It's The Circle, The Circle Of Liiiiiife...

Count me as one of those kids who was a sneaker addict growing up. I never had enough disposable income to really go crazy (my parents would buy me 1 pair of sneakers a year whether I really needed them or not, and I would usually save up enough to buy another pair a year on my own), but I made the most with what I had. Weeks’ worth of research (and by “research” I mean pouring over Eastbay catalogues) would go into my decision, and I would keep my shoes in pristine condition. New sneakers rarely got scuffs because I would reserve them for playing ball indoors, but in the event that they did get a blemish they got the royal treatment: bleach, toothpaste, whatever it took to keep them looking new. Eventually though, I would get a new pair and “demote” 1 of my other pairs. I kept such care of my sneakers that they would last for years, but I still had a natural progression which kept me from stockpiling dozens of shoes at once. I usually kept my 2 newest pairs in my office at school. These were my indoor balling shoes. I would keep anywhere from 2 to 4 pairs in my room at home, which were kind of my all-purpose shoes: street shoes, shoes to wear to class, shoes to ball outdoors, etc. Finally, I kept a singular pair of sneakers (my oldest pair at the time) in the garage at home for mowing the lawn and yard work. This pair was usually on its last legs, covered in grass stains and cement, and starting to get a little bit mousey. When I would get that new fresh pair, the lawn-mowing pair would get thrown out, the oldest pair of all-purpose sneakers would become the lawn-mowing pair, and all the way down the line.

That's just beautiful...

The problem is that in the few years since I have moved away from home, this naturally occurring system of checks and balances has disappeared. I don’t have a lawn anymore, and I only play basketball once a week as opposed to 4 or 5 times a week. Also, I used to wear sneakers to class and work 9 out of every 10 days when I was in college. Now that I’m a participant in the daily rat race, I spend the majority of my time wearing dress shoes. So, my sneakers are seeing less wear and tear over every stage of their life cycle. All of that means that I should be buying sneakers less and less often, right? Wrong…I am a sneaker addict after all.

My demand for sneakers may have gone way down over the past 3 or 4 years, but my means for buying them have gone up. While I’m not exactly making bank at my current job, I’m making much more than my $10 an hour college job, and Krissy and I don’t have any kids or a house or anything expensive to pay for yet. And I will say that the frequency at which I buy myself new basketball shoes has gone way down lately. I probably only get 1 pair of new basketball shoes a year now (and my most recent pair was a gift from Krissy…when you’re a sneaker addict trying to quit the habit, it doesn’t help if your wife is an even bigger sneaker addict than you), and seeing as how I don’t play nearly as often as I used to I could probably get away with buying them even less often than that, but I can’t help it being the sneaker addict that I am. However, I used to only buy basketball sneakers because their sole purpose once they came out of the box was to play basketball in them. The purposes of those shoes evolved over time into whatever I needed them to be, but that’s how they all started out. Now, I buy trainers for the gym (prior to that I hadn’t owned a low-top sneaker since elementary school) and sneakers specifically to wear out with a pair of jeans or something as well. So, where I was only acquiring 1 or 2 new pairs of sneakers a year before, it’s probably like 3 or 4 pairs of shoes now. The result of this is a glutton of sneakers everywhere around our apartment. It was time for some population control.

So, when I got rid of my old pair of Iverson’s (the original “The Question”) this morning, it was with a heavy heart. I had contemplated getting rid of them this past summer when I had begun to play ball outdoors with them (they had started to get worn and come unglued in certain spots), but they just weren’t quite worn out enough for me to toss out just yet. I figured eventually a day would come where I would get them so beat up and dirty from hiking in the woods or digging a car out of a mud hole or something random that I could justify it to myself. This past weekend gave me a reason (albeit a weak one) after my friend Mac borrowed them to play ball in after forgetting to bring a pair of shoes of his own. Mac's feet are a good size bigger than mine, and the parts of the toe that were already coming apart looked even more worse for wear afterwards. The shoes had definitely seen better days, but I couldn’t bring myself to simply throw them out, so I dropped them off in 1 of those clothing bins for homeless people. Crisis averted…the shoe circle of life goes on.

Why couldn't they have just stayed like this forever?

Cue Elton John.

A Miserable End To A Miserable Season

It’s been a week or so since I last made a fantasy or any other update on here, but it wasn’t because I was hiding in the fetal position somewhere. I actually got to the acceptance stage fairly quickly, as I knew even if I made the playoffs my team was likely going nowhere. Either way, the odds were greatly in my favor to at least get in. If I won I was in. If I lost, I could still get in as long as Krissy lost and my brother Dan didn’t win his own matchup and outscore me by more than 50 points. From early on in the weekend, it didn’t look like I had a shot to win, but it looked like Krissy was out of it pretty early on in her matchup also. The only problem was that I had the perfect storm of a bad fantasy weekend, and Dan’s team put up a wopping 123 points. Matt Hasselbeck, who I picked up thinking that he would be a solid fill-in starter, left the game in the 1st half and got me 1 point. Plaxico Burress, in a game where the Jets beat the Chiefs by 4 touchdowns, put up 0 points. Mike Wallace, who had carried me at times earlier in the year, put up a pedestrian 7 points. DeMarco Murray broke his ankle in the 1st half and got me 2 points. CJ Spiller, in a blowout loss to San Diego, got me only 5 points. Jermichael Finley was held without a catch in Green Bay’s game. The only players that did anything for me were Roy Helu, who had his 3rd 100 yard rushing game in a row, and Seattle’s defense. My total output was my yearly worst by far: 53 points for the week, good enough to be outscored by Dan by 70! Adding insult to injury, I had 3 different receivers on my bench (Laurent Robinson, Julio Jones, and Nate Washington) who had at least 24 points apiece. Now, I would have never started all 3 of them because Mike Wallace is a must-start every week, but I could have conceivably started 2 of them over Burress and Spiller for example…especially Julio Jones, who I had consistently started (when he was healthy at least) all season despite having an up-and-down year. To put a positive spin on it though, this mercifully ended what was by all standards a pretty crappy fantasy season for me. Earlier in the year I complained about being unlucky, but my final record was 6-8, and in all honesty this was a 6-8 fantasy team (and all things considered I had to work pretty hard and get pretty lucky even to get to 6-8). Why was this team such a failure? Let’s run down the list…

1. Michael Vick…I have detailed this before, but prior to our league’s draft I heard ESPN fantasy guru Matthew Berry explain on a podcast why he would take Vick if he had the 1st pick in a draft this year. It went something like this…the Eagles have an explosive offense, and last year Vick put up numbers that would have made him a top 10 fantasy quarterback and a top 20 fantasy running back if you isolated his rushing stats (if you extrapolated those stats through a full 16 games). Vick came with risks: a lack of consistency over the years, the propensity to get injured, etc…but if he played up to his abilities and stayed on the field, it would essentially be like having an extra player in your starting lineup every week. I understood the riskiness, but I bought into the theory hook, line, and sinker, and when I found out I had the 1st pick in our draft this year, I didn’t hesitate in taking Vick. Unfortunately, Vick was inconsistent, got hurt early and often, and the Eagles were a bust in general this year. The theory works though…just ask Cam Newton owners this year. Cam went undrafted in our league though, but he is the overall 2nd rated fantasy player in the league right now behind Aaron Rodgers (by the way, while I had completely bought in to Vick, Rodgers was my 2nd choice). Vick’s current ranking is still a respectable 47th, but the pick killed me. I ended up dropping him with a week or 2 left in the regular season (during his most recent time missed due to injury). The result of this left me with a revolving door at quarterback this year including Josh Freeman, Tarvaris Jackson, Carson Palmer, and the aforementioned Hasselbeck. I did pick up Jay Cutler for a couple weeks, which was a good pickup except for the fact that he broke his finger, causing me to drop him shortly thereafter.

2. A bad draft in general…At season’s end I only had 5 of my original 14 picks still on my roster, and that’s generally not a good sign. I guess it could mean that you were really wheeling and dealing to try to make improvements. Also, it’s pretty common to have a lot of turnover with the guys at the back end of your draft, including kickers and defenses. However, it also probably means that you drafted crappy, and you have to replace a lot of the dead weight on your roster.

