ray Rice or anyone else should be thinking about fantasy stats, I hear you, Ray. Then again, don’t lower yourself to actually responding with a tweet to let them know you’re reading that garbage. Just feeding the beast, my man.

–       The Broncos sure look good. The Steelers sure look bad. We’re been here before. 2-0 or 0-2, nothing has been settled, no fates determined. Denver fans are thinking about booking tickets to New York for a Snow Bowl appearance (seriously, check out the Farmer’s Almanac for a prediction on the weather next February around the stadium) and Steelers fans are ready to fire everyone. Slow down, put the season on a simmer and just let it matriculate. It’s the NFL, after all, you know – Not For Long?
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Baltimore Ravens, Bill Belichick, Chuck Klosterman, Code of Conduct, Los Angeles Lakers, Manti Te'o, Morals, New England Patriots, Ray Lewis, Tom Brady

These Lines in the Sand


These lines in the sand,
they keep hurting my hand,
because I redraw them all the time
And covering my tracks
shows me what lacks
’cause life is more than just a climb…
Perspective and introspection are a funny thing.
It’s easy to admit when you are right, and often times hard to accept that you’re wrong. Somewhere between those two places lies our own rationalization, a vague area where we’ve justified our thoughts, our reactions and our perspectives. It’s here, in this place, where we identify what we stand for.
What do I stand for? I’d like to think I know, but truthfully, I’m all over the place. Frankly, we all are.
Last night, following the Baltimore Ravens 28-13 victory over the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship, I commented on Twitter how much I was not looking forward to the next two weeks of The Ray Lewis Farewell Tour. It makes my skin crawl every time we hear another gushing commentary about what a warrior, what a competitor and what an inspiration Ray Lewis is.
And as I wrote a few weeks ago, my visceral reaction is in large part due to the fact I’m uncomfortable with the elephant in the room regarding Lewis’ legacy. I was blown away by a couple of good friends saying 1) they didn’t care as much as I did, and, 2) they’d rather hear about Lewis than Tom Brady and Bill Belichick.
As one of my friends said, we’re not the Moral Police, so whether the story lines revolve around Lewis or Brady, it was a toss up to him. I knew they were partly needling me, as a Patriots fan and someone who loves Brady, over the team’s defeat. Yet another part of me couldn’t comprehend the comparison: Brady is disliked because he wins, because his coach is unlikable and because the Patriots are always good. Ray Lewis’ story is a little more sordid and scandalous, revolving around the night of the Super Bowl in 2001, when two men were stabbed to death after getting into it with Lewis and some of his crew.
How are these things even comparable?
In short, to me, they are not. But I’m not the Moral Police either, so just because I find something gross, distasteful or just plain wrong doesn’t mean others have to. Not everyone thinks the same way I do – and I shouldn’t expect them to. Further, even you could find 49 other people out of 100 to agree with you exactly on something, you’d easily find another 50 who didn’t.
And that’s where we are, really, as sports fans and as a society: split. We justify and rationalize things all the time depending on our own perceptions and values, calling some things wrong and other things right when really, that’s just our own justification for holding some ground on an ever moving target.
Our codes of conduct, our moral lines, are drawn in the sand.
As another friend pointed out, I had no problem with Kobe Bryant’s rape accusations, but I’m getting high and mighty over murder charges? Well, clearly I did have a problem with it – but the point remains, I continued to, and have continued, to root for the Los Angeles Lakers despite Kobe Bryant’s 2004 rape charges.
In my head came the rationalization, where I moved the line in the sand. The Lakers have been my team since childhood. Do you stop rooting for your favorite team because its star franchise player doesn’t seem like a very good dude? Do you allow yourself to call him one of the greats and celebrate the championships he helped guide that team to? In my case, the answers were no and yes.
So I just basically took my hand and made a new line in the sand.
