A sports blog by and for Midwest Sports Fans
The Ravens head into San Diego tonight looking for a win to stay in a good spot in the tightly contested AFC playoff race and also maintain their lead over the Steelers in the AFC North. At the same time, the Chargers are looking for a win to keep their playoff hopes alive.
Perhaps no sports city in America seemingly continues to get cursed quite like San Diego.
I could start with raw wins and losses, and the lack of championships in regards to the Chargers, Padres, and the two NBA tenants that briefly inhabited the 6-1-9.
But even in the rare seasons in which a San Diego team accomplishes something, dark clouds always seem to obscure the triumph.
Who would have thought that Week 13 was going to be so flippin’ intense, entertaining, surprising or WHATEVER you want to call it?!
Anyways…Let’s take a look at your Monday Night entertainment!
Andrew Luck didn’t play this past weekend, as his Stanford Cardinal did not make the Pac-12 championship game. Oregon did. And so did UCLA, which really made the game less “championship game” and more “meaningless exhibition between a good team and a crappy team whose coach has already been fired.”
Anyway, there isn’t much to say about Luck for this week in looking back; but we can look forward.
With the fantasy playoffs just around the corner, every week is critical.
Unfortunately, at this point in the season there aren’t too many gems left out on the waiver wire with the exception of those who gain value because of injury.
Still, there are a handful of players out there who just might put you over the top based on their recent play, favorable matchups, or both.
Expected #1 draft pick Andrew Luck capped off a terrific regular season Saturday night by leading his Stanford Cardinal to a victory over the hated Notre Dame Fighting Irish. In the process, Luck went 20-30 for 233 yards and 4 TDs. He did toss one pick, but overall it was a solid, steady performance from the man who just may end up being Peyton Manning’s replacement in Indianapolis.
But today, the phrase “suck for Luck” has nothing to do with a certain NFL team losing game after game and positioning themselves for the #1 pick. Rather, it has to do with the Nike Pro Combat unis that Stanford wore Saturday night.
Which sucked.
Photo credit: AP Photo/Paul Sakuma via ESPN.com
I’ve seen some bad version of the Nike Pro Combat unis (Georgia’s immediately come to mind), but these may the worst. Black helmets? Black numbers? For Stanford? I suppose the jersey itself isn’t bad, but nothing about it says Stanford. And, um, isn’t that what jerseys are supposed to do?
I have a solution.
We need to get this guy on the case:
Seriously, can you imagine the indignation if this bro had seen that Stanford-Notre Dame game? He’d have downed the entire bottle of 1800 by halftime because of those uniforms.
Whatever happened to men, Michael Imperibroli? Nike. And it’s Pro Combat Uniforms. That’s what.
Now drink up while I break down the NFL’s top/bottom 10 in the race to draft Matt Barkley or Robert Griffin (if they go pro) since the race to draft Luck is pretty much done.
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Breaking news: the Colts lost again.
Here is their remaining schedule. You tell me where a win might come from: at New England, at Baltimore, vs Tennessee, vs Houston, at Jacksonville.
So, with nothing else really to say about this sorry sack of a Manning-less team, here is a picture of Curtis Painter doing one of the few things he does better than Peyton Manning: carrying laundry.
Photo credit: USA Today
That’s it. I’m done with the Rams. And they still have to play San Francisco twice! If you own Steven Jackson in fantasy, trade him. Trade him now.
A bunch of the other craptastic teams won this weekend, so we’ll bump the sorry Chargers all the way up to #3. When you start out 4-1 then lose six straight games, each in excruciating fashion, you get rewards like this.
It’s safe to say that the Norv Turner Era will soon be ending in San Diego, and all 16 of their die-hard fans must be thrilled with that news.
In honor of the Chargers’ rapid ascent up these Suck For Luck Power Rankings, here is the most disturbing image of Philip Rivers on the first page of a Google Image search for his name:
Image source: Pyromaniac
Ah, what the hell. Here’s another one:
Image source: Pyromaniac
My apologies in advance for any nightmares you have tonight.
