I'm #7! Whoo Hoooo!

Okay, so it's just one dude out there, with one list, on one website.

But... I'll take it!

/calls agent
/plans holdout

"Awww no, she need to go on ahead with that horse..."

The Biggest Football Farce I've Ever Seen

This kids, is how you tackle.

Just make sure your ball carrier is...

1. Not running at you at full steam
2. Not bigger than you are
3. Not angling away from you
4. Standing straight up, ahem, preferably...

This column by Slate's Matt Chaney accurately points out what a complete farce the NFL is pushing out the PR door here. A farce that somehow tries to prove that football is not only NOT inherently dangerous at a basic level, NOR downright insanely violent at the level which the league makes it's zillions.

Got that? “Knuckles up, elbows down like you’re throwing double uppercuts.” As a former head-basher in NCAA football, I can say that this is a technique that I’ve seen precisely no one, ever, use on the field. The way I understand it, tacklers are somehow supposed to launch themselves chest first into their opponents, who damn well better do the same or the tackler gets annihilated. The only way this will work is if tackle football is replaced by a version of the game without bullet-head helmets, in which a player is down if you bang him in the chest.

Even if you focus on juvenile players more narrowly, it should be obvious instantly that nobody plays like this. Over the last week, there’s been a video of a star youth player named Sam Gordon going around. Gordon, a nine-year-old girl, is seen darting through tacklers with great bursts of speed. And also, at the end of the reel, there’s a section titled “taking a hit,” in which Gordon absorbs repeated shots on or near her head. None of these kids are using anything resembling a “knuckles up, elbows down” approach to tackling. They’ve all got the crowns of their helmets forward, ready to strike.

True, true. And here's the real kicker: what happens when a kid gets injured specifically ATTEMPTING to crane their necks up and bow their body backward?

The NFL is fighting a losing battle here. Better to just start pushing liability waivers under players noses, and be done with it.

Tommy Tuberville Has A Way With People

Oops. "It slipped."

Sure.

Sunday Roundup: Veterans Day, Johnny Football, The Fiscal Cliff, and More...

I had guests in town this weekend, and they brought with them their well behaved young boys, 15 and 10 years old.

As we were watching football down in the 5 Hour Energy Dome, one of them saw the Blu-Ray of "Black Hawk Down" and started begging us to watch it.

I deferred to their father, who said, okay sure, let 'em watch.

It's about the 5th time I've seen the movie, and it simply never disappoints. One the one level, the helicopter scenes and the pure war-movie action is second to none in Hollywood history.

But on a deeper level, the lessons of service, sacrifice, courage and honor are timeless.

On this Veterans Day 2012, I can only say thanks yet again, for all of those men and women who have served our nation in war, and in peace. I hope those two boys who watched with me gain a greater appreciation as well.

The above photo was widely circulated after Hurricane Sandy, pretending to be current to the most recent hurricane. It wasn't. That does not mean it's not an awesome photo.

It is.

Thank you, Veterans. More than us civilians can ever truly express.

>>>>>>>>>>>>

Family guests John Goettler and son Henry helped get the Shield logo down this weekend.

The afternoon on Saturday was spent prepping the backyard football field for some impromptu 4 on 4 action on a pristine 68 degree fall day. This field is getting a bit nuts, I suppose. Cars are now stopping on our adjacent country road to stop and stare. I watch them from my window and just beam with pride.

"Yup. That's my football field. Like it?"

I still need to get the rest of the numbers painted, but when I do, I'll schedule a full photo shoot for the finshed product.

And don't tell me "you forgot to paint the end zones."

Until I get a professional field striper, I don't have enough 12 oz. spray cans of marking paint to do a whole endzone, much less two!

Heck, the NFL logo alone took 10 cans and 6 kids helping. We almost passed out from the fumes!

>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I missed most of the Texas A&M upset of Alabama because we got done playing football outside as the first half was winding down. Then we all went out for a birthday dinner with the two families after that.

Was I watching on Slingbox during the 20 minute car ride?

Hell yeah!

But once there, it would have been a bit much to just plop the ol' iPhone 5 on my appetizer plate and zone in on the slow motion stunner going down in Tuscaloosa. I believe my wife would have given me the Kobe Death Stare, followed by the dreaded marital "Vote of Confidence."

