Once upon a time - oh, probably 5 years ago - I championed the writings of Gregg Easterbrook on ESPN.com's Page 2.
Gregg was, so I said at the time, the "thinking man's Peter King."
In other words, he was able to observe the entire NFL, and make some really good, really thoughtful points about the game, strategy by coaches, and do all of that, minus the pompous self-absorption of the Latte King.
Ah, never mind.
Drew Magary at Deadspin.com properly crushes Easterbrook this week for his column about the glory and joy of the NFL's "All Unwanted" team. As a general premise, I get it. But where Easterbook embarasses himself, is when he gets HUGE POINTS about certain players entirely wrong.
When you praise Arian Foster and LaGarrette Blount, don't wrap them in a flag of self-righteous over-achievement. It was these players' own character flaws -well known and documented to the entire league - that scared teams away from them.
And rightly so.
The NFL has learned time and time again how painful it is to get burned by shithead players, who say all the right things up until draft day, sign that first big bonus check, buy a bunch of luxury items, and then do nothing more to prepare to play as a professional other than to ask: "So, when's game time?"
In fact, one could argue that it was precisely this humiliation of not being drafted, that served as the much needed wake up call, to finally start saddling up their God-given talents with good ol' fashioned hard work, and ride the combination to success.
Easterbrook either was unaware of why certain players did not get drafted, or just ignored it for the sake of straining to make some point about the virtues of hard work. Either way, it comes across as laughably ill-informed.
Drew eviscerates Easterbrook with more bloodlust than I would, personally, but the points he makes are hard to refute.
It's a shame, because I thought Easterbrook was indeed, "smarter than that."
Apparently, he's not.
Aaaaannnndddd... Fonzie has landed safely on his water skis!
Great post Czabe, and welcome back from vacation.
ReplyDeleteEasterbrook's obsession with "unwanted" players is clearly his downfall here. It's as if he's painted himself into a corner by being such a champion of the non-superstar player, that he has to stretch the credibility of his own cause by including players who shouldn't really be classified as unwanted.
The shame of it is, I think he's generally a good analyst, I like his approach to the game and the league, and he doesn't even need to do this stuff in his column.