3. Injuries…One of my favorite “Dad” sayings is, “Sometimes, it’s better to be lucky than good.” Well, that is rarely more true than in fantasy football. Injuries are part of the game, and some guys (Vick for example) are more injury-prone than others. Still, most good fantasy teams (much like the real teams) are partially good because they managed to not catch the injury bug that year, but on my team injuries spread like a pandemic. Aside from Vick being in and out of the lineup, 2 of my best running backs going into the season were put on injured reserve during the course of the year with leg injuries. Felix Jones was my 2nd round pick, but I dropped him fairly early on in the year when he was out with a shoulder injury. His replacement, Murray, was my number 1 back by the end of the year, but even if I had made the postseason I would have been in big trouble, as Murray was placed on injured reserve after last week’s injury as well. Speaking of a little luck going a long way…

4. Sleeper picks (or lack thereof)…Most leagues aren’t won with the top picks in the draft. Sure, a superstar can have an unbelievable year, but it always seems to be the guy that is shrewd and lucky enough to get those players who have great years out of nowhere that end up winning. Last year when I won our league, I got Arian Foster, Matt Forte, and Fred Jackson in the middle rounds of the draft. I don’t even remember who I used my draft picks on for the 1st couple of rounds because it didn’t matter…those 3 picks basically won it for me right there. This year I tried to employ a similar strategy of grabbing a lot of “2nd tier” backs in the middle rounds with the hope that a couple of them would breakout from the pack. Hightower and Jackson were having solid and great years respectively before they got hurt, but the fact that neither James Starks or Ben Tate really ended up being sleepers for me hurt almost as much as those injuries. Starks has been fighting off injuries the 2nd half of the year, but even prior to that he hadn’t done enough to separate himself from Green Bay’s other backs in their multi-back system like I had hoped. I thought Tate was a smart pick given how Foster pulled the same hamstring like 3 times in the preseason, but while he’s having a great year for a backup running back, he’s still just that: a backup running back. I drafted 5 running backs in total, but none of them, for one reason or another, were one of my starting 3 running backs the last 2 weeks of the regular season.

5. Inconsistency at key spots…Wallace and Finley had been great at times for me this year, but they have been wildly inconsistent as well. Wallace’s decline has been more steady, as he started off the season on pace to break all kinds of single season receiving records. The combination of defenses paying more attention to him, the emergence of Pittsburgh’s other receivers, and the Steelers renewed commitment to the running game as we’ve crept into the winter months seem to be the cause of that. Finley has been more of an enigma, catching 3 touchdown passes 1 week, and disappearing from the offense completely the next. Blame the fact that the Packers have like 1,000 good skill position players for that. At this point, they have still been the 5th and 6th most productive fantasy players at each of their positions this year, but I would have traded a little more consistency for the couple of big weeks that they had.

6. No number 2 receiver…Percy Harvin was penciled in as my 2nd receiver at the start of the year, but when it quickly became apparent that Donovan McNabb couldn’t play anymore I traded him away. In retrospect, I should have held on to him a little bit longer, as he’s had a decent 2nd half of the season with Christian Ponder at the controls of the offense. Julio Jones has had 2 or 3 great weeks, but has had several other weeks where he hasn’t played due to injury or just hasn’t performed when he was on the field. I rode him for much of the year while he was healthy just hoping to catch lightning in a bottle, but as I mentioned before I stupidly sat him when I could have used his production the most this past week. Still, my number 2 receiver position was my biggest revolving door of all. It also may have proven another point when it comes to fantasy: having depth is nice, but sometimes too many choices can be a bad thing too.

In the end, I have no one really to blame but myself. Sure, I was unlucky with injuries, but I outsmarted myself on several draft picks and moves during the season. I guess I can take solace in the fact that as bad as I drafted and as unlucky as I was with guys getting hurt, I was able to piece together at least a mediocre season. Free agent pickups like Helu, Murray, Robinson, and Burress literally kept my season afloat when I probably should’ve been eliminated weeks before. Hopefully for my next fantasy team I can combine that resourcefulness with a little better luck and drafting as well.

The Replacements

The last time I mentioned fantasy football on here was October 26th. A snapshot of that point in time had me at 2-5 overall and on a 2 game losing streak (good enough for 9th place in a 12 team league). Michael Vick had a bye week that particular week, and even when he was on the field he was playing like garbage. Fast forward 5 weeks later, and lamenting picking Vick as my #1 overall draft pick is the only thing that has remained the same. After not playing in the last 2 games and already being ruled-out of this Thursday’s game in Seattle, I decided to drop Vick from my roster. It’s a stunning turnabout for a guy that I thought could potentially win the league for me by myself. Looking back now, it was a horrendous pick. I could’ve gone with a safe choice at running back like Adrian Peterson or Arian Foster. Even though those guys have suffered through injuries during different parts of the year, they have both been solid. I could’ve gone with Aaron Rodgers, who was actually my 2nd choice. Even though running backs are generally safer picks, I felt that the top-tier QBs had the most potential for having ridiculous fantasy years. Even Rodgers would have been a safer pick than Vick though. I decided to gamble on Vick because while he had the biggest propensity to do exactly what he has done so far this year (namely, keep getting hurt and playing lousy for the most part), he also could have had the greatest season in fantasy football history if he played his best and stayed healthy. Unfortunately for me, he has done neither. Meanwhile, Rodgers is the top rated player in all of fantasy this year…while Vick is currently a free agent in our league along with the likes of QBs on IR like Matt Schaub and busts like Tavaris Jackson (I actually picked Jackson up for 1 week for an emergency start).

A familiar sight this season.

To top it off, my team has been devastated at RB. Tim Hightower had already been lost for the year with a torn ACL by my last fantasy post, but my only fantasy stud, Fred Jackson, has since been placed on IR with a broken leg also. If you factor in that I dropped Felix Jones several weeks back in favor of his backup, DeMarco Murray, when he was out a couple of weeks with a shoulder injury, only 2 of my top 7 picks are even still on my roster…and those 2 guys have been shaky at best for me lately. Mike Wallace’s pace has slowed dramatically since the beginning of the year when he looked like he might challenge the single season record books for receivers, and Jermichael Finley could have 3 TDs 1 game and then go weeks without sniffing the end zone again. In fact, if you look at my draft results the only players still on my roster that I originally drafted are Wallace, Finley, James Starks, Julio Jones, and Ben Tate. Jones has had a couple of big weeks, but seems to miss every other game with a bad hamstring. Tate and Starks have been good spot starters, but 1 is a backup to the best back in the league, and the other splits carries with Ryan Grant in a predominantly passing offense…not a good combination if consistent production is what you’re after.

Oh, Mike Wallace...wherever have you gone?

With all that info, you would probably guess that I went from 2-5 to 2-10 by now…and yet I’ve managed to win 4 out of 5 to move to 6-6 overall. Even stranger, there is a logjam in the middle of the league standings right now (5 teams at either 6-6 or 5-6-1), and with last week’s win I moved from 9th place all the way to 5th due to tiebreakers. How is this possible? Well, the 1st thing is that as bad as I drafted, I probably have been that good at picking free agents up. Murray, Plaxico Burress, and Laurent Robinson (who knew?) have all saved my ass in various weeks. The other (and more important factor) has been that I’ve been very lucky, which ironically is something I didn’t have in the beginning of the year at all. Back on October 26th, I had scored more points than almost every other team in the league, but had the most points scored against my team as well. I was in 1 of those stretches where if I had the 2nd highest point total of any team in a particular week, I just so happened to play the guy who had the most points that week. Since then, those numbers have kind of evened out, as I’m more in the middle of the pack in terms of total points scored and points scored against. Which means even though I had my share of 119-108 losses earlier in the year, I’ve had a few 77-67 matchups go may favor since then as well.

Now, if only I can avert any other disasters for 2 more weeks, I should at least make the playoffs, and getting a chance to make a playoff run is really all you can ask for in fantasy sports. So, even if Starks or Tate might be slightly better plays, I felt it was only right to roll the dice and go with the backups of the guys I used to have this week (Murray, CJ Spiller, and Roy Helu). I also couldn’t resist changing my team name to “Injured Reserve.” I know they say you shouldn’t tempt fate, but nothing about this fantasy season has been conventional for me thus far…why should it stop now?

A heavy dose of Roy Helu against the Jets would be just what the doctor ordered.