Likewise, the reason I’m a Patriots fan is Tom Brady. New England isn’t my childhood team. And Bill Belichick, despite being decorated with rings and trophies, isn’t the fairest coach around (I get that’s an understatement). Between Spygate and his constant unsportsmanlike behavior, he’s, well, a jerk. But I like Tom Brady, so I neither agree with his actions or defend them; I just ignore and pretend it’s not there.
Many revel in the Patriots losing and often refer to Belichick and “Belicheat” – which is clever, and most likely true. Yet other teams have been accused of pumping in sound to their stadiums. From high school to the pros, coaches will leave the grass longer or shorter to gain a slight advantage. Is there a difference between taping your opponent to gain an advantage and using all the tools in the stadium to slow them down, break their communication and so forth? Probably so, and the former is certainly a more aggressive form of cheating, but it still feels like we’re justifying one over the other, when in reality, they’re all probably some form of wrong.
Is it all or nothing? Does it have to be?
Additionally, I’ve got no problem rooting for Brady, someone who left his pregnant actress girlfriend for a Victoria’s Secret model, but for years I held local rumors of infidelity against Peyton Manning. Rumors which were never confirmed or exposed in the media, just friend of a friend stories and word on the street type stuff. Nevertheless, I drew my line in the sand: I liked Brady better, so naturally, I looked for the flaws in Manning and ignored character traits of Brady that didn’t jive with my own personal Moral Police.
And really, that’s what we all do. It makes it easier to root for the laundry, since, as I’ve said many times, we don’t know these athletes at all.
We look up to them, but we shouldn’t. We should always be our kids role models. And even when we are, athletes provide some sort of third party credibility to the narrative when you’re coaching your child through a tough defeat or a loss, to say, hey, look at Player X on our favorite team – he fought through that, so good things can happen. Meanwhile, Player X fought through it by taking PEDs, and hasn’t paid child support in six years.
Time to redraw the line in the sand, again.
As I am sure my friend would remark at this point, who cares? Stop with the morality play and just be entertained. What does it matter, anyway? But I can’t.
At the height of the Manti Te’o story last week, Chuck Klosterman wrote on Grantland, in a piece with Malcolm Gladwell, that in essence, our reaction to Te’o shouldn’t necessarily change all that much because some of the story was omitted or embellished or a hoax. He compared it to a best friend of telling you that 10 years ago, he had murdered someone and never been caught. He was sorry now and a changed person. Would you still be his friend?
Klosterman argued that you’d put aside your own moral code and disdain for this action because you knew your friend as someone completely different than the person he was describing and you would remain his friend – unless you were a self-righteous individual. A self-righteous person would say they could never be friends with a murderer because actions have to have consequences.
Basically, you’d move your line in the sand to accommodate your friend.
I guess you can call me a hypocrite for all of my rationalizing on which teams and athletes I root for, and I will be the first to do so, frankly. Because it is hypocritical to blast Ray Lewis, but not turn my moral guns on Kobe Bryant. And I guess according to Chuck Klosterman, I’m self-righteous, because I don’t think I could be friends with someone who committed a murder and got away with it.
We do this justification and line drawing all the time, in normal life, too. The clerk forgot to scan a 24-pack of water bottles, did we go back and tell them? No, because they charged me more for hamburger than the store down the street. Your co-worker comes in an hour late every day and it makes you mad that the boss never says anything, but you’ll take that extra 15 minutes at lunch for a few days a week for six straight months and justify it as a wash.
Let’s say I finally got the break I was looking for in writing, that all my dreams could come true, but all I had to do to get there was write a scathing lie that everyone would believe about an athlete or coach. I’d never be exposed and it would propel me to the top of the sports writing genre.
Would I do it?
I say no. I couldn’t allow myself. Just like I would not have taken a pill to get to the pros. My best friend thinks I’m saying that in retrospect, that I’m standing on a moral high ground by proclaiming that. And there’s really no way for me to confirm that I would have turned it down. And there’s only one way for me to confirm I wouldn’t write the column to break my career open (that’s a hint for someone out there to field me an offer).
