By Spike Friedman at
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In case you were busy discovering something magical, here's what you missed in sports on Tuesday:
The New York Knicks blew out the Indiana Pacers, 105-79, behind 32 points from Carmelo Anthony to even their second-round series at a game apiece. "Now I will grant an exclusive interview to any member of the New York media who didn't write our epitaph after Game 1," Anthony announced after the game while sipping an ice-cold Diet Coke. But no one in the New York press stepped forward. "Come on, anyone? OK, how ’bout anyone who didn't call me Car-Smell-O." But again there was only silence. "Um, anyone who didn't personally insult my family?" Howard Beck of the New York Times then raised his hand to ask if cousins counted, but Anthony granted him the interview before Beck had the chance to clarify.
Craig Kimbrel gave up back-to-back home runs with two outs in the ninth inning as the Cincinnati Reds shocked the Atlanta Braves, 5-4. "I'd be more ashamed if it weren't the Reds," Kimbrel explained after the game. "They were cool, which is what I think of when I think of things wrapped in red-and-white. They were ice-cold. You could throw six of them in a cooler, take ’em on a picnic, and have a hell of a day. As an Atlanta man, that's just an instinct for me at this point."
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 latest in a team-by-team look at the offseason tasks that just can't get botched.
It wasn’t too long ago that the Detroit Lions were the NFL’s latest redemption darlings. Thanks to Matt Millen’s personnel blunders and Rod Marinelli’s flat effect, the Lions finished 0-16 in 2008, with an average point differential north of two touchdowns. Throughout its history, Detroit had typically been one of the league’s most snake-bitten franchises, but this was a rock bottom of unprecedented depth.
That spring brought complete overhaul. Millen was gone three games into the 2008 season and replaced with Martin Mayhew. Marinelli was replaced with Tennessee defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz in 2009. And with the first overall pick that year, the Lions hoped to usher in a new era under Matt Stafford. The group’s first season didn’t go much better — a 2-14 finish and only one spot lower in that year’s draft — but by 2010, signs of growth were already evident. Stafford played only three games, but Detroit still managed a 6-10 finish, with seven of losses coming by one score or less.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports over the weekend.
The Redskins rallied to beat the Ravens, 31-28, in overtime, and dodged a bullet when Robert Griffin III's knee injury was diagnosed a sprain, and not an ACL tear. They dodged another bullet when they discovered it wasn't a sprained knee at all, just a swollen fat face, and dodged a final bullet when they realized they were actually looking at a large photo of team owner Dan Snyder.
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.
Believing Is Art
I don’t know when a series of improbable events starts to mean something, but I do know it looks that way in Indianapolis. The Colts were dead on more than one occasion yesterday in Detroit, but when Andrew Luck got the ball back down five with 1:07 left, I’m not sure anyone watching doubted how it would end: with a 75-yard drive and a Colt in the end zone.
There are plenty of rational explanations for what happened at Ford Field in the final six minutes and 40 seconds, just after Luck’s pass for T.Y. Hilton was intercepted with Indianapolis down 12. Detroit has struggled to develop its running game all season, and few teams are less apt at draining the clock at the end of games than the Lions. The result was two stalled drives that could’ve ended the game but instead handed the ball back to Luck, who’s an explanation all his own. The most notable play on the Colts’ final drive wasn’t the throw to Reggie Wayne or the one to Dwayne Allen on the sideline. It was the willingness to spike the ball on an early second-and-1, understanding that in that situation, the down was inconsequential. Andrew Luck is going to be great, but I’m not sure any of us knew how much his head — or his legs — would play a part in it.
My mind was made up. I sat at the kitchen table and typed an e-mail to my friend Richard Feynman, whose name is not really Richard Feynman.
"I'm starting Matthew Stafford instead of Matt Schaub on Sunday," I wrote.
"This will end in blood and tears," Feyman replied. Then, after a minute: "Are you watching AM games at Ye Rustic tomorrow? Need a ride?"
"I always need a ride," I wrote back. "But you're not going to change my mind about this QB situation. Your team needs a shakeup."
It was Saturday night and I was drunk with power. Feynman had given me control of his fantasy team for a week so I could write about what it felt like to watch a day of football the way people in a fantasy league watch a day of football.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Tuesday.
Ozzie Guillen was fired as manager of the Miami Marlins, and team officials say his positive remarks about Fidel Castro played a contributing role. As he retreated from Miami into the remote Everglades of central Florida with only a small loyal band of 19 followers (including his brother Raul Guillen and Hanley "Che" Ramirez), Guillen vowed that his fight to dominate the Florida sports scene had only just begun. He was given a hero's greeting by the Everglade peasants, and immediately set up a pirate radio station to broadcast his message into the homes of the people.