Another Burgandy and Gold (And Blue) Monday

Each of the Redskins losses during their current 6 game losing streak have been agonizing in their own way, and yesterday’s 27-24 home loss to Dallas followed along that same path. Their 20-13 home loss to the Eagles was the long-awaited Rex Grossman-meltdown game. Take back his 4 interceptions, and who knows what the outcome would have looked like. Their 33-20 loss at Carolina was a reminder of how bare their cupboard truly is. The Panthers, who are no good yet in their own right, at least were able to show off their shiny new toy in Cam Newton. In that game, the Redskins happened to turn to a 30 year old journeyman who had never won an NFL start (and still hasn’t). The 23-0 sha-lacking handed to them by the Bills in Toronto showed a complete lack of effort and preparation by what is supposedly a professional sports team (they allowed John Beck to get sacked a franchise record number of times against a team that hadn’t been able to touch an opposing QB all season long until that point). The ugly 19-11 loss to San Fran at FedEx Field wasn’t even as close as the score indicated. The 49ers were superior enough to play sloppily and unevenly, and yet it still appeared that they were just toying with the Skins for most of the game. Last week’s 20-9 loss at Miami served notice that the season was, for all intents and purposes, over. The Dolphins had only gotten their 1st win of the year a week before. If Washington could find a win anywhere on their schedule for the rest of the season, certainly it would be in Miami, but afterwards it was tough to envision another winnable game for them in 2011.

Sunday’s OT loss to the Cowboys was a different animal all together. The Redskins were an almost unheard of 7.5 point home dog to a divisional opponent (and hated rival). Washington made enough bumbling plays to assure everyone that they were in fact the same old Redskins: a Fred Davis fumble, an ill-advised Rex Grossman interception, letting an All-Pro yet not exactly “fleet of foot” tight end score on like a 60 yard pass play, allowing the Cowboys to pick up a 3rd and 15 in overtime, etc. And yet at the same time they actually displayed some fight and enough play-making ability at other times that they probably should’ve won the game. A win would have done some good for this franchise. It would have ended a 5 game losing streak, avenged another last second loss to said hated divisional rival from earlier this year, and put the Skins at 4-6, which as bad as they had been for 5 weeks would have only put them at 2 games out of 1st place in the mediocre NFC East with 3 divisional games still left to play against the Eagles and Giants…still, while that would have put them mathematically still in the playoff hunt, I think only the most widely delusional Redskins fans would mistake that for an actual shot at making the postseason, but as fans all we ask for is the illusion of hope sometimes. When Graham Gano’s 52 yard overtime field goal attempt sailed just a smidge wide, and then the Cowboys kicker narrowly made his attempt only a few minutes later even that glimpse of hope was extinguished yesterday as well.

Ahhh...the illusion of hope.

What kind of drives me crazy about this season is how people have generally lost sight of the fact that this was supposed to be a rebuilding year in the 1st place…such is the curse of having a surprising 3-1 start I guess. And the Shanahan regime has been far from perfect, but I think it’s fair to say that most of this team’s problems stem from poor decisions made by previous eras of Redskins decision-makers. I guess it is less fun to talk about the sins of the last 10-15 years than to bash the current head-honchos though. For years, Washington was constantly in win-now mode as they signed every high-priced free agent they could find and gave away early round draft picks like they were free samples at the supermarket. This personnel acquiring style generally doesn’t work in any sport, but especially not in pro football. What it did was allow the Redskins to at the very least be mediocre every year, usually hovering in the 6-10, 7-9, or 8-8 record range. Every once in a while they would actually have a year where they were good enough to be 9-7 or 10-6 and make the playoffs, but this was more fool’s gold than anything else, further convincing the Redskins brass that they were only a player or 2 away from being a true Super Bowl contender, and thus continuing the personnel cycle described above.

What’s happening this year is what knowledgeable Redskins fans have feared for quite some time. Eventually, someone at Redskins Park would come to their senses and realize that the real-life fantasy football league strategy they had been employing wasn’t working, and they would finally decide to burn the whole thing down and start from scratch. The side effects of that previous strategy include a lack of young talent, a lack of depth, and an abundance of overpriced and rapidly aging players. Cleaning house is absolutely what needed to be done to fix the franchise for the long term, but having a truly ugly season or 2 is kind of the cost of doing business. Shanahan’s biggest mistake thus far was the 1st big decision he made since signing on with Washington, and looking back it might be one the franchise doesn’t recover from before Shanahan’s time in DC is up: Donovan McNabb.

I don’t think many people thought McNabb coming to DC was a bad idea at the time. Hindsight tells us differently, but even though some wondered why Philly would trade McNabb within the division I think most people thought McNabb was a good fit with the Shanahan offense, and at the very least he would be a serviceable stopgap QB for a couple seasons. I don’t remember anyone saying he would be a huge bust that wouldn’t even make it through a full season in Washington before being relegated to wearing a headset and a baseball cap. McNabb was only 1 player, but it may have set the franchise back several seasons. 1st, it meant Washington had wasted another year without finding their franchise quarterback. Outside of Sam Bradford, the crop of QB draftees was pretty weak that particular year, but perhaps Shanahan could have signed a less expensive stopgap that season (or just rolled with Rex Grossman as a stopgap a year earlier). Also, the draft picks they gave up to get McNabb (a 2nd round pick and either a 3rd or 4th round pick) could have helped further along the rebuilding process as well. 2nd round picks should be immediate contributors and NFL starters in my book. I would consider a 3rd/4th round pick as a guy that might need a little more seasoning, but who could be a starter after a year or 2 as well. That’s 2 potential starters right there. Like I said before, hindsight is always 20/20, but knowing what we know now wouldn’t you have rather suffered through Grossman as your starter last year, used that 2nd round pick on another offensive lineman, a corner, or maybe a rush-linebacker (like they got with Kerrigan this year)? Then, depending on what you got the year before you could have either used your 1st round pick this year on Kerrigan (who looks like he is a stud…so if you think I want a do-over on him, think again) and taken Andy Dalton in the 2nd round, or used your 1st rounder on someone from this year’s talented crop of rookie QBs like Blaine Gabbert or Christian Ponder. I don’t remember the exact order of the draft, but it’s not like they couldn’t have gotten 1 of them by moving up or down in the draft or something. Either way, the team would have been a season or 2 ahead of where they are now in the rebuilding process.

This guy would sure look good in burgandy and gold.

Unfortunately, Shanahan tried to kill 2 birds with 1 stone. He tried to start the rebuilding process while at the same time still trying to stay good enough to “win now” by rolling the dice with McNabb…unfortunately, sometimes the dice come up snake eyes, and you walk away with nothing. McNabb proved this year that it was more than just him and the Shanahans not seeing eye-to-eye last year, as he was every bit of a bust in Vikings purple as he was in burgundy and gold the year before. That’s little solace for fans of a team that have seen this script play out far too many times over the last 2 decades though, and it may end up serving as the legacy of the Mike Shanahan Redskins era in the end. All we (as fans) ask for is the illusion of hope at this point…something we probably won’t feel again until next year.

Hoodie Time

Christmas’ and birthdays kind of take on a new meaning the older you get. It’s cliché to say, but at a certain point the pleasure you get from giving really does outweigh that of the getting. It’s gotten to the point where I almost don’t care if I get a single present on those days…well, “almost.” I mean, what kind of sad pathetic loser would I be if I didn’t get 1 Christmas present, right? Anyway, as you get older you seem to go through different phases in terms of the gifts that you get from people. I think this is partially because as we get older we all get increasingly harder to shop for, which lumps everyone’s gift-giving ideas into 1 or 2 distinct areas. When you’re 5, you are so easy to shop for. Toys, video games, and anything with a Ninja Turtle on it are all gold, but those days can’t last forever.

Bam!

For example, there was one Christmas when I was 11 or 12 where I got like 4 duffel bags from various people. It’s a smart present for a kid who was playing on a million sports teams and needed something to haul around all his junk back and forth to different practices and games, but 4 from 1 Christmas? For the record, I think my parents forgot to coordinate on that particular gift that year (thus both getting me one), and I think I got 1 each from an aunt and I think maybe my Grandma as well. Once I hit puberty, aftershave seemed to be the gift de jour from my aunts, uncles, and more distant relatives that I only saw a couple times a year. As a 14 year old, I had enough aftershave products on top of the dresser in my room that you would have thought you just walked into a Macy’s or something.