Besides, the bar in our restaurant had the game on, just out of view. And given the slight lag in Slingbox working it's magic, you could hear the place erupting with every spectacular play down the stretch.

The two boys and their dad excused themselves to see the final few minutes. I got reports from them.

Incredible game. Incredible.

Sorry I missed it live, but that' how college football season often goes as a fan, right?

You get "up" for the big ones like Alabama-LSU and Oregon-Stanford last week (I made sure to "clear the decks" of any commitments last Saturday) and then you kind of sleep on the others, like A&M dropping a big fat "welcome" turd to the SEC on 'Bama's doorstep.

Johnny Manziel is something else, ain't he, kids?

Now his family is working to secure the rights to the knickname "Johnny Football". Ohhhhkay. Makes me think I really AM sitting on a gold mine with the rights to www.harryhighschool.com.

The move by A&M to the SEC simply could NOT be working out any better.

Texas is saddled with a Longhorn Network that nobody can clear on their cable systems, and one that head coach Mack Brown says is actually HURTING their team due to over-exposure and time requirements to feed the beast.

Their conference doesn't have enough teams for a title game, and they now don't even get a chance to beat the Aggies in a blood rivalry game at the end of the year. (Not that they would, likely, do so this year).

A&M now has stunned Alabama on the road, in perhaps the Game of the Year, they have the most exciting young QB in the nation, and they have only had ONE full season to recruit with the vaunted S-E-C letterhead.

Hard to imagine a better time to be an Aggie in the last 40 years, than right now.

>>>>>>>>>>>>

Or a WORSE time to be an Auburn fan, or Gene Chizik.

What kind of number is a pissed off 1-loss Alabama team going to post on Auburn in a few weeks? 76-0?



>>>>>>>>>>>>

The election is over, but America's problems still exist.

In case you did not know, WE ARE BROKE!

I would yell that louder, but last Tuesday proved that the public is too stupid to understand, or just don't care. Even my own mother, was indifferent to this as I watched the returns with my father and proceeded to plow through half a bottle of Kraken rum.

(I woke up Wednesday, picked up the bottle by it's cute little tentacle handles, and wondered "Man, did I drink all that myself?)

All my mom seemed to care about, while voting again for our magnificent Golfing Teleprompter King, was that Prop 7 passed in Maryland so she would have a new casino to visit just across the river in Maryland.

You want hopeless? That'll give you hopeless.

I can't even flip my own mother, with a PERSONAL appeal to remember her lovely grandchildren and their bleak and imminent future.

From the above link...

The good news is that reality (to use a quaint expression) doesn’t need to swing a couple of thousand soccer moms in northern Virginia. Reality doesn’t need to crack 270 in the Electoral College. Reality can get 1.3 percent of the popular vote and still trump everything else. In the course of his first term, Obama increased the federal debt by just shy of $6 trillion and in return grew the economy by $905 billion. So, as Lance Roberts at Street Talk Live pointed out, in order to generate every dollar of economic growth the United States had to borrow about five dollars and 60 cents. 

There’s no one out there on the planet — whether it’s “the rich” or the Chinese — who can afford to carry on bankrolling that rate of return. According to one CBO analysis, U.S.-government spending is sustainable as long as the rest of the world is prepared to sink 19 percent of its GDP into U.S. Treasury debt. 

We already know the answer to that: In order to avoid the public humiliation of a failed bond auction, the U.S. Treasury sells 70 percent of the debt it issues to the Federal Reserve — which is to say the left hand of the U.S. government is borrowing money from the right hand of the U.S. government. It’s government as a Nigerian e-mail scam, with Ben Bernanke playing the role of the dictator’s widow with $4 trillion under her bed that she’s willing to wire to Timmy Geithner as soon as he sends her his bank-account details.

If that’s all a bit too technical, here’s the gist: There’s nothing holding the joint up.

Meet "The Terminator Arm"

Like I said Wednesday morning on the air with Bob and Brian, I remain hopeful about America despite the election results of Tuesday for one big reason:

"Technology doesn't vote."

By that, it is not Democratic or Republican.

Technology just keeps advancing, and amazing.

Will it present some truly frightening moral dilemmas? Sure.

But it will also solve many, many, many problems, obliterating many of our most current pressing "problems."