Having suggested that the Bears were the best team in football last Monday, I anxiously tuned in to Monday Night Football’s tilt between the Bears and Lions to see just how gruesome the effects of my (unintentional) reverse jinx would be upon Chicago. Instead, the Bears showed up and played an impressive game under the prime-time lights, shutting out Detroit's high-powered offense for most of the game before allowing a mostly meaningless touchdown on the final drive to prevail 13-7. That final score does a poor job of getting across what actually happened in the game. It was a game where, somehow, the Bears felt like they were dominating throughout and at the same time the Lions were far closer to winning than it might have seemed. The Bears played well and were not lucky to win, but they easily could have lost.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Monday.
Matt Cain pitched 5.2 scoreless innings and the Giants won their record-tying sixth elimination game of the postseason, routing the Cardinals 9-0 to reach the World Series. The only hiccup came when rain began to fall late, and Tim Lincecum repeatedly wandered out to the field while the game was going on, holding out his hands and saying, "It's all so beautiful!" as he wept.
I imagine there are worse things to be remembered for than felling a horse with a single punch, but it should be noted for posterity that this was not the only highly theatrical brawl of Alex Karras’s career. In 1963, a professional wrestler named Dick the Bruiser strutted into the Lindell AC Bar, a Detroit pub Karras partly owned, and Dick the Bruiser was intent on stirring up trouble. Karras and Dick the Bruiser were scheduled to wrestle that coming Saturday, but Dick suggested they settle it then and there, and so they did, reportedly shattering windows and engaging patrons and passersby and several of Detroit’s Finest in the fracas. Dick the Bruiser wound up with five stitches, but Karras lost the subsequent wrestling match, so I guess we can call it a wash.
Earlier this week, Pro Football Weekly ran a fairly rabble-rousing story in which a “rival GM” made his thoughts known about the surprising start for the 1-3 Lions. And those thoughts are that it’s not all that surprising. (My money in the “rival GM” pool is on the Packers' Ted Thompson. He’s always had a tendency to run his mouth.) The crux of the comments was that despite their trip to the playoffs last year, Detroit wasn’t the rising contender that so many had made them out to be. The question is whether the three main criticisms hold any weight.
1. Detroit is one-dimensional on offense.
They are a one-dimensional offensive team that if the quarterback (Matthew Stafford) is not on, people are figuring it out. If you take (WR Calvin) Johnson out of the game (one TD through four games, compared to eight TDs at the same stage last season), who else do they have that can beat you?
Although you would be forgiven for forgetting, there were actually brief moments of football that snuck between the blown calls and "bullshit" chants that seemed to dominate this past weekend of NFL action. Some of that football inspired very interesting coaching decisions, and while the best and worst of those decisions normally come up in the "Thank You for Not Coaching" section in the Monday column, there were so many decisions worth discussing this week that it's going to serve as the basis for this edition of the newly named Tuesday column, "Fourth and Short." (Thanks to reader Josh Dixon for giving us a better name than "The NFL Thing We Used to Call 'Fabs and Flops.'")
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.
The Consequences of Free Football
Within a span of eight minutes, three games — Dolphins-Jets, Titans-Lions, and Saints-Chiefs — featuring six middling contenders briefly turned bad football into balletic anarchy. And in one of those special, even DirecTV’s–Sunday Ticket–package–is–useless moments, three games that seemed, on their faces, to be less than important quickly unraveled a rare combination of overtime results. To convey what happened in the fourth quarter in Tennessee would require a dry-erase board, a fully loaded Sharpie, and a mastery of the dark arts. It was a ludicrous game, one of the most exciting you’ll ever see while also trying to watch seven other games. In the end, the Titans got a win-win: a victory in the standings; an encouraging performance in OT after Detroit stormed back behind Shaun “LOL” Hill; and a brief affirmation that Jake “The Quake” Locker is their quarterback of the present and future. Until next week.
In New Orleans, the Saints completed some sort competence inversion master class. They lost after the no-good, very-bad Chiefs sloooowly overcame an 11-point fourth-quarter deficit. Jamaal Charles ran all the way to Vaughan’s Lounge and back, Ryan Succop kicked all of the field goals, and the Saints felt a true pain. Theirs was a loss-loss. It’s clear that they are weak and 0-3 and officially praying for a secret package from Sean Payton this week. It will contain either a redesigned playbook and in-depth tape analysis, or 53 cyanide capsules.
Jalen Rose and David Jacoby discuss the highlights of NFL Week 2. Plus the Lakers, Thunder, and how Kobe Bryant and karma teamed up to teach Jalen a lesson.
You Know Nothing of Our Work
About seven days ago, right around when Baltimore finished cleaning up the Bengals, it seemed like we knew a few things after Week 1. The Ravens were good — maybe very good. The Patriots were the Patriots, but with the type of defense they hadn’t fielded in almost a decade. Atlanta’s offense looked ready to break out, and the Jets’ offense looked better than all of us expected (that includes the Jets). The Cowboys got over their Giant hump. No one wants to play San Francisco, ever. That’s why it’s always nice to get to Week 2. It’s that yearly reminder — “Oh, that’s right, we know nothing.”