At some point, hooded sweatshirts became the go-to gift idea for me. This was perfectly fine because I love hoodies. During high school and college, I can hardly ever remember wearing actual “jackets,” as when the weather turned cool enough I would just start whipping through my hoodie rotation. When I was working my way through college for the Rec Sports Department, I think I had a different UMBC hoodie for every day of the week. This “gift phase” started when I was about 15 or 16, and it ended…well, actually it’s still going in some ways. For example, I probably haven’t gotten a hoodie from my parents since I was a teenager, but I can think of occasions where my siblings, Krissy’s parents, and her brothers have all bought me hoodies over the last few years. (Even Krissy has bought me a few despite knowing I have a closet full of them. This is as much because she loves shopping for athletic apparel as anything else.) And why wouldn’t they? They are affordable (even the relatively expensive ones), sensible (they know I go to the gym and play sports), and it’s just about all anyone sees me where when I’m not at work.

If they're good enough for the president of the motherf****** USA, they're good enough for me.

This has become a double-edged sword…take a look at our appartment’s coat closet and it is lined wall to wall with hooded sweatshirts. Including fleeces and zipper-downs, by my count as of yesterday I owned 17 hoodie-like things. Krissy’s side of the closet has at least that many as well. The problem is that we all eventually have to become grownups, and you only get to wear a hoodie so many days of the week when that happens. It was time to do a little bit of spring cleaning on that closet…but where do you begin?

To start, I decided that it would be stupid to get rid of my favorites, which included a hand-me-down black UMBC hoodie that Pat left in his office after he stopped working there (I ended up getting his job and, consequently, the sweatshirt), a grey Nike zipper-down, and a blue Old Navy fleece. I also couldn’t bring myself to get rid of an older white Adidas hoodie that Krissy had gotten me as a gift (even though there is some kind of stain on the sleeve that no amount of bleach can get out). Similarly, I decided against things I had gotten as recent gifts, like a couple of Under Armor hoodies, a Caldwell College hoodie, a blue and red Nike zipper-down, and a black Jordan hoodie. These are the sweatshirts that I had gotten most recently, but for the most part hadn’t even gotten a chance to wear much yet…thus the reason for this hoodie purge in the 1st place. I also didn’t allow myself to get rid of an old gray Under Armor UMBC hoodie. This was partially because it is Under Armor, partially because it is about as comfortable as any article of clothing I own, and partially for sentimental value…the hoodie was a gift from my old UMBC boss, and it kind of reminds me of a simpler time when what I didn’t make in money I made up for in free clothes, shaving cream, and other swag.

There were a couple of others mixed in there as well, but that didn’t leave a lot of options for what I could get rid of. 2 were pretty easy choices: a nondescript blue fleece and an equally nondescript blue hoodie that I think I had gotten as gifts from my Grandma and Krissy’s Grandma, respectively. After that it got tougher…a gray Quiksilver sweatshirt that I wore the heck out of during high school and college, a darker gray Old Navy fleece that I also wore a ton in college (mostly because it did a good job of covering up my neck-acne…sigh), and a size XL gray Adidas UMBC hoodie that I only wore a couple times ever because it was ginormous on me (it was another work gift though and a really nice sweatshirt…if only I had been given a “shmedium”).

So, there you have it: originally 17 sweatshirts cut down to 12. That’s still a lot of hoodie and hoodie-like articles of clothing, but I reduced my sweatshirt count by about 30%, which freed up some much needed closet space. It also consequently will allow me to have less of an aneurism when I need to pick out a sweatshirt to wear since I have fewer things to choose from in the 1st place. And yet this all has the smell of futility to it…odds are that people will continue to buy my hoodies, and those unused hangers will have new sweatshirts on them in no time. I guess there are worse things to complain about though. Here’s to never growing up!

Just When You Think Things Are Going Well...

As much as I have written about sprained ankles and knees, pulled hamstrings, and things like that, I’m convinced that the worst possible sports injury on this level is any type of lower back injury. When you hurt your back, the pain and limitations are not just restricted to that area. It's just as difficult to bend over and pick something up as it is to get your legs to move where you want them to go or to reach up to grab something from a shelf. If there is any truth in back pain being hereditary, I probably have the bad back gene. I have heard all the stories of my Dad and his brothers comparing notes on their bad backs over the years, and every once in a while my brother and I have suffered back spasms as well. Of course, this might have more to do with the fact that we all have participated in athletics and some degree of manual labor of the years than genetics, but either way it is a common trait that we all share.

One of the great things about being a kid is that all kids are basically rubber band men. Your body seems fully elastic, and can contort in ways that don’t even seem humanly possible as an adult. Rolled ankles and twisted knees have no effect. You can play all day long, come back the next day without any muscle soreness or stiffness, and do it all over again. I remember suffering my 1st “back spasm” when I was 12 or 13 years old. I was on a travel basketball team, and we had a weekend tournament where games were taking place at multiple sites across a particular county. That weekend was the 1st time that I had to come to grips with the fact that I wasn’t an “invincible” kid anymore. I was in fact human. We had been scheduled to play 3 games that day: 1 in the morning, 1 around noon, and the last 1 later in the afternoon. During the 2nd game, I must have done something to tweak my lower back, but being the impervious to pain kid that I was I couldn’t pinpoint an exact instance when it happened. Nevertheless, riding in the car on the way to game 3 of the day caused my back to tighten up, and so I had suffered my 1st sports-related back injury.

The worst back injury I ever had happened during my freshman year in high school. During a basketball game against DeMatha, I stupidly stood in to take a charge in the 4th quarter when we were already down by 20 points. I got the call, but as I hit the floor I immediately felt my back tighten up. That game was only about midway through the season, but the injury lingered for another 2 months or so until the season was finished. There were many days I would miss practice to give my back an extra day of rest in order to be ready on game days, my teammates and coaches nicknamed me “Charles Barkley” (and not for the way I played), and for the rest of the year I wore 1 of those back braces/supports that you usually only see middle-aged dads and guys moving furniture for a living wear.

The uniform of the 45 year old man.

Since then, I have suffered slight back spasms every once in a while, but nothing as severe as that high school injury, but this weekend I felt a slight pull in my lower back after catching a pass near the goal line, and trying (unsuccessfully) to tight-rope walk my way into the end zone. I had some tightness in my back the rest of that day, but it didn’t prevent me from playing basketball the next morning (albeit not going full-bore). Fast forward to this morning when I felt a shooting pain in my lower back as I was sitting at my desk at work...once again, sitting seems to be the worst thing you can possible do if you are having back spasms. The pain was so sharp, that I actually started to sweat, and as I’m writing this I have to position myself in a way that looks like a Louisville slugger has been shoved up my keister. So anyway, count me out from the gym for at least a day or 2 as I hope to avoid any further setbacks. Back pain…such a pain in the ass.

Danger!

Roll Tide

I have become less and less of a college football fan over the years. Part of this is because I’m a grownup now, and I don’t really have the luxury of spending all of Saturday AND Sunday plopped on the couch from 12pm-11pm. Part of it is that I didn’t go to 1 of those big state schools with a powerhouse football program. I know a lot of people that went to schools like Florida, Ohio St., or Penn St., and the traditions of college football like homecoming weekend and tailgating are as engrained in their lives as Christmas trees or Thanksgiving turkeys. I went to a school with no football program at all, so I don’t have nor will probably ever have that kind of connection to the sport. Similarly, I grew up in Maryland, an area that was Redskins territory and Redskins territory only at the time. No college football program in the area was really big enough to compete for the population’s attention. If I had grown up or had family from an area where college football is a birthright, it may have been a different story.

Enter into the conversation my gym buddy, Scott. Scott’s family is from Alabama, where you basically have to decide whether you are an Auburn or Alabama fan by the time you get baptized. That being said, Scott would tell you that he bleeds crimson. Every once in a while, I like to rile Scott up by talking about a very sore subject for him: Boise St. Most fans of SEC teams share the same superiority complex that Scott has. They have good reason to feel superior too. While I’m too lazy to look up the actual stats now, I know for a fact that the SEC has won more national titles than any other conference since the BCS’s inception, and throughout any given year the top 10 ranked teams in the country from week to week could be littered with 4 or 5 SEC teams. SEC teams pass the eye test too, as the quality of the athletes and the speed of the games doesn’t even compare to that of other conferences as a whole.

This is where fans of SEC teams like Alabama, Florida, and LSU (and other big time non-SEC football schools for that matter too like Ohio St., Oklahoma, and Texas) get in trouble in my opinion though. No one would argue that Boise St.’s conference (the Mountain West I believe) is as good as the SEC, the Big 12, or the Big 10. No one would argue that even though Boise has had a pretty good recent string of success that their history, pedigree, and resources can’t match up with a school like Alabama. Alabama is likely to have a top 5 recruiting class every year until the end of time…the kids that Boise recruits aren’t slouches, but they are not on Alabama’s level in that way.