But I have to believe that I wouldn’t, otherwise, what do I stand for?
I presuppose that many others are like me, but perhaps there are not, who want to know that you can reach your goals without lying and cheating, and that when you do, you won’t become an insufferable jerk.
It seems more logical to stay true to what I say I believe, based on my own personal Moral Police than to continue to stay loyal to a team or an athlete. When the information we have changes, so too does our opinion or allegiance, right? It’s been confirmed the world is round, so just because, let’s say, I was a World is Flat guy for 20 years doesn’t mean I keep my head in the sand, right?
I suppose what’s left is this: perhaps it is time for a break from the morality writing I’ve been doing for the past month or so, because I’m no more qualified than anyone else to tell you what’s right or wrong for all of us. It’s quite possible that I am self-righteous and a hypocrite. In fact, I think I’ve learned that I’m as human and guilty as the next person when it comes to who I root for and what I justify in my head.
But can I change it – and should I – now that I realize it? Should I put away the Lakers gear? Stop rooting so hard for Touchdown Tom? Maybe it’s time to start living out what I believe, instead of just writing it – maybe I should watch sports with a sort of distant attachment, because it’s getting more difficult the older I get.
As I heard someone say recently, life is not the way it’s supposed to be, it’s the way it is. The way you deal with it makes all the difference.
We can’t make these athletes and coaches do what we want, behave like we want or do what we expect. We can only barely do that with ourselves most days. We’re all just human, prone to fall short and incapable of perfection. Yet in between, we have to decide, what will we stand for.
Or at least I will. So until Kobe retires, I’m renouncing my Lakers fandom.
And next time, I’m going back in the store to pay for the water bottles.
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Indianapolis Colts, New England Patriots, New York Giants, NFL, Peyton Manning, Super Bowl XLVI, Tom Brady

Isn’t It Ironic?

I wonder if Peyton Manning enjoys the musical styling of Alanis Morissette? Because if I had to fancy a guess as to what is playing on his iPod during his rehab workouts, this week especially, it has to be Morissette’s “Ironic.”
Because isn’t it ironic – a little too ironic – that the Indianapolis Colts host Super Bowl XLVI this Sunday, a game they never would have received without the shiny new Lucas Oil Stadium, a stadium that would never have been built without Manning transforming the Colts?
Yet when the game kicks off, it’s difficult to predict two things: 1) If Manning will ever play football again, and, 2) If he does get cleared to play football, will it be for the Colts?
It’s technically cosmic irony. It’s like rain on your wedding day, or a traffic jam when you’re already late.
And just to make sure Manning got this message, the football gods aligned the stars so that Peyton’s little brother, Eli, leads his team to the Super Bowl.
Against Peyton’s long-time arch-rivals, the New England Patriots.
Who are quarterbacked by the one man people debate could go down as better than Peyton: Tom Brady.
What are the odds of that?
Super Bowl XLVI also happens to be a rematch between the Patriots and the New York Giants, who four years ago, gave us a thrilling Super Bowl that saw the Giants come-from-behind in the final seconds to topple the then-unbeaten Patriots.
There’s hype and then there’s the Super Bowl. And then there’s a Super Bowl rematch of the Patriots and Giants. Of all the storylines this week, Peyton Manning and his neck are a mere footnote.
But Manning should be more than that to this city, especially now. This city should be kissing his Super Bowl ring. Instead of Tebow-ing, we should be, uh, Manning-ing.
He has transformed this city in ways only people from here can understand. None of this – and by this, I mean the event of the Super Bowl itself – would be possible without Peyton Manning. Cold weather cities do not get the Super Bowl without a new stadium. (For reasons why, see Detroit in 2006 and Dallas last year.) And teams like the Colts, pre-1998, don’t get new stadiums. You get new stadiums by winning – like a lot – because winning 10-plus games a year for a dozen years brings in a ton of fans.
