Yesterday, we stopped lamenting the end of the NFL's acquisition season by detailing how 10 teams had sufficiently upgraded their weakest spots in the lineup. Plaudits were handed out, compliments were given, and we even found a nice thing to say about the Browns taking a running back third overall. All in all, it was a day of high praise.
Today, though, brings the natural counter to that piece: the 10 teams who failed to address their biggest holes this offseason. Some of these organizations tried to do so and failed. Others were limited by the salary cap. A couple of them even created those holes early on in the offseason and never seemed to get around to patching them up. We're not concerned with the excuses here, though; we just see the smoldering wreckage at certain positions for each of these teams and wonder whether that problem will come back to haunt them in 2012.
With just four business days left before the start of the NFL free agency period, it's high time for us to start the final portion of our sprawling, seemingly endless free agent preview. After standing in for agents, scoffing at the largesse of owners, and identifying comparables for the pool's key players, it's finally time to approach free agency from the perspective of the league's general managers and player personnel departments.
While Monday's column focused on Tim Tebow and the weekend's confusing coaching decisions, there's a lot more to talk about. Players in each game came up big and small under the harsh glare of the bright postseason lights. Let's get past Tebowmania and fourth-down-a-go-go and get to it. Yes. You waited patiently, and now it's time for the Fabulous and the Flops!
On Saturday night, the Detroit Lions play the New Orleans Saints. I've got my baby carrots and Nicorette lozenges, which translates to me being really excited. Why the hyped-up state when I have no rooting or gambling interest? Well, you know how people say football is a results-oriented business? You know how people say that to you in, like, the bank? Well, it's not. It's about the journey. It's about how things unfold and the road you take to get to where you're going.
Here's where I get into trouble: I fixate on how I think the narrative of a football game should play out and I get upset when things deviate from that. So for my sanity and your entertainment, here are three different (all totally plausible!) ways this Lions and Saints matchup could down that I would find acceptable.
Hey you, yeah you with all the disposable income. You know what stimulates the economy? Casual sports gambling! But we're not throwing you in the deep end without some floaties, here. The Triangle has contracted one of Vegas' most astute handicappers to help you navigate the choppy waters of gambling. Here's what Erin Rynning had to say.
As always, we detail the sordid and the successful every Tuesday in our weekly look back at the previous weekend's games; this is "The Fabulous and the Flops" for Week 15.
This week, we'll identify the player who might qualify as the worst backup quarterback … ever. We'll point out which quarterback looks like a different man during the second half, try to compare a player to a couch, and note which head coach was brave enough to own up to his mistakes on Sunday. We'll start, though, with the blowout from last Thursday night.
In this week's "The Fabulous & the Flops," we mine the annals of futility to find comparable games for some of the week's worst performances. Which quarterback nearly beat out Blaine Gabbert for the least accurate game of the season? Which pair of elite wide receivers couldn't buy a catch on Sunday? Which team should probably stop calling running plays altogether? And what did Devin Aromashodu unexpectedly do? All that and more, but first, is Beast Mode becoming a dominant running back?
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Tuesday.
In the ACC-Big Ten Challenge, no. 2 Ohio St. embarrassed no. 4 Duke 85-63. The Buckeyes dominated every facet of the game, and Jared Sullinger led his team with 21 points. After the game, 95 percent of Duke alumni agreed that overly strict government restraints on big business were responsible for the loss. The other 5 percent were working late on Wall Street and missed the game.
In this week's edition of "The Fabulous and the Flops," we identify the player who needs to accompany Ndamukong Suh to image-revamping school, show some love to the young talent who is making the absence of a major star seem like nothing, and basically make fun of the sloppiest game of the season for a while. Plus: Our coverage of Chris Johnson as either the best or worst player on the field continues!
Scheduling games on Thanksgiving might very well be the greatest thing the NFL's ever done. Can you imagine how boring the day would be without football? How lucky we are to avoid bonding with our families under the guise of watching Detroit get blown out by 40 points.
Until the Lions were recently dragged down by the rising tide of Millen, though, the perception surrounding the Thanksgiving Day host teams was that they gained a competitive advantage by virtue of hosting games on the holiday. Not only did they get to play teams that had to travel after a short week of practice, but they then got a nine-day break before having to play again -- basically an extra bye week. That seemed more valuable before the NFL implemented a Thursday night package as part of their NFL Network in 2006, but it's a question worth re-evaluating: Do the Cowboys and Lions really have an advantage by virtue of those Thanksgiving games?
In this look back at Week 11's action, we identify the fabulous linebacker who seems to be making everyone else on his team superstars, the pair of rookies who made our Friday column look wise, and the head coach who deserves credit for trying to pull out an unorthodox win.
In this week's "The Fabulous and the Flops," we've got our usual mix of praise and scorn. In our look at the numbers and storylines coming out of this weekend's game, we find a coach who's messing around like he wants to be fired, a group of overmatched offensive linemen who helped create career days, and a veteran specialist who had something resembling a perfect game.
We start in Atlanta, though, where an All-Pro probably cost his team the game without anybody realizing it.
In this week's "The Fabulous and the Flops," we've got a lot of questions to answer about a tricky Week 8. Which team put up a dominant defensive performance and nearly lost? How many weeks can a fluke stick around before it's no longer a fluke? And has Tebowmania really bitten the dust?
First, though, we begin with the biggest upset of Week 8.
"Can you believe ‘15’?" one Detroit Lions defender asked after his team's 45-10 immolation of Tebow and the Denver Broncos. "Come on — that’s embarrassing. I mean, it's a joke. We knew all week that if we brought any kind of defensive pressure, he couldn’t do anything. In the second half it got boring out there. We were like, 'Come on — that's your quarterback? Seriously?'"
With another NFL week in the books, it's time to traverse the football landscape and identify the heroes and villains from Week 7. In "The Fabulous and the Flops," we sift through the reams of numbers and narratives produced by each game from the previous weekend to somehow make sense of a game that doesn't always make sense. Like how the young quarterback who received plenty of praise for his game really didn't play all that well. (And no, we don't mean Tim Tebow.) But more on him later. We'll start in Detroit, where two teams previously traveling in opposite directions crossed paths and seemed to reverse field.