Let’s not carried away with excitement here. You beat Indianapolis, and you allowed them to score 19 points. And congrats on running all over them, but everyone does that.
The Browns jumped out to an early lead over the Bengals, only to give it away to the clear #1 football team in the state of Ohio (since Ohio State is down this year).
But hey, at least Peyton Hillis was back! Maybe now he can start to recapture the magic of 2010. Assuming, of course, that he doesn’t get anymore sore throats or have any more shotgun weddings.
The Bucs have now lost five in a row, and they actually make the Colts looks suffocating against the run. Chris Johnson hasn’t been able to juke a brown paper sack this year, yet he racked up 190 yards against the Bucs on Sunday.
The only question for this team now, with the playoffs clearly out of the question, is does Raheem Morris make it to next year? If the Bucs want to have any hope of not squandering the talent they’ve accumulated, I say the answer is no. We’ll see.
Yes, I think the Vikings and Dolphins, among others, would beat the Eagles right now. That is how bad this team is playing. Their coaches are yelling at eachother on the sidelines, Desean Jackson isn’t blatantly short-arming catch attempts, and good players are getting injured one right after another.
Side note: when Andy Reid gets his walking papers at the end of the year, and it’s becoming likely that he will, some team looking for a head coach (hello Dolphins!) better snatch him up quickly. I’ll agree that perhaps it’s time for a parting of the ways in Philly. Sometimes that happens, even to good coaches. Sometimes change is needed. But it doesn’t mean Reid is no longer a good, perhaps even great, NFL coach. I don’t think he’d stay unemployed for long.
Now, apropos of absolutely nothing, here is a video of a hippo releasing a little pressure after a second helping of Thanksgiving dinner.
Yes, the Vikings have now replaced the Rams as the team I irrationally support despite their record. But seriously, the Vikings have played decent football in hanging tough at Atlanta without Adrian Peterson and almost coming back to beat Oakland. Can you honestly tell me you don’t think Minnesota could beat the seven teams above them on this list?
You lose at home to Rex Grossman and the Redskins, you make this list. It’s as simple as that.
Frankly, I kind of forgot about the Jaguars. Had I remembered them, I probably would have placed them in the 4-6 range because Blaine Gabbert sucks so much. But out of deference to the great Maurice Jones-Drew, who continues to play hard and churn out tons of yards in losing efforts, I’m going to keep the Jags here.
Seriously though, watch Gabbert in the pocket anytime anyone gets near him. He freezes up and braces for contact instead of standing in there like a man and delivering a throw (which I obviously would do if I were a professional football player). I wonder what Michael Imperioli would have to say about that after a few shots of 1800 tequila.
Honorable mention: Kansas City Chiefs (4-7), Washington Redskins (4-7), Arizona Cardinals (4-7), Buffalo Bills (5-6).
Honestly, all four of those teams deserved mention. There is a pretty clear line between the top 18 teams in the NFL and the bottom 14. So congrats to everyone who made this list! You officially suck.
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For once, Andrew Luck is not the toast of the college quarterback world.
Combine Stanford’s loss to Oregon two weekend ago with Luck’s pedestrian numbers against Cal on Saturday (20-30, 257 yards, 2 TDs, 1 INT in a 31-28 win), and then mix in superlative performances by Baylor’s Robert Griffin III and USC’s Matt Barkley this past Saturday, and Luck doesn’t seem luck such a clear-cut #1 prospect any more, now does he?
Sooooo…yeah….
That’s probably how a lot of you felt after last week’s fantasy results. If you had a bad week, join the crowd.
It appears that certain defenses (the Cowboys, Titans, and others) may have finally caught up with certain offenses (Bills, Panthers, and others) after the long offseason, which led to some surprising and disappointing performances in Week 10.
But not for Aaron Rodgers owners. Never for Aaron Rodgers owners.
No worries. If you have a bad week, it’s not your fault; it was just one of those weeks. Good grief, the Chicago Bears’ DEFENSE was the number one fantasy player last week. Let’s just write it off as an off week and get back on the horse, ready for Week 11.