Fans buy seats, food and merchandise. They create an atmosphere. They create a fan base that will sell out said new stadium, even in a year like 2011, when the team goes 2-14, fires it’s coaching staff and organizationally derails. They stay loyal when the owner acts out his life like a Saturday Night Live sketch on Twitter.
The success of the Manning-era Colts led to this moment. In turn, we’ve learned in the last six months that Manning is the Colts, literally, and frankly deserves all the credit for everything they did between 1998-2010.
Peyton Manning masked wild deficiencies of teammates and front office decision makers. He covered for mediocre coaching, less-than-mediocre defenses and a talent discrepancy that, looking back on it, was sometimes as wide as the Grand Canyon.
Think about this: since 2001, only four teams have represented the AFC in the Super Bowl: The Patriots (five times), the Pittsburgh Steelers (three times), the Colts (twice) and the Oakland Raiders (once, in 2002).
The Raiders, clearly, caught lightning in a bottle in 2002. They’ve been horrible ever since. But how on earth did the Colts hang in there with the Patriots and Steelers, perhaps the two most well-ran organizations in the NFL? How did they compete with those two franchises?
Simple: Peyton Manning.
Because it wasn’t the owner – Patriots owner Bob Kraft and the Rooney family that owns the Steelers, are vastly superior to Jim Irsay, his guitar and his tweets. It wasn’t the coaching – Bill Belicheck, Bill Cowher and Mike Tomlin are all vastly superior coaches that Jim Mora, Tony Dungy and Jim Caldwell. And it certainly wasn’t the general managers and decision makers. The Steelers and Patriots draft really well, sign the right players and do all the little things right. Meanwhile, Bill Polian was asleep at the wheel in the player personnel department for at least five years.
Peyton Manning is so good, so vastly superior that he basically was a one man show. In hindsight, it’s become a chicken and egg question with his teammates. Was Marvin Harrison good, or did Peyton make him good? Is Dallas Clark a great tight end, or did Peyton simply make him great? You get better by association on the Colts when No. 18 is under center.
So was it a good business decision to pay him $28 million in 2011 for not playing a single down of football? Of course not. It was, as I said before, quite stupid. But did the Colts, on behalf of the organization and this city, owe it to him? Hell yes. Consider it payment for services rendered.
Certainly Manning has long been well compensated for his talents as the highest paid quarterback in football for a number of years. But what he did in Indianapolis transcends just the game.
Indianapolis was Naptown. We hosted a few NCAA Final Fours and claim “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing,” the Indianapolis 500 – as if anyone still really cares about open-wheel racing outside of the month of May – and the Indiana Pacers had a good run in the late 1990s, but that’s been about it.
Since Peyton arrived, the NCAA moved its headquarters to Indianapolis and we’ve hosted more Final Fours than any other city. Other events have come to town, thanks to the hard working folks at the Indiana Sports Corporation. The economic boost and impact will be felt for years. A new stadium was built. To give you the mindset pre-Peyton, we were the middle sized town in the middle of the middle West. This city built a new minor league baseball park before it built a new football stadium.  
To see the city this week, alive with a kind of energy and enthusiasm that is hard to even adequately describe, is frankly amazing. And none of this would be possible without Peyton Manning. And all this, coming from the most staunch Brady-backer.
Now that doesn’t make what is likely to happen in a few weeks any less difficult. The Colts have an incredibly difficult decision to make on Manning and the future of this franchise. And this has to be a business decision. They have a chance to start over with another franchise quarterback. Manning, despite his rosy outlook, might never play another down – and even if he does, he might never be what he once was.
But that conversation can happen after Sunday. After the city basks in the glow of the hosting the Super Bowl.
Thus far, Indy is nailing it. To the point I’m wondering if the NFL won’t come back again in five or six years for another Super Bowl. And in another turn of irony, the weather has been fantastic – leaving me to joke to a friend that people from out of town are going to go home thinking Indianapolis would be a great place to retire: warm winters, friendly people, tons of stuff to do…
Which makes me wonder if we can credit Peyton for the weather as well?
He’s pretty much responsible for everything else happening this week.
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