Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Check it Out I Found this Hidden Gregg Easterbrook Column

Before I get to TMQ, can someone help me out with something. This is from Scoop Jackson's column about the Michael Crabtree holdout:

But in truth, he does have recourse. Despite reports that the Jets may be interested in talking with Crabtree, there's still a backup plan: re-enter the draft next year and hope to get picked higher than he did this year. Yet this tactic is something that could and probably would affect his entire career, not just his rookie season. (It's the same move that agent Charles Tucker tried with the Milwaukee Bucks and Glenn Robinson in 1994, a move that haunted Robinson throughout his career. Just something to think about.)

A. Glenn Robinson was the number 1 pick. I don't think he had any designs on holding out to be re-drafted at the zero slot in 1995.
B. The hold out did not "haunt" Glenn Robinson throughout his entire career. That's made-up bullshit.

Now to the T&A loving badboy Gregg Easterbrook!

In other football news, perhaps Tuesday Morning Quarterback was premature in declaring last week that courage was breaking out across the NFL. (examples of coaches not going for it). So when courage might have saved the day, an NFL coach was hyper-conservative, desperate to avoid responsibility; when it made absolutely no difference what he did because the game was lost, the coach went for it. See other examples of NFL coaching timidity below.

That's funny, because just last week I declared that your declaration was probably just a lazy lead-in to your column, since teams went for it on fourth down at the same level as week 1 and not at a level that was too anomalous with previous seasons. In week 3 teams had 42 fourth down attempts. This is versus 34 in both weeks 1 and 2. Now, I understand that Easterbrook is not just talking about the quantity of attempts, but the scenarios in which the attempts were made (when the game was up for grabs versus when the game was essentially lost). However, I have to think that over 3 weeks, behaviors haven't changed that much - especially from week 1 to week 2 and from week 2 to week 3.

Sweet 'N' Sour Play No. 2: Note 3: (play recap...). San Diego versus Miami -- why wasn't this game played on a beach with the cheerleaders in bikinis?

Because the TMQ likes girls in bikinis, right! T&A man! Right on! He's just like us, only he likes to write 1,000 words about "cosmic thoughts"! Shut up.

Hidden Play of the Week No. 1: Hidden plays are ones that never make highlight reels, but stop or sustain drives. Highlight reels are showing Carson Palmer's last-snap-of-the-game touchdown pass to Andre Caldwell, enabling Cincinnati to defeat defending champion Pittsburgh. (Cincinnati also was in trips at the goal line, and Pittsburgh didn't jam either.) Twice on that winning drive, the Trick-or-Treats faced fourth down -- fourth-and-2 and fourth-and-10. Palmer completed conversion passes both times, helped by solid pass-blocking. These hidden plays made the game winner possible.

All highlights I saw of the game showed these 4th down conversions. This would be the opposite of “never making highlight reels”.

Yeah it's not much, but I had to fly through this week's column.

1 comment:

Chris W said...

Good to see you posting regularly again. I'm a huge fan.