"There's Crab To Catch..."

The sun came up... and everything wonderful about my life is the same.

And every problem facing America, is still there.

The mob has spoken, and they said overwhelmingly - by 2% of the voting population - that they want Obama to have one more crack at fixing those problems.

Good luck.

I refuse to buy into the doom and gloom. This is not because I am naive. I'm just a rugged optimist.

Does it suck? Oh yeah. Sure does. Big time.

But you know what, there's crab to catch. So you just gotta get back out on deck and get working.

In life, you don't get to wake up and choose the weather. You just have to deal with what it is, for how long it lasts.

And so too, with this.

I have some stray thoughts on how to better "trim up" our "team" so we can start winning again. But right now, they are loose and scattered. Maybe this time next week, they will have congealed in my brain and I'll share them here.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with Lt. Dan on the mast of the Jenny.

"You call this a storm? It's time for a showdown. You.. and me...."

Welcome to The Czabe.com Cover5 NBA Leagues!

This is exciting, fun basketball for Laker fans.

If you are like me, you have an NBA team that is NOT one of David Stern's "chosen" franchises. You know, the ones in either warm climates, in states with no taxes, or major metropolitan cities with storied NBA legacies.

So we are the collective "non-meat" filler for Stern's Travelling Hardwood circus.

Well, do NOT despair my friends! Because Cover5 is going to make watching the NBA fun, and perhaps PROFITABLE!

Cover5 is expanding their games this year by offering NBA and College Basketball leagues. Sadly, you'll probably spend more time playing Cover5 than most players will playing defense.

Rules are simple:

Lines Come out Monday

The spreads are "estimates" that far out, so take that for what it's worth. Since Cover5 is not a casino, it doesn't matter if the line matches what it actually is by Friday.

Otherwise, there would be too many and it would be too difficult to track your scores and your friends. That's the problem with fantasy basketball and why so few people actually play it.

Games to Choose are only on Saturday -Sunday.

Same scoring system as Cover5 NFL.

There is a Cover5 Public league for you to join today or create your own private league so the winter months are more enjoyable this year!

I am going to get a "Public League" for you cheap-o's, and we can play for a Beer Tube. And if there's enough interest, how about we do a $50 "cash league" like football, with once again a limit of 30 entrants to match the NBA's total of teams.

Sound fun? Of course it does!

So JUMP ON IN!

UPDATE: 

Here's the link to the Public FREE League....
Here's the link to the Czabe CASH $$$ League....

Go to www.cover5.com and click on NBA Leagues, and search for my name.
 
As easy as a Dwight Howard alley-oop from Steve Nash!

This is what I get to watch for 82 games.

"A republic, if you can keep it..."

“We get the government we deserve.”
Alexis de Tocqueville

"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."
Winston Churchill

At the close of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia on September 18, 1787, a Mrs. Powel anxiously awaited the results and as Benjamin Franklin emerged from the long task now finished asked him directly, `Well, Doctor, what have we got? A republic or a monarchy?' `A republic, if you can keep it,' responded Franklin.

Not The Kind of Evaluation He's Gonna Like

With 12:47 left in Sunday's "Homecoming" game against the 1-6 Panthers, the roof fell in on this Redskins season, and perhaps the entire Shanahan regime in Washington.

Already struggling mightily to score points - they had 6 at the moment - the known Achilles heel, the defense, gave up a monster strike of 82 yards from Cam Newton to Armanti Edwards.

Two plays later, Josh Wilson was called for an easy pass interference in the end zone, and proceeded to argue, whine, and moan about it to the referee. It was enough that he was eventually forced to sprint off the field for the Skins to get their "heavy" package into the game for the Panthers new set of downs at the one.

Newton and Panthers went quick-snap QB keeper, and Newton plunged into the end zone with minimal resistance.

21-6. Season, over.

Watching the replay on NFL Network, Deion Sanders directly criticized embattled team loudmouth DeAngelo Hall for letting Edwards go on the "wheel route" that resulted in the game clinching bomb.

I'll take Deion's word for it. He criticizes fellow cornerbacks about as often as Tom Coughlin smiles.

Of course, Hall will no doubt tell you it wasn't his fault. It never is.

And after the game Shanahan dropped a steaming turd into the punchbowl.