Because of this, even seeing a team like Boise creep up into the top 5 of the rankings is enough to cause Scott’s blood to boil. They have no business being ranked that high. They wouldn’t even go through an SEC regular season above 0.500. These are the types of things Scott will say arguing against Boise. These kinds of things aren’t even really worth arguing…heck, most of the really good SEC schools don’t even make it through their respective seasons unscathed. You can use a 1-loss Florida team and a 2-loss LSU team that each won the national championship in different seasons a few years back.

If you bring up points in favor of Boise St., Scott will shoot down all of them. If you say that they can only play who they are scheduled to play, he would say that they need to try to schedule some better teams. If you say that they have tried to and point to playing at Georgia and what basically amounted to a road game against Virginia Tech the year before, he would say that’s not enough. If you say that they won both those games (the game against SEC opponent Georgia handily), he will say both those teams didn’t happen to be “that” good anyway at the time. If you say that they try to schedule those kinds of games all the time, but don’t get any takers because most big time schools don’t want to suffer the possible embarrassment of losing to Boise St., Scott would say they need to switch to a different conference. If you bring up the fact that a school of similar stature, Utah, smacked Alabama in a bowl game a few years ago, and Boise beat another traditional football powerhouse, Oklahoma, a few years ago in a bowl game as well, these points are scoffed at and poopoo-ed as flukes.

These arguments are all just in fun, as for all I know Scott is right, and Boise St. would lose by 4 touchdowns if they played Alabama or LSU. That’s all well and good, and besides I should know by now that trying to convince a fan of a team from a power football conference that Boise St. or TCU belongs in the same conversation as them is like trying to convince a fanatical religious nut that evolution really exists. Still, what really got me riled up is when Scott tried to argue that the general public would rather see a LSU-Alabama rematch in the BCS title game this year than have to watch the winner of that game face Boise St. (hypothetically assuming that things would workout so that would be the matchup). This is the typical elitist attitude that fans of teams like Bama and LSU have…the fact is that Alabama and LSU (just to pick out 2 teams) are not as important to the rest of the sports viewing world as they are to fans and alumni of those schools. And besides that, Boise St. vs. [insert powerhouse football team] would draw in much more attention than Bama-LSU, round 2. 1st, the loser of that game won’t even make it to their conference title game, and therefore should be eliminated from contention right there. 2nd, people get tired of seeing the same thing, especially after the 2 week lead-in to the 1st game between those 2 teams, and the constant blubbering about it being jammed down our throats by ESPN and every other sports news organization. 3rd (and most importantly), Boise-Bama or Boise-LSU would essentially be the plot of every great sports movie of the last 50 years playing out in real life. I’m sorry, but “Hoosiers” wasn’t about 1 great basketball team beating another…it was the classic underdog story. Guys like Scott and I are fans of the game. We are going to watch no matter who plays...but non-football fans aren’t going to watch LSU-Alabama, the sequel. Doesn’t anyone remember the Butler-Duke NCAA title game from a couple years ago? It only got the highest TV rating of any NCAA game since 1997. The “little team that could” vs. the “unstoppable juggernaut team”…now, there’s a story. By the way, did I mention the LSU-Alabama game was a disappointing 9-6 snoozefest? I’m all for great defense, but I don’t think it exactly lived up to the hype, and I don’t think the masses will be clamoring to see it again.

The problem with the whole “Boise doesn’t belong” attitude dismisses the whole premise of sports in general. It’s about competing, and champions aren’t determined on paper or in preseason rankings. Sure, if sports was a beauty pageant, the Alabama’s, Oklahoma’s, and LSU’s of the world would win every year…but sports doesn’t work that way. It has to be proven on the field or on the court. And I concede that guys who think like Scott could be right…if Alabama and Boise played 10 times, the Tide might win 9 of those games. In sports where champions are determined by playing a series of games, that would definitely hurt Boise’s chances. But that’s the thing about this situation…they only need to win once. And that might make elitist college football fans angry, but that is in fact what sports are all about.

Misery Loves Misery...Or Something Like That

Let’s start with real life football…the Redskins, only 6 games into their schedule, are for all intents and purposes done this year. After losing on the road to the Panthers, they fell to 3-3. Maybe even more important than that was the manner that they lost…and their ever-growing body-count. I still stand by my previous statements that I like the moves they made this offseason, and I think the roster is improved even if it won’t necessarily show in terms of wins and losses this year. Having said that, if everything broke right for them this year (as it did for the most part through the 1st 4 games of the year) they could perhaps surprise people and make a push for 1 of the last playoff spots in the NFC…a big “if” though. Along with the obvious questions at quarterback, the roster still lacks depth along the offensive line and proven offensive playmakers that defenses have to account for week in and week out. Part of getting breaks is making your own breaks though. Through the 1st 4 games, Washington ran the ball fairly well, forced turnovers on D, avoided injuries for the most part, and made enough big plays at key moments to overcome mediocre quarterback play and give themselves a 3-1 record. The last 2 games showed just how little room for error this team actually has. Interceptions doomed the Skins last week against Philly. Mounting injuries during both of the last 2 games seem to be handicapping this team for the long haul though. Stud left tackle Trent Williams will probably be out at least a couple more weeks with a sprained ankle. Starting left guard Kory Lichtensteiger and running back Tim Hightower have been lost for the season with torn ACL’s. Chris Cooley was also put on Injured Reserve today. Santana Moss is out basically indefinitely with a broken hand. So, who exactly on the Redskins offense strikes fear in the heart of opposing defenses? Is there anyone there that defensive coordinators will look at and say, “Hey, we need to account for that guy at all times?” Fred Davis has promise, but isn’t consistent. Roy Helu and Ryan Torain both seem capable, but it’s hard to expect a lot out of them behind a makeshift offensive line. Jabar Gaffney? No. The quarterbacks? Oh wait…they are stopgaps for next year anyway. Yep, that pretty much should do it.

…

I have had both bad and unlucky fantasy teams in the past. I think even the best fantasy players have years where a star running back gets hurt or something…but I can’t think of a year that I have felt more scorned than this year. Last year was an embarrassment of riches for me. My team was good enough to have 2 out of my top 3 or 4 draft picks get hurt or just plain underperform, and my team was still head and shoulders above the others in our league. This year, I have had no such luck. This week, I sweated out my potential waiver wire pickups, as my 2 best players (Vick and Fred Jackson) were on bye weeks. I actually was able to claim someone who I thought might save my week, DeMarco Murray. Little did I know he would rush for the all-time single game rushing record in Cowboys history. Still, I was forced to sweat out the Monday Night Football Game between the Ravens and Jags. I went into the game down 12 with only Ravens kicker Billy Cundiff left to play (the team I was playing had no one left at that point). 12 points is a lot for a kicker, but given that the Ravens were favored to blow out the Jags it was still within the realm of possibilities. Of course, Baltimore played a stinker of a game, playing pitifully on offense, and managing only 7 points for the whole game…in case you didn’t do the math already, that would give me 1 (count ‘em, 1) point for Cundiff’s output. Making me even angrier in hindsight, the loss basically hinged on the matchup of our kickers and defenses, where he outscored me a combined 27-4 (or something like that). Now, if you look below at the snapshot of our league standings through 7 weeks, you should notice a few things…

The season is slowly slipping away.

1st, you will notice that I am 2-5, on a 2 game losing streak, and in 9th place in a 12 team league. You will also notice that in terms of total points scored, only 3 teams have more. But in terms of total points scored against my team, no one has a bigger number than me…so, week in and week out more points are scored against my team than any team in the league. I have had to scramble to pick up guys in light of bye weeks (Finley and Starks…sad that I am even relying on James Starks as a key player in my lineup anyway) and injuries (Hightower) again this week, so I could really use a week where the team I play just completely chokes and has like 60 total points…but that doesn’t seem to be the way things are going for my fantasy team this year.

Everyone Loves A Quarterback Controversy

As a Redskin fan, I am no stranger to quarterback switches and controversies. The Skins have had something ridiculous like 22 QB’s in 19 seasons. With that being said, “Rex vs. Becks” is nothing out of the ordinary for us, but still it’s enough to get my heart rate up a little bit going into this week’s game against Carolina, as Beck is a career journeyman who we know very little about. So, to have a quarterback controversy in my own house is a little much for me right now.

