The Sports Curmudgeon

It’s Tuesday and so it’s time for the five worst NFL teams from last weekend:

5. Cincy: They had a lot to play for; they could have grabbed the top spot in the AFC wild-card race and stayed alive for the AFC North title. They laid an egg offensively and while it’s not embarrassing to give the Colts 34 points, the Bengals’ defense made it look easy for the Colts.

4. Texans: To give you an idea of how inept the offense was here, they punted the ball 7 times and threw 4 INTs. That’s the formula for a drubbing and it worked here to the tune of 40-7.

3. Panthers: This was a game to keep them in the midst of the wild-card race. All they managed to get was a field goal on offense while the defense gave up 37 points. Baaaad!

2. Dolphins: Another season, another abortive late-season run. Where was the momentum from beating the Pats last week? The Dolphins gagged – no two ways about it.

1. Raiders: They were shut out; they were shut out by the Rams’ defense; they were shut out for the third time this season; they were shut out at home. Pathetic!

I have to say that I was tempted to put the Chicago Bears on this list at #5 because even though they won, they did not cover themselves in glory on Sunday. The Bears scored 31 points in regulation and needed OT to beat the Bucs. Excuse me? The Bears defense – the unit that will have to carry them in the playoffs if this team is going to do anything – ceded 31 points to the Bucs? Here are some overview stats to give you some perspective on just how bad that was:

Six times this season the Bucs have gone an entire game without scoring a TD on offense. On Sunday, they scored 4 TDs in the second half in the span of 15 minutes and 25 seconds.

Up until they scored that first TD on Sunday, the Bucs had gone 43 consecutive possessions without a single TD. Then they scored 4 times in a row.

The Bucs led the NFL in “three-and-outs” coming into the game and started out with nothing but “three-and-outs”. The Bears showed no killer instinct here. Normally, that would bode ill for the playoffs where they would face good offensive teams - - except they are in the NFC, where there aren’t any consistently good offensive teams.

Another less than thrilling performance from last weekend came from the Giants. The Eagles rush defense is nothing to write home about but the Giants gave up running the ball when they failed to gain more than 10 yards per carry. Why would they have a game plan to throw the ball 40 times and run it only 22 times? Don’t be fooled by the score. This game was a one-possession game until the Eagles returned an interception for a TD with just over 2 minutes to play in the game. The Giants were not playing catch-up; they chose to throw the ball two times out of three. Why?

By the way, do you think that Eli and Archie Manning might be having any second thoughts about their “pissy” behavior that made Eli into a Giant and kept him from playing for the San Diego Chargers? They should.

Back in the seventies, the Dallas Cowboys used this new-fangled contraption called a computer to rank college players for drafting purposes. It worked; the Cowboys made some terrific “discoveries” and got some excellent players in the draft that other teams never heard of. That “advantage” is long since gone. But two franchises in 2006 have rosters built on drafted players that show good draft day acumen.

The Baltimore Ravens have scoured the “obscure schools” and have found a lot of NFL talent playing there. The Ravens have found Adalius Thomas, Bart Scott and Dawan Landry out there and all have been starters for the Ravens this year. In addition, the Ravens served as the “point-of-entry” into the NFL for Will Demps and Priest Holmes. None of those players was a household name as a collegian.

The San Diego Chargers seem to be masters of the draft-day trade. In 2001, they had the #1 pick in the draft and Michael Vick was out there. They swapped picks with Atlanta and picked up another pick. The Falcons got Vick; the Chargers got LaDanian Tomlinson and Drew Brees with their two picks. Then in 2004, the Chargers had the #1 pick again and the Mannings threw their little fit about where Eli was and was not going to play football. The Chargers made a deal with the Giants to give them Eli Manning and got Phillip Rivers, Shawne Merriman and Nate Keading in return. You’d have to categorize both of those trades as a fleecing by the Chargers.

David Stern handed out suspensions for the brawl in Madison Square Garden over the weekend. Carmelo Anthony got the longest suspension (15 games) for escalating the fight once things seemed to be calming down. Looking at the tape, that seems to be the case. However, Nate Robinson only got 10 games and if had not been the “third man in” – to borrow a phrase from the NHL which knows a thing or two about in-game fights – this situation would never have gotten to the point where Anthony would have felt the need to throw a sucker punch.

David Stern has an image problem for his league. Among the sports fans in the general public, there is a significant fraction that believes that the NBA is made up of thugs and sociopaths who happen to be very tall and very athletic. And that portion of the sports fans has turned away from the NBA in significant numbers. This brawl was shown on TV at least a bazillion times; the suspensions will do little to convince those who have turned away from the NBA to give it another look-see.

And by the way, since NBA games in December and January are only ever so slightly above the level of “meaningless”, what is the true impact of these suspensions? The answer is - - not a whole hell of a lot.

Here’s what I expect will happen in a couple of months. The Knicks are under orders from ownership to show significant improvement this year or the coach/GM could get himself a ticket out of town. Well, I would not be surprised if some folks used this brawl to demonstrate how much more passionate the players were this year as opposed to last year’s sleepwalking team as part of the “significant improvement” shown this season. Stay tuned…

Finally, a note from Dwight Perry in the Seattle Times about another basketball brawl:

“A brawl during a Dallas high-school basketball game last Friday got so out of hand that not only was the game suspended with 5:04 left to play, but police responded with SWAT units.

“Or as they’re better known in basketball circles, outside shooters.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…