He said now was the part of the season where the coaching staff would be able to "evaluate" which players want to be here for the next several years.

Whoa! Wait. What?

Evaluate?

Did you just say what we all think you just said? The 2013 "Regular Pre-Season" (as I like to call it) has begun?

Wow.

No matter how much he'll fall back on his caveat of this team not being "statistically" out of it, and no matter if his statement is true, this is just something good coaches - or ones who fear for their paycheck - do NOT  do with 7 games left in the season.

Even more alarming, was how he said it. With a serene arrogance that he has come to perfect while here in Washington.

Sure, we know, Mike. This place was a flaming station wagon of fail when you were given that $35 million deal to save us.

But have you seen your record?

Yes, YOUR record.

I know your excuse list looks something like this...

1. Existing talent worse than I thought...
2. McNabb turned out to be a bum...
3. Injuries
4. Strike shortened off-season
5. Did mention injuries?
6. Getting screwed out of $18M in cap space...

But again, you are now 5-15..... AT HOME.

This is the place where your boss likes to drink away the losses in his suite, sometimes past midnight. You don't want him doing this.

That's 14-27 overall. You are now well behind the dreaded "Zorn Index" (12-20*) and Zorn deserves an * on that, because Vinny came in and essentially submarined the second season after 6 games by hiring the Bingo Caller.

And yet after a game like this, with the special little throwback uniforms, and the "good ol' Skins of yesteryear" on the field at halftime, this coach decides to throw in the towel?

I wasn't the only one stunned. Here, listen to Coach Dunge and Roidney Harrison on Football Night in America.



So now here we are. Season over. The defense is so bad - they came into the game allowing 314.3 net yards passing, which is the highest average per game in NFL history - you wonder how they can make it all the way to Christmas from this far out.

They are the most penalized team in the NFL.

Jackasses like Hall get coddled by the staff, not disciplined. Something that I am certain is eating through the lockeroom like fast spreading rot.

That leads to otherwise good guys like Wilson thinking it's fine to argue with the refs himself. Because, hey, the coaches kid, Kyle, ran 200 yards out of his way to berate some scab refs for a call that was bad, but had a very minimal outcome on the game.

There is no discipline, leadership, passion, or depth.

But there was Shanahan, calmly after this game taking a perfunctory "I've got to coach better" pill, before throwing his team under the bus with a sneer.

So you're gonna see who "wants" to be here for the next few years, eh?

How sure are you, that you'll be the one making that decision?

The "evaluation" which is now fully in motion, is an evaluation of you, and your entire regime.

I doubt you will enjoy it.

The Nicktater Is A Joyless Enigma

But I can't seem to "hate" him.

I suppose it's because I am NOT a fan of another SEC program. Plus, you can't quibble with his dominance.

That said, it's now abundantly clear why his "act" - if you will - went over like a fart in an elevator when he was head coach of the Dolphins.

Millionaire adult players, aren't going to respond to a mope like this.

Here was the particularly DULL interview I referenced on the radio show this morning. Please don't watch this video while operating heavy machinery.

Gruden Gets JACKED UP! by Frank Caliendo

Gruden: "People are gonna say you are too small to play the QB position. What are you gonna tell them?"
Kid: "That I'm gonna grow."
Gruden: "Grow?"

Classic.

You Want Pathetic? This, Is PATHETIC.

Apparently, JerrahWorld isn't all it's cracked up to be as a "home field" advantage for the Godless Blue Stars of Texas.

According to a New York area newspaper, the Cowboys sent an e-mail to season ticket holders, reminding them that their job once they pay $75 to park their car, is to actually YELL for the home team.

Imagine that.

This week the Cowboys e-mailed season-ticket holders a “Stand Up and Shout” campaign that instructs fans on how to cheer against the Giants. This weekend, there will be a new third down graphic on the video board. 

“When you see the video graphic playing on the video board, get on your feet and get LOUD! Together, we can make opposing teams dread coming to Cowboys Stadium,” the email says, according to the New York Daily News. “If we all play our part, we can help give our Dallas Cowboys a true home-field advantage. 

The last time Dallas played at home, the Chicago fans were louder at times than the Cowboys fans. The Bears said so. 

Wrote Bears wide receiver Brandon Marshall on his Twitter account: "Big ups to all the Chicago fans in Dallas. Felt like a home game." 