How did this happen? Well, we brought on this guy, Segu, to quarterback our coed touch football team this fall. Segu is my friend Mac’s boy from way back…the problem is that through 2 games Segu, to put it nicely, hasn’t played well. And actually, we basically pulled him in favor of my wife, Krissy, about midway through the 2nd half of that 2nd game. Now, you have to understand that putting Krissy in at quarterback is not some novelty act. I don’t think we have played against another team in 3 or 4 years that has had a full-time girl QB, but Krissy is (and I know I’m biased, but I don’t think I’m exaggerating) a great athlete. She is a former D-1 catcher (so she has a hose…I’m a good athlete, and she’s throws a football at least as far as me, and definitely prettier than me). She lettered in 3 sports in high school, including tennis (which she picked up just because she was bored during the spring basically). She was a point guard on the basketball team, and if you watch her play basketball (or any sport for that matter) she doesn’t play like a girl…she plays like a guy. I’m not denigrating female athletes, but a lot of girls who are even good basketball players don’t look like fluid athletes. They seem more rigid as the run, cut, and jump. A lot of them shoot a set shot from their waist. They do that weird move on layups and post moves where they take like a weird extra step because they can’t really jump (anyone who has watched girls’ basketball knows what I’m talking about). That’s not Krissy…she runs, jumps, and generally moves like a guy (a short guy, but a guy). So, she’s not being subbed-in as some kind of circus sideshow…she’s in the game because she can play…and she played really well.

In that 1st game, Krissy brought us back from 2 touchdowns down in the 2nd half. Our offense, which had looked stale and stagnant up until that point, looked crisp. She was decisive with where to go with the ball, spread the ball around, mixed in short, deep, and mid-range throws, and the offense moved. Really, the ball barely touched the ground. Unfortunately, we had a chance to tie or go ahead (depending on if we went for 1 or 2) on basically the last play of the game, and we failed to convert. The next week, Krissy played QB from the outset, and played really well again. This time though, we played against a much better team. Our offense probably played well enough for us to win, but our defense just couldn’t come up with enough stops. Last week, Krissy and I weren’t able to make the game, and Segu stepped back in at QB. From what I gathered, the other team wasn’t on par with the teams we played earlier in the year, but a win is still a win, and Segu played well also. So naturally, Mac posed the question to me about this week’s game: who are we starting at quarterback?

Since he asked the question, I already knew his vote was in for Segu. You have to admire his loyalty, and Segu seemed to have improved his play in last week’s win from earlier in the year. I also admit I feel bad for the kid. 1st, it’s awkward because we specifically brought him aboard to play quarterback for us…only he hasn’t played well (aside from 1 game against an inferior opponent). It’s doubly awkward because no dude who is a good athlete (which he is) and has even a little bit of pride wants to lose his role on a team to a girl…no matter how good that girl is. Mac also made the point that Segu is just getting used to playing with us, and he does have the advantage of being more mobile and having a stronger arm than Krissy. Having a girl play quarterback also eliminates “gender plays” (gender plays are plays where a girl must either throw or catch a forward pass…almost all of the teams choose to complete these plays by having a guy QB, which means only the girls on the field can go out for or defend a pass if they are on D…if you use a girl QB in those situations, everyone can go out for a pass like a normal play though), which normally can be big play opportunities because the field becomes much more opened up and less congested. So, it’s a weird situation, but the problem is that if the decision was based simply on merit, who to pick would be no contest: Krissy is the clear choice. So, I posed a question back to Mac: who has performed better to this point at point in the season?

I could tell this was a question/point that he wanted to sidestep, which is understandable because Segu’s his boy and he’s naturally going to look out for him, but he answered (probably somewhat begrudgingly) that Krissy had in fact played better to this point. The problem is that there is a counter to most of the arguments in favor of playing Segu at QB. Segu is still new and getting used to how the rest of us play, but with 3 losses already we can’t afford a huge learning curve at this point. 1 more loss and we probably will already be eliminated from the playoffs. He is more mobile than Krissy, but Krissy has mitigated that for the most part because she has become really good at not holding onto the ball. She finds who’s open and gets rid of the ball quickly and accurately. Her arm isn’t as strong, but it’s strong enough, and she seems to throw deep with more regularity and success than Segu or Phil (Phil had played quarterback for us prior to this year). That might partially be because other teams may sleep on her arm, but she also is more willing to throw up a jump ball if she sees 1 of our better guy receivers in 1-on-1 coverage, and unlike in years past where our girls were the strength of our team our athletic guys are probably our strength this year. She has done a great job of allowing us to go up and make plays on the ball while at the same time not forcing throws into coverage. The gender play issue is something that I didn’t like at 1st either, but I actually think this works out better for us this year because of the issue I just said. Overall, our girls are not our team’s strength this year. They are solid, but not spectacular. Having a full-time girl quarterback allows us to just go to whoever is open on every play. We don’t have to be bogged-down with worrying about completing passes to guys or girls. And gender plays are normally big play opportunities, but because our girls are not strong overall this year and Segu wasn’t very accurate, our gender plays mostly resulted in incomplete passes anyway…they were basically a waste. Plus, having a girl QB means we can have 5 guys go out on pass routes on every play. With a guy QB, only 4 can get out in routes because only 5 guys can be on the field at a time. This just places more stress on the defense…it’s basically the equivalent of getting 2 wide receivers, a fullback, and a tight end out in pass routes vs. having 4 speedy wide receivers go out on pass routes. This has basically replaced the old gender plays as our new source of big plays.

Because of that, our style of play is somewhat revolutionary I think. If your guys are really strong, but your girls are weak (except for 1 girl who can throw), why not play her at QB? That way you eliminate gender plays and get more guys out in pass routes every single play. I feel like it is a good strategy, but to employ it you have to have that 1 girl who can not only throw but read defenses and make good decisions with the ball. Krissy is pretty much the only girl I know of capable of that at this level. Even then, I wonder if we will ever see any other teams use this idea. Most guys are too macho to relinquish that kind of position to a girl, no matter how deserving. That’s 1 thing that is pretty cool about the group of people we have on our team though: we seem to be able to put egos aside and just do what puts us in the best position to win, and while Mac probably wishes he could stay loyal to Segu, I think both understand that this is the right choice right now.

Grossman Seals His Own Fate

I purposely haven’t logged onto the Washington Post website to read any Redskins stories yet this morning because I know I’m only going to be echoing in this blog what all the Post columnists have already written: surprise, surprise…Rex Grossman imploded. Through the 1st quarter of the season, Sexy Rexy had caused the overly-optimistic type of Redskin fan to think this was a new and improved Grossman. Long gone were the days where Rex would complete almost as many passes to the other team than to the guys with the same colored jerseys as him. He had matured, and he knew the Shanahans’ offensive system backwards and forwards…but I think most Redskin fans who were watching the 1st 4 games closely were just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Sure, Grossman is capable of good days, like his opening game against the Giants. Even despite 2 interceptions in week 2 against Arizona, Rex also made enough good throws, including a money 4th down touchdown throw to Santana Moss, to put Washington in position to win (although you could argue that he was heavily aided by a stalwart defensive effort and a heavy dose of Hightower and Helu on the ground). For all intents and purposes, we saw Good Rex those 1st 2 weeks, but in weeks 3 and 4 we got more of a glimpse of the Bad Rex we have mentioned before. Rex’s numbers in the week 3 game against Dallas don’t look terrible at 1st glance, especially considering he was playing in a hostile environment against a solid D: 22 for 37, 250 yards, a pick, and a touchdown throw…if you actually watched the game, he was largely ineffective though. Washington’s D played well for the most part, limiting the Cowboys to only field goals and setting the offense up in great field position off of a turnover on at least 1 occasion, and yet Grossman wasn’t able to muster any consistent productions aside from 1 long drive in the 3rd quarter. The game-ender was on a sack-fumble of Grossman, which is the other type of play that has become his signature move over the years. Still, I think I wrote in a post following that game that I was willing to give Grossman a pass for the reasons stated above. Plus, while he wasn’t great in that game, he wasn’t terrible either, and I laid the majority of the blame on the Redskins’ playcalling rather than on Rex himself. The week 4 game against St. Louis was the 1st time this year that we truly saw Bad Rex rear his ugly head with 2 2nd half picks. He finished that game with a quarterback rating below 50, and only the ineptitude of the Rams and the Redskins’ defensive pressure on St. Louis QB Sam Bradford allowed Washington to escape with a win.

