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.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Monday.
The Giants arrived in Indianapolis for this weekend's Super Bowl, and safety Antrel Rolle said the team is "expecting to win on Sunday." At that exact moment, Tom Brady walked by and whispered, "Game's on Saturday, Einstein." Rolle smiled tightly and told reporters he knew Brady was just messing with him. But when he thought everyone was looking away, he took out his phone and glanced at the calendar. "Yup, just messing with me," he said to himself. "Knew it."
Bill Belichick told reporters that injured tight end Rob Gronkowski didn't practice on Monday. But that doesn't mean Belichick didn't put him to work — he needed all the cameramen he could get for the Giants' practice that afternoon.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Tuesday.
A source reported that the Detroit Tigers have agreed to a nine-year, $214 million deal with former Brewers slugger Prince Fielder. The hefty contract was a bitter pill to swallow for Tigers third baseman Brandon Inge, who is currently being paid in worthless foreclosed Detroit homes.
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Noah Graham/Getty Images AP Photo/Jae C. Hong
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Tuesday.
Kobe Bryant scored 48 points on 31 shots as the Lakers beat the Suns 99-83. "If I play bad or have one bad game like I did in Denver, everybody cries for a change or cries for the fact that I'm too old," Bryant said after the game. Reporters gently pointed out that the "bad game" against Denver had come in 1999, at which point Bryant looked frightened and repeatedly asked for Shaq.
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 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!
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.
Every Thursday afternoon in the Triangle for the remainder of the 2011 season, Bill Simmons will make his pick for that night's NFL game. Here's his pick for Week 10 (home team in caps).
Hey degenerates — remember me? I’m the guy who last week told you to bet the Ravens over 28.5 points and to wager on the Philip Rivers interception machine to keep rolling. Unfortunately — those were my only winners. A net of -15,000 jermajesties last week takes my year to date total to -48,500 jermajesties overall. I apologize. My proposition picks have been as flimsy as a Kardashian’s wedding vows. Now that I got the “Kim Kardashian is a fickle sports groupie harlot” joke out of the way let’s proceed with the gambling:
Every movement has a defining moment. The American Revolution had the Boston Tea Party. The hippies had Woodstock. Occupy Wall Street has … well, regardless, the BQBL’s defining moment occurred on October 23, 2011, in Week 7 of the NFL schedule. For generations to come, on the morning of October 23, families clad in Carson Palmer, Curtis Painter, and A.J. Feeley jerseys will grab a football, head to the backyard, and throw errant passes to each other in recognition of this glorious day.
Keeping with BQBL Day tradition, the elder generations will describe the events of Week 7 in 2011 to the young'uns while aimlessly scrambling around the yard and throwing passes 30 feet over their heads. They will tell of the mythical Matt Hasselbeck and his 104 passing yards against the Texans. They will repeat the story of Palmer, who helped solidify a scoreless afternoon for his Raiders and — keeping with BQBL Day tradition — they will don a long blond wig and detail exactly how Painter, on national television, willed his team to lose by 55 points. Then, BQBL Day will culminate with the whole family around the dinner table, poised to dive into their traditional BQBL Day feast of nachos, buffalo wings, and HGH flakes, and they will first all take turns telling the tale of the Miami Miracle. The day that it was revealed to the world that Timothy Richard Tebow was not only the greatest quarterback to ever play the game of football, but the greatest man to ever walk the earth. I can’t wait until next year. I think I am going to adopt a son right now.
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.
