7-9 "Winners": How the NFC West Was Won

For those of you who turned on Monday night football expecting to see a close, well executed NFC West game, I am so very sorry. Whereas I watch as much football as I can, hopefully you did not stay up watching the penalized riddled, middle school football game that was the 49ers-Cardinals game. ESPN and the NFL sent out apologies on their websites after the game......well they did not, but they should. 
 

Now I do not want to sit here and just rag on the Niners and Cardinals or the entire NFC West (San Francisco, Seattle, Arizona and St. Louis) for that matter... but yea... that is what I am going to do anyway. And before any goes off on me about me being from Houston, understand this, every team in the NFC West would be in last place in every other division in the league. For the last two years, the Cardinals have made the playoffs on accident with records of 9-7 and 10-6. And now that their Hall of Fame QB is gone, they are going to finish well below .500. Moreover, there is a very real chance that the winner of the division is going to finish at 7-9. For those of you who do not know the playoff structure in the NFL, each conference gets 6 teams in the playoffs (4 from each of the division winners and two wildcard teams which have the next best records respectively.) Currently, the Rams and Seahawks are tied at the top with 5-6 records, followed by the 49ers at 4-7 and Cardinals at 3-8. This is the problem with the current playoff structure in the NFL. One of these teams is going to represent the NFL in the playoffs, leaving out teams that might have a record two games better, in a more difficult division.

Yes the Texans were left out last year due to a tiebreaker with the Jets, along with two other 9-7 teams. This is not the point. And I am not upset about the Texans being left out. And also, this is not like Boise St. or TCU playing for the BCS National Championship. This would be like Indiana playing for the championship. An atrocity. Something needs to be done in the NFL when years like this occur. It does not happen that often but it could be fixed with a simple 8-8 rule or something like that. Some radical people would just do away with divisions for good, but I think that is a bad idea. Divisions make for great rivalries and give different cultures to different regions of the country. However, a 7-9 division winner has no place in the playoffs when there are teams like Tampa Bay and New York that might get left out of the NFC Playoffs with 10-6 or 9-7 records. Not only would the team that drew the NFC West winner in the playoffs have an advantage in the wildcard round, the team with the bye would not get the full advantage of a bye, having to play a team that had a tough battle the week before.

I implore the NFL to do something about this if the NFC winner ends up at 7-9. There is no reason to allow a team that cannot win at least half of their games. NFL fans are more devoted and smarter than ever. Please do not insult their intelligence by letting some bush league team in over another that truly deserves it.

Cortland Finnegan and the Bear Poking Exhibition

These four things I know are true: Alexander conquered the Persians, nothing is sweeter than summer rain, every DeLorean can travel through time and you do not pick fight with someone who can beat your ass. Andre Johnson, if he wanted to, could probably run through the UFC and Cortland Finnegan decided to, as the title suggests, poke the bear a little too much.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMMJBVXTIHA
 
During a 20-0 blowout, Titans corner back Cortland Finnegan was constantly yapping and talking junk like he could not see the scoreboard. Like he could not see that the man he had been defending the entire game had pwned him once again. At the time of the fight, Andre Johnson had 9 receptions and a TD. Numbers like that are common when Johnson goes up against Finnegan. However, this time the battle continued well after the play. Finnegan like the punk he is, instead of taking his whooping like a man, started to chirp and yap. Things escalated during a couple of running plays in the 4^th quarter while Johnson was blocking and spilled over after a run that was not even on their side of the field and BOOM!! Johnson started smoking fools and lighting up chumps. By all accounts Andre Johnson is the nicest, quietest guy in the league. The exception to the diva wide receiver rule which has infected the NFL. But every man has that point when it is time to go. Finnegan got a cheap shot to the face on him and that was the line. Johnson sees Finnegan twice a year and has to deal with this coward of a person who would rather make a name for himself by trash-talking and not having good, solid play on the field. And Finnegan like the punk he is, backed up that cowardly performance by hitting Andre Johnson's right fist with his face a couple times. Clearly Johnson lost his cool. He felt bad for what happened because he knows that is not him and he apologized after the game.