Still, as the Skins headed into their bye week at 3-1 and the deepest they gone into any season alone atop the NFC East in about 10 years it was hard to feel too terrible about Grossman’s limitations. You have to understand, long-suffering Redskin fans were not expecting to go 12-4 this year. We have been whining for years about ridiculous offseason moves that perpetuated a constant “win now” mentality, while in reality all of Washington’s high-priced acquisitions over the years did nothing but make the team old, expensive, and incohesive…not to mention that fact that the constant giving away of high draft picks for veteran players sapped the organization of any depth at all (or ignored some positions, such as the offensive line, all together). So, while we weren’t necessarily hoping that the Skins would suck bad enough to go 1-15 this year, I think most true fans understand that this organization is in the midst of a rebuilding process and would be willing to sit through another 6-10 season (like last year) as long as it appeared the team was building towards something. As a fan, I don’t want a team to be built for one year of success…I want something long-standing (see New England, Philadelphia, Baltimore, etc.). Prior to the season I think I even wrote that the Redskins could be much improved this year and finish with same or even a worse record than last season, and I also would have been fine with that. But realistically, I was thinking this team could probably go 7-9 or 8-8. I understood that the Skins might have had the worst looking quarterback situation in the entire league when training camp opened up. Curiously, John Beck, a relative unknown, seemed like he won the favor of the coaching staff in the preseason, but almost equally as strange, Grossman was named the opening day starter for the regular season. (In fairness, they both acquitted themselves just about equally during their preseason opportunities.) However, I think most knowledgeable Redskin fans felt the same way about the QB situation that I did…neither guy is good, but that’s ok for now because they are probably (aside from a miraculous transformation of either one) just 1 year stopgaps anyway. I think most Redskin fans understood this and realized from the get-go that regardless of who was named the starter at the beginning of the year, most likely both Beck and Grossman would take turns passing the starting duties back and forth to each other. I personally think Grossman and Back will trade 1st string status, either because of performance or injury, 2 or 3 more times before the year’s end…and you know what, that’s fine for now too.

Fast forward back to this Sunday, when the full transformation back to Bad Rex had been completed. I must confess that I missed the 1st pick, but from what I can gather it was a throw into traffic down by Philly’s goal line as Washington was driving for the opening score of the game. The 2nd pickle was a woefully underthrown ball off of a flea-flicker to a streaking Jabar Gaffney, who had gotten a good 2 steps behind the deepest defender in the Eagles’ secondary. If thrown out in front of Gaffney, it would have been a touchdown. The 3rd pick was basically a game-killer. After an interception of Michael Vick set the Skins’ offense up in Eagle territory, Grossman forced a ball into double coverage that was easily intercepted by a Philly defensive back. A touchdown drive would have pulled the Redskins to within 7 with plenty of time still left in the 2nd half. The defense had seemed to regain some of its footing after a rocky start, and the Vick interception caused a shift of momentum in the Skins favor. That 3rd pick gave the momentum right back to the Eagles. If the 3rd pick was the game-killer, the 4th pick was the Grossman-killer, as he basically just threw a pass up for grabs down the left sideline. It was bad enough that it all but forced Mike Shanahan’s hand…cameras panned to the sideline immediately showing Beck getting loose. Rex’s numbers for the game: 9 for 22 for 143 yards, no TD’s, and 4 (count ‘em, 4) interceptions…transformation complete. While I had argued before that Grossman hadn’t played that bad through the 1st 4 games (2 of his interceptions were tipped/dropped by his own receivers), his overall numbers for the season speak for themselves: only completing 55% of his passes, a rating of 66.5, 6 TD’s, 9 INT’s, and 2 lost fumbles…so basically, he averaged about 1 touchdown and 2 turnovers per game through the 1st 5 weeks, which on a team with room for little error is not going to fly.

Umm, Rex...this isn't considered "open."

Amazingly, after a Beck-led touchdown drive the Skins were only down 20-13. If their defense could force a 3-and-out, the Redskin offense would have one last gasp at forcing the game into overtime at least. However, Washington’s D, which had been gashed by the run all day long, allowed Philly to pick up a couple 1st downs and subsequently run out the clock. How it was still even a game at that point is beyond me. Between the turnovers and their inability to run the ball, Washington barely had the ball at all in the 1st half, and the Eagles seemed to be running up and down the field at will. Despite their early season struggles, they displayed a lot of the offensive firepower that allowed them to put up 59 against the Skins in the same building last season. (For the record, while Washington’s defense is leaps and bounds better than last year, they still match up poorly with Philly’s offense…actually, Philly’s team speed makes them a tough matchup against most D’s, but the Skins simply don’t possess the speed at cornerback or inside linebacker to combat Vick, McCoy, Jackson, and Maclin.) And yet, after falling behind 20-0 their bend-but-don’t-break defense was able to keep them in the game the entire 2nd half. On Philly’s last drive, they just didn’t seem to have enough gas left in the tank to make 1 last stop though, and the beginning of the “John Beck era” was just too little, too late…

Other news and notes from yesterday in the NFL…

- Sad news coming out of Oakland, where it’s being reported Jason Campbell is out for the season with a broken collarbone. Campbell was having a breakout year in his 2nd season in Oakland, leading the Raiders to a 4-2 record. We had flipped to the Red Zone channel during a break in the Redskin game yesterday, and when the Raiders came on I even mentioned to Krissy that I wish Shanahan would have held on to him after coming aboard. Hindsight’s always 20-20, but looking back would you rather have Campbell for the last couple years or some combination of McNabb, Grossman, and Beck? Yea, I thought so. Still, the circus atmosphere surrounding the Redskins and their constant changes in coaching probably ruined him from being a good player here, and he needed a change of scenery. I was rooting for him to have a strong bounce-back year, but such is the nature of a violent sport like football I guess.

- Quite a funny dust-up between Niners coach Jim Harbaugh and Lions coach Jim Schwartz after San Fran’s win yesterday. I know Harbaugh is a fiery guy who has a history of ruffling opposing coaches’ feathers, but he is a little over the top for me. Still, I couldn’t help but laugh at the way he untucked his shirt like he was in a “girls gone wild” video, chest bumped one of his offensive lineman, and then oddly shook Schwartz’ hand at midfield. Schwartz clearly took exception, but he looked like such a wheenie chasing after Harbaugh as he headed to the locker room. From here on out, I’m going to start referring to Schwartz as “Jeff Van Gundy-Lite.” I love Van Gundy as an announcer, but the image of him hanging onto Alonzo Mourning’s leg during a Knicks-Heat brawl will forever be burned into my brain. Emotion and passion aside, I couldn’t help but think Harbaugh’s “over-exuberance” might have been somewhat staged and aimed directly at Schwartz, who in Detroit’s recent resurgence has been known to fist pump, chest bump, scream at officials, and generally behave like a maniac on the sidelines himself. It’s not hard to imagine Schwartz doing the same exact thing if the roles had been reversed. I will withhold judgment until I hear my boy Mac’s thoughts on the subject though, as he’s a diehard Lion fan.

I think I just sharted.

- On a day when the Redskins gagged and the Giants won to pull ahead of the Skins all alone in 1st place in the NFC East, I could at least take solace in the fact that the Cowboys continue to find ways to lose games. On the road against the mighty Patriots, Dallas somehow (mostly through the play of their own stingy D) carried a lead deep into the 4th quarter; however, the offense wasn’t able to score or run off enough clock to prevent Tom Brady and company from driving for a late game-winning touchdown…the Skins may stink, but another Cowboy collapse let me sleep a little bit easier last night.

Dance Dance Revolution

Over the past couple of years, I've developed somewhat of an obsession with dancing, specifically different forms of the hip hop genre of dance. I think Krissy is mostly responsible with the manifestation of this obsession, as she introduced me to corny movies like Step Up and Take the Lead, which led into my regular viewership of shows like So You Think You Can Dance...I'm not sure why I like dance-related stuff that much, given that I can dance just about as well as William Hung can sing, but every once in a while I will sift through dance clips on YouTube, and sometimes I will find a gem or 2. I really am a sucker for this stuff...

The 1st video is by a dance crew of kids that is apparently called "The Art of Teknique." I have a tough time estimating how old the kids actually are (7 or 8 maybe?), but whatever age they are these kids are better dancers than I was at anything when I was their age...maybe sneaking sodas and chocolate chip cookies in my grandparents' basement, but that's about it. As good as they are, the best part of the video for me comes at the very end (right around the 2:42 mark) when the song basically ends, and the kids kind of fall over each other, much in the way that any goofy 8 year old boys will do...superhuman as they look, they are still kids after all.

