NFL
By Sean Quinn
It’s about winning and losing and Drew Bledsoe can no longer win.
Even though the season is over for the Buffalo Bills and they have returned to their customary form of watching yet another NFL post season from the comfy confines of their couches, the criticizing and questioning has just begun. The first name on the list is Drew Bledsoe. And rightfully so.
Under the controversial leadership of “Mad Mike” Martz, the St. Louis Rams have once again captured a playoff berth. Unfortunately for Rams fans, the first round is as far into the playoffs that this team will go. They are terrible on special teams despite having been criticized all year for not addressing that problem. With the exception of Leonard Little, they are overmatched at every position on defense; their turnover margin is the worst in the NFL. On top of all of that they are the 3rd worst team in the NFL at stopping the run. Mike Martz is behind all of this and he should shoulder the blame when this team loses in the first round to Seattle.
Now that we got the regular season out of the way, let’s go on to our Round 1 playoff picks. During the regular season, we got about 63% of the picks correct. If you read Tokar’s column on “expert” picks, you’ll know that’s pretty decent. But, like most teams, we expect to pick it up during the Super Bowl run. Problem is that we can’t agree on anything.
Old dogs might not be able to learn new tricks, but there’s nothing old about the four rookie sensations who have earned the right to a large ego, and the right to boast their ridiculously large contracts. These young rookies know all the tricks in the book, and they’re not afraid to use them.
The Bears are definitely showing signs of life this year and I believe with some fine tuning in their player personnel, they can win their division and make it the playoffs.
This is the tale of two rookie quarterbacks in the National Football League, a tale of triumph and defeat and a tale of greed and irony. It is the tale of Pittsburgh Steelers rookie quarterback Ben Roethlisberger and New York Giants rookie quarterback Eli Manning.
For the past seventeen weeks of this NFL season I have been following the picks of 54 different people and two computer games (see my zipped excel file), though I’d like to note that the two computer games apparently didn’t pick for three of the seventeen weeks unfortunately. Picks were made by celebrities, ranging from celebrities from the stage to the mother of a sports celebrity. I think that only the people living in Philadelphia consider Wilma McNabb a celebrity. After seventeen weeks I have learned the following things:
Call me Ernie Banks. Call me the 1918-2003 Red Sox. Call me the pre-2004 Phil Mickelson, for I am cursed.
The first thing that comes to mind when you hear the name Peyton Manning is the word touchdown. The 6 foot 5, 230 pound perennial superstar has racked up 356 fantasy points this year on yahoo fantasy football, the most points in fantasy football history.
Well folks, after a long season, it all comes down to week 17. Milehigh and I are battling it out for the top picks champion. A late season surge by Milehigh (and collapse by yours truly) has Milehigh in the lead by 4 games. But there are plenty of games in contention this week. On the flip side, Guru Ganu and Mr. X (retiring after this season) are battling to get out of the cellar. We’ll be picking the playoffs as well but for now, let’s get the regular season sorted out.
Here we go with the Week 17 Picks. If you want to see how well the experts here at SC stack up against the competition, check out this excel file.