What do smart NFL teams do in and around draft day that naive, stupid teams don't do? They draft better players, of course, but it's not that simple. They don't "want it more" and will themselves into picking better players. The dregs of the league don't just forget what winning football teams look like and come away from the draft with three punters and a kicking tee. Matt Millen drafted Calvin Johnson. The Browns took Joe Thomas at the top of the first round. Dumb teams do brilliant things sometimes. And likewise, the teams we perceive to be among the league's smartest make plenty of mistakes on draft day. The Ravens traded up to grab Kyle Boller. The 49ers took Alex Smith over Aaron Rodgers. Bill Belichick has drafted dozens of useless defensive backs over the past few years. This stuff happens.
Because they occasionally screw up, we know that it's not that the league's wise teams are privy to some super-secret scouting technique that the dumb ones can't pick up on. They don't see some tiny hitch on tape or have some perfect interview question that reveals everything about a player's future. And players don't come fully developed out of the college womb, either; they continue the growth and maturation process at the professional level, and it would be naive to pretend that the organization they end up in doesn't have a huge say in that. It's no accident that linebackers for the Steelers and defensive linemen on the Giants seem to develop more reliably than if those same players lined up for the Chargers or the Jaguars.
With the NFL offseason trudging along, 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.
There were two elements of the Saints' 2012 season that were unprecedented in the NFL. The first was the season-long suspension of Sean Payton, a product of the punishments handed down after the (admittedly botched) investigation into the bounty program linked to former defensive coordinator Gregg Williams. Even without their primary play caller, the Saints and Drew Brees were still a top-10 offense, and with both Payton’s return and offensive coordinator Pete Carmichael’s decision to not seek a head coaching job, they should be even better at moving the ball next year.
The other historic thing to happen to last year’s Saints is the more concerning one, because it has no such guarantee of righting itself. By most measures, the Saints were an all-time terrible defensive unit in 2012. New Orleans gave up more than 7,000 total yards during the regular season — the most ever surrendered and more than 900 yards worse than the league’s 31st-ranked team. Only Tampa Bay gave up more yards through the air, and no one gave up more yards on the ground. New Orleans posted a defensive DVOA of 14.8 percent, again worst in the league. Just about nothing went right on that side of the ball for New Orleans, and the result was Payton, immediately upon return from suspension, relieving Steve Spagnuolo of his defensive coordinator duties and replacing him with Rob Ryan.
In case you were out just driving, man, just hitting the open road, here's what you missed in sports Tuesday.
The Houston Rockets tied the NBA record for 3-pointers but were denied the record outright after a flurry of ejections marred the end of their 140-109 win over the Golden State Warriors. Houston point guard Jeremy Lin, who led the way for the Rockets with 28 points and nine assists, said after the game, "It was total Linsanity out there, huh?" before pausing dramatically for effect. "I mean, I've seen some things in my day, but that was totally Linsane." Lin then paused again, before admitting, "Guys, I have a lot of T-shirts to move, so if you could remind people of Linsanity, that would be really great. My cousin is all like, 'Get these boxes out of my garage,' and I'm like, 'Whatever, Tom. You said I could leave them in there as long as I needed,' and he's all like, 'Yeah, but I thought they'd be gone in a week,' and I was all like, 'Yeah, me, too.'"
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.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Thursday.
The Falcons intercepted Drew Brees five times and ended his record streak of 54 straight games with a touchdown pass in a 23-13 win over the Saints. In a weird coincidence, popular rabbi Andrew Altman, a.k.a. "Drew Briss," also had his own streak — 54 straight successful outdoor circumcisions — snapped by a falcon yesterday.
There are two ways that a blackjack dealer can ruin your night. I don't mind the first way — if he's grimly dealing himself face cards and blackjacks, you know it's time to flee to another table. (And if you don't, it's your own fault.) But when the dealer keeps giving himself 3's and 4's, grinding out five-card 19's and BARELY beating you? That's trouble. You always feel like you're one good hand away from flipping the script on him, only an hour later, he's apologizing profusely as you're debating whether to hit the ATM because — DAMMIT — you know you can beat this guy.
That's the Atlanta Falcons right now. Nobody is afraid of them. Everyone thinks they can beat them. Somehow, they keep grinding out those 19's and 20's and sending people to ATMs.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports over the weekend.
Eli Manning threw for 249 yards and three touchdowns as the Giants routed the Packers 38-10 to take a two-game lead in the NFC East. The Giants defense sacked Aaron Rodgers five times, and rubbed salt in the wound as he lay crumpled on the field by repeatedly noting that he "looked smaller in person."
For the Saints and their fans, a season that seemed dead on arrival after an 0-4 start has sprung back to life. New Orleans has gone on a 4-1 run since that dreadful start, highlighted by last Sunday's Mercury Morris–enabling win over the previously undefeated Falcons. At 4-5, Saints supporters who had likely thought about possible vacation destinations for an otherwise-meaningless winter are now beginning to whisper a word that would have been unfathomable at the end of September: playoffs.
Can the Saints do it? Is this 4-1 team the "real" Saints as opposed to the guys who started 0-4? And why have they suddenly gotten better? They're all questions worth asking and ones I'll attempt to answer.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports over the weekend.
The L.A. Lakers hired former Phoenix Suns and New York Knicks coach Mike D'Antoni to replace Mike Brown. In his basement, Dwight Howard took down the complex pyramid of surveillance photos and connection lines and case notes from his bulletin board, stored them in a cardboard box marked "The Brown Investigation," and replaced them with a sheet of paper on which he'd written a single word: "D'Antoni?"
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Monday.
Today is Election Day on About Last Night. Terrence the Grantland Robot, the incumbent, will be taking on Carl Tompkins, a 25-year-old actual human who hopes to be an intern here. The winner will serve as ALN's second-in-command (Shane Ryan holds a sort of semi-permanent Vladimir Putin role). After each news item, I'll allow each of them to make a statement outlining their positions and why they deserve your vote. Please choose either Terrence or Carl in the Facebook comments below, either by commenting with their name, or "liking" somebody else's comment with whom you agree. We'll tally the votes tomorrow morning and announce a winner.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports over the weekend.
The San Francisco Giants are World Series champions. Marco Scutaro hit the go-ahead single with two outs in the 10th inning as the Giants beat the Tigers 4-3 to sweep the series. Pablo Sandoval, who hit .500 in 16 at-bats with three home runs, a double, and four RBIs, was named the Series MVP. "Total bullshit!" said delusional Tigers outfielder Andy Dirks, who got his first hit of the series in the sixth inning of Game 4. "The MVP is so political now. It's all about who you know."
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 over the weekend.
Ryan Vogelsong struck out a career-high nine batters through seven dominant innings as the Giants beat the Cardinals 6-1 to force a deciding Game 7 in the NLCS. Vogelsong's name literally means "birdsong" in German, which is kinda funny when you consider they were playing the Cardinals. But it's less funny when you learn that "Vogelsong" is a German euphemism for killing birds with poisoned food pellets. Ugh, Germany. Ugh. That's just classic you.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports over the weekend.
Matt Kenseth managed to avoid a 25-car pileup on his way to earning a Sprint Cup victory at Talladega Superspeedway. Kyle Busch, car No. 25 in the pileup, later admitted that he drove in mostly because he "wanted to see what it was like." The only non-car in the pileup, Rex Ryan, said he heard there were free pastries.
