BY MICHEL GONZALEZ – FAN FUEL BLOGGER
The NFL regular season is ever so slowly drawing to a close and we were treated to surprises, shocks – both good and bad – and a lot of whacky stuff.
Here just a sample of what 2011 boiled down to.
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SURPRISE TEAM OF THE YEAR: San Francisco 49ers. The Niners came into this season with a new coach and modest expectations. Fast forward to December and they’re not only headed to the playoffs, but they’re also running away with the second seeding in the NFC.
DISAPPOINTING TEAM OF THE YEAR: Philadelphia Eagles. Gee, like we couldn’t see this one coming! For all intents and purposes, the Eagles’ 2011 season went kaputt when Vince Young proclaimed this was a “Dream Team”. Some dream it turned out to be! Injuries devastated the team, poor defensive play became a trademark and certain players’ attitude (DeSean Jackson, that would be you!) left a lot to be desired. All in all, this season could turn out to be Andy Reid’s last at the helm.
ONE-TRICK PONY OF THE YEAR: Indianapolis Colts. Forgive the bad pun, but the Colts proved they had very little beyond Peyton Manning. Once Peyton was lost for the year, several non-descript stiffs, including regular backup Curtis Painter, followed one another under center and the results were catastrophic.
STORY OF THE YEAR: No matter how much I’d like to give the nod to the hype surrounding Tebowmania, I have to go with the child abuse scandal at Penn State. No other event rocked the football world like this one, because it transcended all levels. Countless NFL Players, both current and past, have played for Joe Paterno and Jerry Sandusky and most of them had something to say. Matt Millen’s outburst on ESPN was probably the most memorable. Jump to the 4:20 mark below:
OK, THIS THING HAS GOT TO GO!: Twitter has taken too much space, especially amongst those with very little to say or do. Between Jacksonville kicker Josh Scobee calling DeSean Jackson a “punk” and Terrell Owens who tweeted that a Dallas sportswriter was overweight (I’m paraphrasing; the sportswriter replied that Owens should get a job because of all the pending child support he owes), this childish behavior has gotten out of hand. It’s become an electronic version of school kids shouting names at each other during recess. Sheesh!
OK, THIS THING HAS GOT TO GO, PART DEUX: Memo to all analysts, both in the booth and the studio. I appreciate how you break down certain plays and make them accessible to everyone. Honest, I do. But pretty please, with sugar on top, is there any way you can get rid of that seizure-inducing contraption known as the “Clicker”? The Telestrator should be sufficient when showing a safety tripping on the hashmarks when he’s about to blitz!
FINE, FINE, FINE! If there’s one thing that will stick in my mind, and in many players’ wallets, it’s the inordinate number of fines levied by the NFL against players. Honestly, I stopped counting after Week 3. In some cases, such as helmet-to-helmet hits, it was justified. In other cases, such as Haloti Ngata’s hit on Mark Sanchez in Week 4, it was totally absurd. If you add all the money amassed in fines, you’d be nearing the million dollar mark. For years, the NFL was nicknamed the “No Fun League” but with this propensity for fines, we might as well call it the “Next Fine League”.
SO HOW WAS YOUR DAY? American shoppers have their “Black Friday”, the NFL has it “Black Monday”. On December 12, two teams fired their head coaches. Kansas City unloaded Todd Haley, while Miami did what it should have done last January, which is fire its head coach, Tony Soprano Sparano.
STAY CLASSY, GUYS! While we’re on the subject of fired head coaches, I’d be remiss if I didn’t bring up two coaching changes that showed a total lack of class. Both were at the college level, but they’re still noteworthy. The first is Rob Ianello, who was fired from his post at the University of Akron, but found out about it while on his way to his mother’s funeral. The other was Todd Graham who left the University of Pittsburgh after just one year to take the head coaching gig at Arizona State and let his players know by text message. Nice!
WELCOME TO DRAFT HISTORY 101: In the 2011 draft, the Jaguars moved to the 10th overall spot to draft QB Blaine Gabbert. The poor kid was thrown to the wolves earlier this season and has looked just awful, prompting many to encourage the Jags to pick another quarterback in next April’s draft. Though idiotic, the move is not completely unheard of. In fact, The Cowboys used their first-round picks in 1989 and 1990 on quarterbacks Troy Aikman and Steve Walsh, but the 1990 pick was used in the supplemental draft. (The Cowboys traded Walsh to the Saints in 1990.)