The next 2 videos are both danced in a style that I have just come across called "dubstep." According to my extensive research on Wikipedia, dubstep is a form of electronic music characterized by "tightly coiled productions with overwhelming bass lines and reverberant drum patterns, clipped samples, and occasional vocals." To your average Joe, dancing to dubstep resembles someone doing "the robot" on HGH. The 1st dubstep video is of a dude that calls himself "Swody." At 1st glance, Swody looks like your run of the mill, white, emo-looking kid...until the beat drops, that is. The video starts off kind of slow. He shows off some robot-eque moves, but at about the 1:10 mark the beat speeds up, and this guy starts going insane. His hand movements, leg movements, and popping (yes, I know some dance lingo...thanks, So You Think You Can Dance) are scary-good. My only complaint is that the kid needs to close his bedroom shades because the glare is kind of distracting (especially in the 2nd song when he's wearing a white shirt, which makes some of his hand movements almost impossible to see).

However, I think I saved the best for last. The other dubstep dance video features (according to YouTube) a guy named Marquese Scott. One of the 1st things you notice is that the song is "Pumped Up Kicks," which even if it is mixed to dubstep is kind of slow and melodic, so you wonder how is this guy going to dance to it? After watching it, you realize the slow parts were some of the best sections. He is moving so slowly at times that you would swear he put some type of super slow-motion effect on the video. With that being said, the fast hard-hitting parts are as equally nasty. His legs, arms, and neck seem to move completely independently of each other when he wants to...sections of it really don't look real. The "whoa" moment of the video starts at about the 4:10 mark, where the guy does a move that I have never seen before. He pitches his body forward on one leg, while keeping the rest rest of his weight behind it, and comes to a complete stop almost like someone popping a wheelie on the front tire on a bike. When I 1st watched the video, I was with my brother-in-law Nick, and we must have rewinded that part a half dozen times before finishing the rest of the video. In short, he's a sick dude.

The Rise and Fall of the NBA

Early this summer when the Dirk Nowitzki and company beat the Big 3 in the NBA Finals, it capped off probably the most celebrated season in basketball history. I’m only 26, so I missed the battles of the Showtime Lakers, Bad Boy Pistons, Sixers, and Celtics of the 80’s. I missed the careers of Wilt, Jerry West, Oscar Robertson, Bill Russell, and Kareem. But from the start of the 1st Jordan 3-peat on, I am pretty well-versed in NBA folklore. The 2010-11 NBA season had more hype going into it than any other season ever, and it delivered with some of the best storylines you could dream up, including up-and-coming teams (the Thunder and Bulls) and superstars (Durant and Rose), aging teams trying to make 1 last run with their current cores (the Celtics and Lakers), big time trades (especially Carmelo to the Knicks), young studs putting the league on notice that they are the real deal (Blake and Wall), a team that embodied the idea of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts (the Mavs), and a hated villain (the Heat). If more or all of this upcoming season ends up being cancelled, which is very likely after the 1st 2 weeks of the regular season were nixed by commissioner David Stern earlier this week, all that momentum is gone. This isn’t rocket science or some brand spankin’ new point of view, but in this case it’s probably worth stating the obvious. It wasn’t that long ago, after Jordan’s 2nd retirement and the last NBA work stoppage, that the NBA wasn’t all that popular of a product. Professional athletes are almost always universally thought of as greedy spoiled brats, but the climate of the NBA in the late 90’s and early 00’s represents much of what puts people off about professional basketball players to this day. Around the time of the lockout, Patrick Ewing will always be remembered (probably unfairly) for saying that the reason NBA players needed to be paid so much money was because they spent a lot of money too…simple supply and demand, right? People will remember those years for overpaid/underperforming stars like Antoine Walker and Latrell Sprewell, the Shaq-Kobe feud, Tim Donaghy’s accusations of corrupt officiating, and the ugly brawls such as the “Malice in the Palace.”

You can’t fault the man for that sweet flat-top fade though.

If Stern thinks those aren’t fond memories, just wait to see what fans’ perceptions of the league are if there is no resolution to this current labor dispute. To piggyback off Mike Wilbon’s point on the matter, the people of this country and its struggling economy are not going to take kindly to a lost NBA season because a group of millionaires and a smaller group of billionaires can’t come up with a way to divvy up the pie. People who are struggling to pay their mortgage and their rent are not going to want to hear it, and fans are going to turn on this league in a way not seen in sports since the baseball strike in 1994…probably worse.

Fair or unfair, these upcoming months will serve as Stern’s legacy.

That’s not to say that all fans will turn their backs on the NBA and that the league won’t ever again regain it’s popularity. It’s a star driven league, and if the stars come back to play so will the hardcore fans…just ask anyone who packed a gymnasium across the country this past summer to watch a local pick-up league all-star game.

Coming to a local midmajor college arena near you: your NBA All-Stars!

Maybe the most troubling thing about this labor dispute is that it’s hard to place the blame of it solely at the feet of the players. Sure, everyone agrees that the players make too much, but somebody had to pay them, right? To steal something I heard Tony Kornheiser say, you could argue that the top 10-20 players in the league are actually underpaid. It’s the Rashard Lewis’, Gilbert Arenas’, and Marvin Williams’ of the world that have thrown everything out of wack…overblown mistake-ridden deals for sure, but no one put a gun to these owners’ heads to sign these players. As Rashard Lewis basically said when asked about his salary recently, “What did you want me to do, ask for less money?” In essence, this dispute is about protecting the owners from their own stupidity…so if you are on the players’ side of the negotiating table, why would you come to an agreement with the owners (aside from saving your sport)? It’s a mess that the owners themselves created.

“I like everything about the proposed contract, sir…except I would like to be paid half what you’re offering.”

As it seems the 2 sides get farther and farther apart every day, the idea of the season being cancelled all together seems like a more distinct possibility all the time…what a waste of a million good storylines going into this season. LeBron and the Heat finally gelled after a season of ups and downs to make it all the way to the Finals only to collapse at the very end. If it were a script, you couldn’t write Act I any better than that. How they play in their 2nd season together may be even more scrutinized than the 1st. Would teams like the Bulls and the Thunder make another leap this year? Do the Lakers, Celtics, Spurs, and Mavs have enough in the tank to make another deep playoff run? A cancelled season would only mean the aging cores of those teams would make them another year older with nothing to show for it. Would we see a repeat of the Carmelo-trade drama from last year with Dwight Howard and Chris Paul? Also, if the season were to be cancelled, it would be 3 years since Blake Griffin came into the league, and we would have been robbed of 2 of those potential seasons (1 by injury). If the league and its players don’t figure this out, say goodbye to all of that…

…and who knows if the NBA will ever regain this momentum again.

Probably for the Best

I’ve heard someone say before that money doesn’t buy happiness, but it sure helps. Krissy and I often wonder how much money we would have saved if we could have hypothetically lived with our parents until our mid to late 20’s like her 2 older brothers. Well, after some consideration I feel that I might have saved some money, but for the most part I think I would have just blown most of it. On what? Well, for starters my car…I am 100% happy with my ’11 Tacoma, but I am actually happy that I don’t have enough disposable income to accessorize the hell out of it.

My semi-blank canvas.

To start with, I would probably add a lot a couple of things that the Tacoma TX-Pro has: the tube steps or running boards or whatever you want to call them and the black 16” beadlock wheels. (The stupid side graphics you can keep, Toyota.) Outside of those things, the TX-Pro is basically the same truck as my TRD…same BF Goodrich rugged trail tires, same TRD off-road tuned suspension, same everything. Still, someone in the neighborhood next to me must have gotten one recently, and I have to admit it’s pretty sharp.

Apparently "extreme" means rims and running boards.

Next would probably be a little suspension lift, a roll bar, a light bar, a skid plate…this ’07 monster doesn’t have all of those, but it definitely was a source of inspiration.

Whoa...

Pretty soon, my pickup would actually start to look like an entry into a Baja race…and I would have poured approximately a billion dollars into the accessories of this truck.

Would this even be street-legal?

Toyota is actually coming up with a “Baja” edition of the Tacoma due out in 2012. From what I can tell it basically looks like the current TRDs with maybe slightly beefier tires, and the hood and siding look trimmed to more reflect an actual Baja truck. Anyway, along with all the obvious reasons it’s probably for the best that I am married and have responsibilities and yada yada yada…if not, I would almost definitely be even more broke than I am now!