Wrote Chicago defender Charles Tillman: "Cowboys Stadium felt like Soldier Field with all the Bear fans. Thanks for traveling to Dallas and showing us some love. Bear Down!!!" 

The Cowboys 56% winning percentage at "Jerry World" is considerably worse than the one the Cowboys posted in Texas Stadium, where they won more than 68% of their games. 

Last year, Marcus Spears said the crowd at the Cowboys’ old home was “way louder.”

The problem with JerrahWorld is simple. They have an oversupply of seating capacity, by around 20,000 seats - easily. Cowboy fans are atrociously fickle - everybody knows this.

So for every big Division/Rival game at "home" there's 20,000 EASILY had seats for either visitors, or "native" non-Cowboy fans to come and invade.

Combine this, with a truly 9th Wonder of The World TV Screen (it's fucking incredible, really) that makes the stadium a real "Tourist Attraction."

So with that recipe, you're gonna get crowds that are routinely 20% or more, road fans.

Until the novelty wears off, and then you'll just get empty seats.

Clownsuits For Sale!

The Pittsburgh Steelers looked like helmeted bumblebees Sunday, with an homage to the ol' 1934 Steelers. (Fun Fact: The Steelers that year went 2-10, beating the BOSTON Redskins twice! Oh, the irony!)

Of course, these unis looked utterly stupid.

Unless you think they looked awesome.

Which maybe 15% of Steelers fans did. And you take that 15% of maybe 1 million (guess?) Steeler fans around the world, assume a merchandise buy rate of 50% of those 15% of that 1 million, and take an average NFLShop.com purchase of $29.99... and well... ah fuck it.

MONEY!

The NFL loves its money, and it will stoop to any gutter level to scoop up even more. The NFL is like a rich guy up to his shoulder reaching into a sewer grate for a shiny nickle.

But hey, nobody got hurt by the stunt (except your eyeballs) and if you don't like it, don't buy it. Yeah, Capitalism!

If you want to know more about the flimsy pretense of this shameless cash grab, the boys at UniWatch.com are all over it - as they are with all things uniform and logo in sports.

(They, are the REAL "Man From U.N.C.L.E.")

Fire This Bum!

Always feels good, doesn't it, sports fans?

Rarely works.

Maybe this kid has the right idea. Hell, Andy Reid is obviously out of ideas, so what the hell. Hire him again, and re-fire him again.

Then call one of those "players only" meetings.

It's the action movie equivalent of throwing your empty gun at the bad guy.

Are You Not Entertained? Are you NOT ENTERTAINED!?

There's a reason why the NFL is the Tyrannosaurus Rex of professional sports in America.

Put simply, there is nothing that compares as pure athletic spectacle.

Little known Colts RB Vick Ballard provided another vivid reminder of this fact Sunday. His impossible flying, twisting, launching effort at the magic orange pylon in overtime, was something that had to be seen, to be believed.

And seen, and seen, and seen again.

My first reaction was "holee sh**!"

My second reaction was: "Hey, didn't Denzel do that in the movie "Flight?"



I once angered hardcore baseball fans, by saying that if you've seen 12 basic baseball highlights, you've essentially seen them all.

Home runs, the $20 bill of baseball highlight currency, are reduced to nothing more than saying: "Wow, that went far."

Football, however, is endlessly splendid in highlight form. While a game may drone on for 3 hours with nothing to chew on but your fingernails, there's always that chance something truly shocking - magical, maybe - will suddenly unfold in front of your eyes.

In glorious 1080p high definition.

Hey, don't yell at me. The World Series, is well on it's way to a new record low in TV eyeballs, dipping below even the NBA Finals nadir of the Nets-Lakers annihilation.

Which brings me to something I've been wondering for a while now. That clip in "Flight" where the plane screams low overhead, UPSIDE DOWN? I mean, is that possible?

Says the interwebs... no, not really.... unless Denzel was just barrell rolling.

Commercial aircraft are definitely not designed to fly upside down and could not sustain flight.

Airplane wings have a specific shape - curved on the top and relatively flat on the bottom. Air flowing over the curved top of the wing has to travel faster than the air flowing across the relatively flat bottom of the wing because it has farther to go. This difference creates a low-pressure area (vacuum) on top of the wing, and this is where the majority of our lift is generated.

