By Robert Mays at
Ronald C. Modra/Sports Imagery/ Getty Images
Everyone remembers that feeling on the first day of school. Rolling up in that brand-new collared shirt and the impossibly clean shoes. Not thinking, but knowing that, yeah, this is going to be my year. There was something reassuring about seeing everyone back together again. This isn’t new. I’ve been here before. I’ve got this. In those first couple days, the possibilities seemed endless.
For NFL players, that’s OTAs. After a few months away, everyone’s finally back in the same place, and the prospect of starting anew, well ... it tends to get people a little overexcited. This is the time of year reserved for baseless, outrageous predictions by groups of pathologically competitive men drunk on football and hope. With that in mind, we present the 2013 NFL season, based on nothing but those baseless, outrageous predictions.
Week 1
It’s a clear and crisp 55-degree day in Cleveland, and as the first half comes to a close, the only thing that’s been more perfect than the weather is Ryan Tannehill. The Dolphins quarterback got himself a fresh buzz cut this week, and in those new Fins unis, damn, does he look immaculate. That chin is what comes to mind when you think Franchise Quarterback.
OK, so I know what you’re thinking: If you’re going to start a countdown this far in advance (which is admittedly crazy), why not just wait to start on a round number? I’ll tell you why — because Simmons is the boss, and he wasn’t going to go another day without a reason to get excited about football season:
It's time.
I want the countdown to the NFL season. EVERY DAY.
That was an e-mail from earlier this week. It was not a request.
With free agency and the draft process revving up, there are plenty of questions for every NFL team. But for most, there's one issue that trumps the rest. This is the first in a team-by-team look at the offseason tasks that just can't get botched.
There's higher-profile news in Minnesota at the moment, but amid all the Percy Harvin drama is a lingering question that threatens the Vikings’ very foundation. There’s no actual proof that Adrian Peterson can be killed by conventional weapons, but his post-human season is at least partially (partially!) a result of running behind of the league’s best offensive lines.
Early this morning, the Minnesota Vikings released a seemingly blasé statement not atypical for this stretch of the NFL calendar. "Adrian Peterson had a surgical procedure done today by Dr. William Meyers, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Dr. Meyers was able to successfully repair Adrian’s abdominal core muscle injury (sports hernia). We expect a speedy recovery with no long-term concerns." Our question: No long-term concerns for whom?
Super Bowl XLVII was also the final game for one of the legends of an era, Ravens Linebacker Ray Lewis. Lewis, who has seen his share of controversy throughout his career, left the stage with his trademark piety, saying, "Man, I didn't play well enough for us to win, but the team and God really picked me up. Haven't gotten away with anything like that in a loooooong time." Lewis then winked, pointed to the sky, and said, "I owe you one, big guy!" God responded, "Dude owes me more than one. Way more. Man, sometimes I have no idea why I keep bailing him out. But we go way back. I dunno, Pete is telling me to cut him off, but then I see those big sweet eyes, and I just can't help myself."
On any given Sunday (or Monday, or Thursday), your NFL Run & Shootaround crew will be gathered around multiple televisions, making inappropriate jokes and generally regressing to the mean. Catch up on all the NFL action right here.
Field of Dreams
We are barely 12 hours from the end of the Washington Redskins' season. At the moment, I have no idea of the extent of additional injury (if any? *wishful*) to the knee of The Most Important Professional D.C. Athlete Since Gheorghe Muresan. The range of possibilities seems to begin with something like, "the already-existing sprain was more sprained and The Robert will be back in time for summer OTAs," and ends with, "a ligament was damaged and Black Jesus will be performing divine rehab all the way up to the start of the 2013 season, which means Kirk Cousins will be taking starter-snaps for at least the first couple games of the 2013-14 season." And the nagging, annoying hindsight-enhanced read of the situation is that it never should've come to that crappy, gut-turning moment in the fourth quarter, not after RG3 had shown through a full two-and-a-half quarters of ineffective play that he was so impaired as to be a hindrance to the team's best chances at a win.
Because I’m a Bears fan, and because my friends and I made a blood pact to never again discuss what transpired in the NFL on Sunday afternoon, I decided that this week’s Trenchie Awards would go a bit differently. There’s really no sense in discussing what happened in the past. We can only move forward, and in front of us is a set of lineman matchups that has me (and anyone else with pictures of J.J. Watt in his or her locker) looking forward to this year’s wild-card weekend even more than I normally would.
J.J. Watt vs. Geno Atkins
OK, so they’re not actually playing against each other, but in a game that’s otherwise uninspiring, we get a chance to watch the two best defensive players in football do their thing.
As Sam Monson of Pro Football Focus wrote this week, if it weren’t for the historic year Watt has put together, Atkins’s 2012 would be the season worthy of all this adulation. According to PFF’s numbers, Atkins graded out almost two times better than any other defensive tackle the site has ever charted. Cameron Wake and Von Miller were the only two players, at any position, to record more total pressures. Unlike Watt, whose position varies based on Houston’s front and situation, there’s no mistaking what Atkins is. He’s a 3-technique, 4-3 tackle who happens to be one of the four most disruptive pass rushers in the league.