The last time a team used consecutive first-round picks in the regular draft on quarterbacks was in 1982-83, when the Baltimore Colts drafted Art Schlichter and John Elway. But that was a highly unusual circumstance in which neither one of those quarterbacks played for the team in 1983. Schlichter was suspended for the entire 1983 season, and the Colts traded Elway to the Broncos before he ever played a down for Baltimore.
Before the Colts, you have to go all the way back to the early 1960s Los Angeles Rams to find a team that used first-round draft picks on quarterbacks in back-to-back years. The Rams actually drafted quarterbacks in the first round three years in a row: Roman Gabriel in 1962, Terry Baker in 1963 and Bill Munson in 1964. But Baker was a college quarterback who played halfback in the NFL, so that’s not quite the same thing, either. Prior to those Rams, the last team to draft quarterbacks in back-to-back first rounds was the 49ers, who took Earl Morrall in 1956 and John Brodie in 1957. The 49ers traded Morrall to the Steelers before the 1957 season.
BUYER BEWARE: Funny how everyone in Oakland applauded the trade that brought Carson Palmer to the Raiders. The fact is that through Week 15, the team’s been able to stay in the playoff picture in spite of Palmer. In eight games since being acquired from the Bengals, he’s been throwing interceptions at an alarming rate (13 in 8 games) while maintaining a rating just a shade below 71. All this at a modest cost of two future first-round picks.
FROM THE “DUDE, HOW STUPID CAN YOU GET” FILE: Since Sam Hurd was never heard of on the field, I guess he wanted to be known off the field. On December 15, Hurd was arrested on federal drug charges and from the looks of it, he wanted to be a major player in Chicago. Before his arrest, Hurd told an undercover agent Wednesday night that he was looking to buy “5 to 10 kilograms of cocaine and 1,000 pounds of marijuana per week for distribution in the Chicago area.” Hurd negotiated to pay $25,000 per kilogram for the cocaine and $450 per pound of the weed. So Hurd had the cash flow to pay for $575,000-$700,000 worth of drugs per week. That’s well over $2 million per month.
OK, this is just me talking but the guy was paid over a million dollars to play a game most of us would give anything to play and he blows it by trying to be a drug kingpin. Dawg, you’re facing over 40 years in jail. I don’t think you can expect the same kind of comeback Michael Vick and Plaxico Burress had.
HOW CAN WE MISS YOU IF YOU WON’T GO AWAY: When a rash of season-ending injuries hit starting quarterbacks, guess whose name popped up again? That’s right, the NFL’s favorite groundhog. Brett Favre’s name was linked to the Houston Texans and the Chicago Bears. He ended up staying home, but most likely because no team was willing to pony up the kind of dough he would have commanded.
Keep in mind last season, he made $13 million for the season. I’ll let you guess how much he would have wanted for half a season. That and I don’t suppose Jenn Sterger works in Houston or Chicago these days!
EPIC FAIL OF THE YEAR: This one has to go to Donovan McNabb. When the Vikings acquired McNabb, it was admittedly to bridge the gap between Brett Favre and rookie Christian Ponder. Alas, McNabb – thereafter nicknamed McFlabb – showed up overweight, essentially looking like Humpty Dumpty wearing a purple jersey, and proceeded to complete 94 passes in 156 attempts for 1,026 yards in six starts. He also got four TD passes and two INT’s, all for a modest $5 million per season. He was benched after six games before being released. It got so bad that when other quarterbacks around the league started dropping like flies, McNabb never got a single, even from his hometown Chicago Bears.
OK, SO THE GUY IS BECOMING A BIG DEAL!: All told the days preceeding the Week 15 game were a big deal for Tim Tebow. First, a drug-sniffing dog named Tebow helped police in a trafficking case. High school students were suspended for “Tebowing”. A Colorado microbrewery announced plans for a new ale, Tebrew and “Saturday Night Live” featured a Tebow skit, in which Jesus comes into the Broncos’ locker room after a win.
Then against the Patriots, Tebow became a mere mortal. In the process, he made one of the most boneheaded plays in recent memory, when he got his directions mixed while scrambling for his life and got sacked for a 28-yard loss. No Mile High Miracle this time.
And finally…
WHERE IS THE LOVE? Canadian rock band Nickelback was invited to play at halftime of the Green Bay-Detroit game. Only problem is, an online petition was started by a University of Michigan student to remove the Edmonton band from the show; the petition was signed by some 50,000 people. Nickelback ended up playing one song and left to a chorus of boos. The irony is that Nickelback played the halftime show of TWO Lions games in four days, as they supplied the entertainment for the Grey Cup.