Flip the airplane over, and the lift is destroyed. While rollovers and very short times of inverted flight are possible, too long like that stresses the airframe and aircraft in ways it can't handle, and result in either structural failure, stalling, or simple complete loss of lift.

Okay, but like, um, has this ever actually HAPPENED to a passenger jet flight? Answer: (gulp), YES!

An All Nippon Airline pilot screwed up in the most stunning way possible, and nearly killed 100 people...

Here's what happened: the co-pilot mistook the rudder trim knob for the cockpit door lock switch so when he "opened the door" for his captain, he actually caused the jet to roll and drop 1,900 meters in 30 seconds. According to internal investigations, "the narrow-body aircraft continued to roll until it reached 131.7 degrees to the left, leaving it almost belly-up. Its nose pointed down as much as 35 degrees at one point."

In the movie, they get on Denzel's ass because he likes booze, coke, and waitress tail. Damn. Big deal. Some pilots can screw up when stone cold sober.

Hold On A Minute, Superman!

Okay, I might just throw up in  my mouth a little bit, but I think I am going to call on Rick Reilly for backup on a point I've been making about RG3 so far this year.

It's not that he's over-rated. He's awesome. Electric. Current and future star for many years.

But this is a honeymoon. So enjoy it while it lasts.

He'll eventually float back down to "normal good/great" which should be enough to cheer about if you are a long suffering Redskins fan still fresh of the Rex McBeckman disasters of the last 2 seasons.

RG3 is terrorizing confused and scared defenses, and it's a beautiful thing to watch. Yet it is surely going to fade as teams make adjustments. It won't end abruptly, and maybe not even this year.

But my other point about RG3 being "maxed out right now statistically" is also something I will stick to. The ol' phrase "And he's only going to get better..." is often applied in sports when rookies/phenoms take leagues by storm.

However, sometimes, it's not true. Sometimes players regress. Or stagnate. I don't think Griffin will regress or stagnate, but he'll be forced to evolve. And his stats can't go much ABOVE where they are now. I mean, QB's just don't pass for 75% completions in this league, even with the rules being as ridiculously stacked in favor of QB's as they are now.

Griffin's at 70% (#1 in the league!) right NOW, 7 games into his career. How much higher can he go? Not much, in my opinion. This is not to knock him, but more of a concession to the statistical laws of the football universe.

He's running the ball at an incredible clip: on pace for 1,000 yards, which would put him on the same slim shelf as the ONE season where Michael Vick did that for Atlanta. Combine that pace with his expected 3,600 yards passing... and RG3 is on pace to produce nearly 5,000 yards of total offense.

Phenomenal for a rookie!

But that's about the MAX for a QB in terms of yards produced, and last year 4 guys did that by just throwing the football.

Anyway, here's Rick Reilly and ESPN's guru of "Total QBR" - a made up metric, that I have claimed in the past was pure Bristol Bullshit, and now look at me, I'm citing it! What a fraud I am!

/hangs head in shame

"It's like they're not watching Andrew Luck," says a man who analyzes quarterbacks for a living, Jeff Bennett, the curator of the most comprehensive QB stat ever invented, ESPN's QBR (total quarterback rating). "One is being called a savior. But the other is just as successful and no one seems to notice."

If you want a stat that considers everything a QB does, and when he does it, and what was at stake when he did it, then Bennett's QBR stat is for you. Going into Week 8, it had the Mannings at 1 and 2 (Peyton, then Eli), with Tom Brady third. Sound about right? In the QBR rankings, Luck is sixth and Griffin eighth.

But it tells you more than that. For instance, it tells you:
Luck runs more successfully than Griffin. He's had 10 scrambles for first downs. Griffin has had nine.
Luck is asked to do more than Griffin and is doing it. His average pass completion travels 8.6 yards in the air, highest in the NFL. Griffin's is 5.8, one of the lowest.
Luck is more valuable to his team than Griffin. Sixty-nine percent of the Colts' passing yards are gained while the ball is in the air, the rest after the catch. Only 49 percent of the Skins' passing yards come through the air. In other words, Griffin still has his training wheels on. Luck has his license.

What is it, Mike, all of RG3's Subway ads?

Wait! I'm clairvoyant! I know exactly what you're going to say next!

