Tag Archives: NFL

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Some Love Pity For a Rival

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Obviously, the Detroit Lions are a team that I enjoy watching the Packers beat twice every year.  No football fan ever wants their team to lose a game within the division.

At the same time, I think that as an honest-to-goodness sports fan, you must have had some pity for the Lions and their fans during the tenure of Matt Millen as the GM.  The dufus was hired out of the broadcast booth with no personnel experience to speak of, and it showed, day in and day out.  Today, the Millen Era is finally over in Detroit.  All I can say as an NFL fan is, “Well, there’s a move that’s only 4 or 5 years late.”  The saga of ineptitude was simultaneously hilarious and sad from the outside looking in.  I can only imagine how painful it’s been for the tens of fans that the Lions still have.

Rejoice today, oh Detroit faithful– the dawn has finally come.

Sports, Uncategorized

Replacement Prognostication, Week 3

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If you missed last Friday, you can clickity-click-click back on the 12th of September off to your left there, and get the skinny on prediciting the NFL games.  I decided I would (poorly) cover for Josh this year.  That said, we’ve come to Week 3!

  • Packers – win
  • Bears – win
  • Lions – lose
  • Vikings – lose
  • Chiefs – win
  • Dolphins – lose win
  • Seahawks – win

Season Record to date: 4-2

Sports, Uncategorized

Replacement Prognostication

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If you’ve been with us from the beginning, you’ll recall that from Bozeman in 2002, I predicted the outcome of the majority of the Packers schedule, and a few miscellaneous other NFL games as well.

For the last 2 NFL seasons, I have ‘syndicated’ Josh’s weekly pronosticating email on my blog.  For 2008, he’s taking the year off.  I don’t have a problem with that, but it does leave me with a little bit of an empty feeling.

Remember the players’ strike in baseball in 1994?  They canceled the World Series and then the 1995 season started with “replacement players,” before the labor agreement was finally settled?  Well, I decided I would bring you my own “replacement prognostication,” just in case you’d end up missing it.  You’ll note that, just like the replacement players, it doesn’t quite seem like “the real thing”

WEEK 2:

  • Packers- win
  • Bears- lose
  • Lions- lose
  • Vikings- lose
  • Chiefs- win
  • Dolphins- lose
  • Seahawks- win

Have a great football weekend!

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Wow. Just… Holy Crap. Wow.

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These were the best words I could muster to comment on the fact that the Green Bay Packers will be hosting the NFC title game next Sunday. I can’t imagine there is one person in the state that thought our team would be in this position back when the season started.

I tried to find it on the webs, to no avail, but I could have sworn there was a poll on the Urinal-Sentinel early in the fall, when the Brewers were still playing, and the Packers and Bucks were just getting started in camp– it asked some version of the question, “which of these teams is going to win a title in their league first?” Now granted, hosting the conference championship does not a Super Bowl champion make, but back in September, the answer to that question seemed obvious– the Brewers were the best-looking of WI’s pro franchises.

Too many question marks existed for the Pack, too many miles on Brett’s arm, and too many others in the NFC looked better on paper. I didn’t think I would need to watch nearly as many Packer games this year as I did. I admit that I was a nay-sayer.

That is what makes this so surreal– when Green Bay hosted the conference title game after the 96 season, I think we all felt that we were riding some sort of wave of destiny– Brett had boldly proclaimed they would win the Super Bowl early in training camp, and we believed, and then they dominated– for the best part of 17 weeks, the Packers were the best team in the NFL. It just felt like there was no stopping them. The following year, even though they traveled to San Francisco, I think there was still a feeling of entitlement– like there was no way the Packers were NOT going to be in the Super Bowl again.

There’s been no feeling of the sort for me this year, and maybe that’s for the better. On one hand, I have no expectations, and just to be in this position is remarkable accomplishment. On the other, I feel like I should have enjoyed the ride even more. I think most Green Bay fans had given up on the idea of another Favre-led Super Bowl team, but with the opportunity now within grasp, you start to think “maybe destiny has come back around again.”

In any case, way to go, Packers. Two games between you and Ultimate Glory, and as unlikely or impossible as it seems, this year has proven this much to me: you just never know what’s going to happen.

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Still Got the Fever

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I have to admit being a little disheartened after another road series loss by the Crew this afternoon, especially when they managed to pry two defeats from the jaws of victory in Cincy.

I’m gonna try to remember that we’ve still get a better, more exciting ballclub than we’ve had in 15 years, and “it ain’t over til it’s over,” and countless other tired sports cliches.

You can still have fun on the ride all the way til the end of the season. God knows the Packers aren’t gonna do shit this year, so why not?

Sports, Uncategorized

Well, Good for the Tuna…

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This absolutely idiotic story over at MickeySports has earned my biggest eye-roll of the day.

When do you think Parcells will knock off the bullshit and just tell it like it is:
“Yes, I’m really going to retire from coaching– until I decide to come back again.”

It’s like he’s playing the real-life version of Madden ’04: in ‘franchise’ mode, if you turned off the ‘owner’ features, you could hop from team to team every year if you wanted to, re-building, de-building, trading, drafting, and basically forming the entire league however you saw fit.*

I first picked this story up from the AP wire, and I guess it sort of floors me that they have it framed like this will “really be it” this time. At least ESPN has a note about how Parcells has “retired” 3 times before. Who knows? Maybe we’ll see him in Oakland next year. The only NFL owner possibly more obnoxious than Jerry Jones, after all, is Al Davis.

* – I can remember being in the throes of a particularly severe Madden addiction some time during 2004, and saying to myself on the eve of a simulated conference championship weekend 10 or 15 years in the game’s future: Hey: I’ve coached all 4 of these teams…