Have you ever seen a more desperate run than Adrian Peterson’s last run of the 2012 football season? Not just in the NFL, but anywhere — like to the bus stop or across the lawn or down the stretch at the track? With 24 seconds left on the clock, on Green Bay’s 37-yard line in a tie game, AD needed 35 yards to break Eric Dickerson’s record. He grabs the handoff and follows his fullback. He diverges from his lead as soon as said fullback pops a linebacker and instantly drives 12 yards downfield. At the 26-yard line he weaves 30 degrees inside for five yards, and then it all gets a little Butch Cassidy and the Stanford Marching Band. He looks like he’s being chased by the entire Green Bay 53-man roster. He bends his shoulders back toward the sideline right before two Packers jump on his back at the 17 and he carries the two of them in a sort of crescent-shaped path to the 11 before he falls over and the Vikings call timeout.
There is chaos. Everybody in the Metrodome — whether wearing purple or green and gold — seems bewildered. Did he get it? Wait, he didn’t get it? He has to wait along with everybody else for a 5-foot-2 person to kick a chip-shot field goal. Afterwards, he is hoisted on somebody’s shoulders.
On any given Sunday (or Monday, or Thursday), your NFL Run & Shootaround crew will be gathered around multiple televisions, making inappropriate jokes and generally regressing to the mean. Catch up on all the NFL action right here.
Notes on the Horror of Rooting for Evil (a New York Giants Fan Tale)
They're always strange, those last few weeks of every NFL season when you see what it's like to be somebody else. I know how to speak the language of Giants fans (written on our particular Rosetta Stone are words like "Mike Cherry") but it's harder to make out foreign cadences. And anyway, trying to get inside the mind of a fan-of-another is like attempting to visualize your life with a different set of children. Why even go down that road? But sometimes it becomes briefly necessary to make exactly these projections, which is why I was reduced yesterday to becoming invested in the Detroit Lions for a short but serious while. The results weren't pretty. Every family has its own set of issues, and it's usually better if you stay quiet about your own and don't get too nosy with anyone else.
The fantasy football season isn't quite over, but as of this week, the Fantasy Island competition is. After 16 weeks and a very tight race, we're pleased to announce that Matt Borcas has won a spot as our fantasy football writer. This week is Matt's soft open of sorts, and when it comes time for rankings and previews next summer, everyone will get a full introduction as we start ramping up to the season. Thanks again to everyone who participated in this year's competition, and to those who've read.
One hundred years after the sinking of the Titanic, another overblown, too-big-to-fail enterprise — the Philadelphia Eagles — is crashing and burning, and Andy Reid insists on bringing fantasy owners down with him. Case in point: On Wednesday, Reid announced that despite LeSean McCoy’s return to the starting lineup, he would employ the dreaded three-way split between McCoy, Bryce Brown, and Dion Lewis.
It didn’t have to end this way for the Eagles. Their skill position players were meant to carry fantasy teams to championships, not to the first overall pick in next year’s draft. But as Reid spends his final days in Philadelphia brooding like Captain Edward John Smith, owners of McCoy and Brown are left to fend for themselves.
With Ephraim back in the studio this week, we talked Aldon Smith v. Von Miller, the tricks to keeping warm in cold-weather games, and what it's like to be released at the end of the season.
For Steven Jackson, everything about Sunday afternoon was fitting. With 1:47 left in the third quarter, and with his team trailing Minnesota 33-7, Jackson took a delayed first-down handoff and went for nine yards up the middle. With those nine, Jackson’s career total was 10,002 — a plateau reached by only 26 others. The crowd in St. Louis rose to its feet, gave a short ovation, and then watched as an incomplete pass and Jackson getting hit in the backfield made it fourth down. As Adrian Peterson’s continuing pursuit of history was cause for celebration, Jackson’s came and went without much notice.
Each of Jackson’s 10,000 yards has been gained while he was a member of the St. Louis Rams, and it’s that part of it that makes his accomplishment even more impressive than it already is. There have been plenty of NFL players whose talent has been squandered on bad teams in the past decade, but Jackson deserves to be near the top of the list.
In Jackson's seven years as the Rams’ starting running back, St. Louis has tallied 23 wins, roughly 3.3 wins per season. Over the same span, the Rams have been outscored by more than 1,000 points. Since 2007, the highest finish for a St. Louis offense in total yards is 22nd. In total points, it’s 24th. For the majority of Jackson’s career, St. Louis has defined awful in the NFL, and the question as Jackson nears 30 and his career enters its twilight is just how good he might have been.
On any given Sunday (or Monday, or Thursday), your NFL Run & Shootaround crew will be gathered around multiple televisions, making inappropriate jokes and generally regressing to the mean. Catch up on all the NFL action right here.
When I Paint My Masterpiece
This is a video of Adrian Peterson highlights, with play-by-play by Gus Johnson, because of course Gus Johnson was calling this game.
On any given Sunday (or Monday, or Thursday), your NFL Run & Shootaround crew will be gathered around multiple televisions, making inappropriate jokes and generally regressing to the mean. Catch up on all the NFL action right here.
I am exhausted. Not just because I spent 40 minutes of "real time" standing-squatting-jumping-kneeling-windmilling in my living room as the last four "game minutes" plus OT played out between the paid football players representing the Chocolate and Charm cities yesterday. (BTW, no one should be surprised that D.C. prevailed — food > manners.) But also because meaningful December football is no longer part of my constitution. Like baggy jeans and land-line telephones and paying for music, the once-vital D.C. pro football team has become less critical to my daily existence for all of the obvious and exhaustively well-documented decades' worth of reasons. Of course the 2007 run after the still-unfair and still-distressing Sean Taylor tragedy was inspired. But Todd Collins was prominently involved, which means ... that Todd Collins was prominently involved. This QB and this team and this run are different. Like, once-in-a-generation different, which definitely feels like hyperbole but isn't, IMHO.