Reilly, you single-celled organism. Griffin leads the NFL in completion percentage! He's third in the league in passer rating! Luck is second to last!

Oh, you mean NFL passer rating, the most useless stat in football? The 41-year-old fossil that was invented, literally, on a slide rule? The one that doesn't even consider running or fumbles or time of game or score? Yeah, I know that stat. That stat is the whole problem.

RG3 kills in that stat because he's nibbled his way to a league-leading 70.4 percent completion rating. Given the way the Redskins have babied him, Katy Perry in heels could throw for 60 percent. More than 20 percent of RG3's passes this season haven't even traveled across the line of scrimmage. Only 6 percent of Luck's haven't. If you do a cannonball and I do a triple backflip with a McTwist and we both get straight 9s, whose dive was better?

Portman, Suh, and a Hunter Pence's Magic Bat

Some days, I put a modest amount of effort into this page. You know, think about something for a few minutes, write about it for about a half hour. Chuck up a jpeg or two.

Then there are days like this. Where I just throw three piece of "eye candy" on the page and say: "Here. You'll enjoy this. Look!"

/puts up "Gone Fishin' sign

>>>>>>>>>>>>

Drunken Bear Fan, Fails Stripper Pole Combine

.

The Real Cam Newton Finally Shows Up

It took a while, but "heeeeere's Cammy!

They say that adversity does not build character, it reveals it. And right now, a 1-5 start by a Panthers team considered by some to be a bit of a playoff "sleeper", has scratched away the phony shine on the former Heisman winner to reveal what some said was there all along.

Nolan Nawrocki, a scout for Pro Football Weekly, refused to buy the hype leading up to draft day. You can read the full write up here (and much of it is positive) but Nawrocki was SAVAGED by the media's "amen chorus" on Cam when it came to this paragraph in particular.

Very disingenuous — has a fake smile, comes off as very scripted and has a selfish, me-first makeup. Always knows where the cameras are and plays to them. Has an enormous ego with a sense of entitlement that continually invites trouble and makes him believe he is above the law — does not command respect from teammates and always will struggle to win a locker room. Only a one-year producer. Lacks accountability, focus and trustworthiness — is not punctual, seeks shortcuts and sets a bad example. Immature and has had issues with authority. Not dependable.

Now... low and behold... with Sunday's pathetic loss to the Cowboys, we saw Cam throwing his coordinator under the bus in public on play calling. 

Dude? Really.

It's NEVER a good sign, when NFL Network talking heads are asking if you are the "new Jay Cutler."

I had doubts about Cam Newton based more on his short college experience, and his super-simplified offense he ran at Auburn. I was agnostic to the "off-the-field" persona stuff, including his now infamous quote about wanting to be "an entertainer and an icon" as well as a football player.

Mind you, I was never "all OUT" on him as a QB in the pros, I just had some doubts, and saw lots of red flags. And as you saw last year, he took all of those red flags and shoved them up my ass and anyone else who doubted.

Which brings us to now. Adversity. It happens. How do you respond, as an athlete? What do you do? What do you say? How do you act? Can you L-E-A-D?

It's quite possible Cam will figure it out, now that the football tailwinds of last year, have shifted into headwinds this year. I was impressed last year with his ability and willingness to stay in the pocket as it collapsed, stand tall, and deliver heavy balls to all parts of the field with accuracy and timing.

But the game changes. And the game is hard. And people are going to - GASP! - "say things..." you know.

Time to figure it out, Cam.

Start, by understanding that your body language means something to your teammates. Your coaches. Your fans. That means the scowl and pout after losses at the podium. The towel over the head. All of it. Start with changing that, because it's the easiest thing to do.

There's a long, and excellent career to be had for Cam Newton. If he wants it.

UPDATE: Ooops. Panthers GM Marty Hurney just got the axe! Ouch. Who could have seen that coming? Oh wait... Nolan Nawrocki did. This guy (/Gruden voice) is getting more right by the second!

Can provide an initial spark, but will quickly be dissected and contained by NFL defensive coordinators, struggle to sustain success and will not prove worthy of an early investment. An overhyped, high-risk, high-reward selection with a glaring bust factor, Newton is sure to be drafted more highly than he should and could foreclose a risk-taking GM's job and taint a locker room.