All the talk this year has mainly been of the struggles of Chris Johnson and Philip Rivers. As painful as it is to watch, dwelling on the problems will set you back.
Six team byes have been scaled back down to four this week, so fewer players will be sitting out of your matchups, but it will still likely necessitate at least one or two touch decisions; decisions you shouldn’t take lightly, because while this may be the middle of the season for the players, our playoffs are right around the corner and crunch time is upon us.
The Halloween Nightmare at Arrowhead proved even worse than feared for the San Diego Chargers last Monday night.
As if Marty Schottenheimer showing up in the Kansas City owner’s box – in a Chiefs blazer that Hank Stram would had been proud of – wasn’t enough of a knife twisted in the backside, Philip Rivers’ Joe Pisarcik impersonation at the regulation could end up ultimately spelling doom for San Diego’s season.
Week 8 is now in the books after Philip Rivers fumbled away a road win in Kansas City, which means we are right around the midway point of the 2011 season. Most teams have played 8 games, a few have played 7, and we can finally start to state with some level of certainty who is good, who is not, and who is too enigmatic to declare.
Without question, the story of the first half of the season (other than this) has been the ascent of the Detroit Lions.
They went 0-16 three years ago, then 2-14 in Jim Schwartz’s first year, then 6-10 last year; and now halfway through their 2011 slate Detroit, sitting at 6-2, is a bona fide contender in the NFC. And the Lions aren’t just an empty record either. They have the skill, attitude, reputation, and right now the health (knock on wood) to suggest that they aren’t going away.
So in honor of the Motor City Mufasas, and their roaring wreakers of wreckage Ndamukong Suh and Calvin Johnson, I give to you my Midseason NFL Power Rankings, with each team presented alongside a Motown classic that sums up the first half of its season.
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How many teams would trade their current QB, right now, for Cam Newton?
This is a question I’ve been thinking about a lot over the past several weeks, as I continue to be more and more impressed (and surprised) by how well Cam Newton is transitioning to the NFL in his first season.
Division rivals will fight for a win tonight, and this might actually be a Monday night game worth watching as many of the Monday Night Football matchups this season have been less than entertaining.
Leading the AFC West, the San Diego Chargers (4-2) will travel to Kansas City to take on the Chiefs (3-3). Kansas City looked buried at 0-3, but they have a huge opportunity tonight to get right back into the thick of the AFC West race.
Let’s take a look at the teams.
I don’t like that NFL teams wear pink during the month of October. I love the idea that they are celebrating Breast Cancer Awareness Month and doing what they can to increase awareness and honor those who have fallen victim to the disease, but I don’t like that they add pink to the uniforms for the whole month.
30 years from now when the next generation of kids are watching highlights from the 2011 season, they will randomly see players wearing pink, and unless the NFL continues this practice forever, they won’t know why. The great thing about highlights from the 60s and 70s is that teams always looked the same. They were the definition of uniform.
Nowadays each team has at least one throwback or alternate uniform that they wear periodically throughout the season. And while they look great, it messes with continuity. I realize that the extra uniforms bring in racks on racks on racks of extra money each season, but they need to do away with it. Teams should be forced to pick one uniform design – one home, one away – and stick with it. If the throwback uniforms are such a hit and look better than the default uniforms, then switch back.
On to the Week 5 Power Rankings.
The last time these two teams met was back during Week 9 in 2007. It featured the greatest single game accomplishment in NFL history – Adrian Peterson put up an astonishing 296 rushing yards in only his eighth career game, only three games after running for 224 yards against the Chicago Bears.
Even though it is a small sample size, almost literally the smallest you could get, we can all expect Peterson will run for over 300 yards on Sunday afternoon right? Probably not, considering when Peterson set the record in 2007 his quarterback was Brooks Bollinger. I will never say anything bad about Brooks Bollinger (North Dakota native), but I think we can all agree that Donovan McNabb is a bit of an upgrade.
That being said, I don’t think there will be a need for Peterson to run the ball 30 times, especially in the first game of the season.