I have been harping for at least a year for someone on the Texans to step-up and take control and leadership of this team. And leave it to the douche Cortland Finnegan to simultaneously be exactly what the Texans did and did not need. He provided a release valve for a frustrated team and hopefully rallied the Texans behind Andre Johnson who needs to take control of this team. Unfortunately, the Texans play in Philadelphia on Thursday and Johnson might be suspended by the league for that game. Ask anyone in the league if Finnegan got what he had coming and they would say yes. Most people also think Johnson should not be suspended and 20 years ago that would not even be questioned. It is just an unfortunate situation.

Should he be suspended? No. Will he be suspended? I do not know. I do know that if Richard Seymour did not get suspended for punching Ben Roethlisberger last week, Johnson should not be suspended for putting a punk in his place. Hopefully the league will take Johnson's record and personality into account when they decide because while I loved the fire, I would rather see Andre burning up the Eagles on Thursday.

Michael Vick for M.V.P.????

   Yes those are questions marks in the title. The question marks are there because I would like to question the statement before it. Never have I seen NFL fans become so reactionary over one game. Never have I seen fans want something to happen so badly. Maybe that is just the nature of our society. We forgive and forget and want underdogs to succeed and in Vicks case, be redeemed. Yes Michael Vick beat the Redskins two Mondays ago. Yes he beat them bad. He beat them very bad...like really bad. If you did not see it, Vick went left, the 'skins went right, then the game was over. A simple 85 yd flick to begin the game and it was over. But when you get down to it, he beat a bad team on a bad day.

   The problem with Michael Vick giving the M.V.P. is that he is not even in second in the M.V.P. voting. Since that game, people everywhere have been handing the M.V.P. to him like Philip Rivers did not exist. And I would argue that Tom Brady would finish second in the voting right now. If your tallest receiver is Wes Welker and you rely on a 6-yr old boy named Danny Woodhead, game in and game out and you are still 9-2, you get the M.V.P......uhh if Rivers was not doing what he is doing. I could sit here and spew out a bunch of stats but I will not. We all know Rivers is going to break Marino's season yardage record. And once again, he has started a late season run right on cue. He is doing more with nothing. And him and that nothing are going to come back and win the revived AFC West. If you could name the receivers the Chargers were going to have other than Malcolm Floyd, Antonio Gates and Vincent Jackson before the season started, I would have slapped yo mama in the face for raising a liar. What makes Rivers' year so great is that Gates has missed the last several games with injury, Jackson was a hold out and is going to play his first game this week and on top of it all, the Chargers first round draft pick Ryan Mathews has been injured most of the season and they have been relying on undersized Darren Sproles and someone named Mike Tolbert to run the ball. (Incidentally, if you cut Tolbert in half, you would get two Darren Sproles) I still do not know who their receivers are. One of them is a TUTU or something??

   The lesson is this: we again need to separate what we want to happen from what is happening. Look, I am a football fan. I am a Michael Vick fan. I want him to be redeemed and to succeed just has much as the next guy, but that does not mean we can just ignore other greatness. The fact of the matter is that he missed three games but the Eagles still managed without him. In fact Kevin Kolb, the real starter, won two of those games. So you wonder how much of it was Vick and how much of it was really head coach Andy Reid. And the head coaching position is another point in Rivers' favor with the wailing idiot he has coaching him. Michael Vick has been very good this year, and who knows, maybe he will blow us all away these last six weeks and move in front of Rivers and Brady. But given how the Pats and Chargers play in December and January, do not count on it.

  As for my humble M.V.P. picks,

1. Philip Rivers. On top of all the stats and injured teammates, his team is in prime position for a division win
2. Tom Brady. What can I say. Year in and year out he wins. If he did not have Bill Belichick as head coach, he would be number one.
3. Michael Vick. You have seen the tape. You know what he can do. If he can do what he did to the Redskins a couple of more times, he might jump up the list.

Vince Young and the Houstonians' Delusion

   Disclaimer: To any knowledgeable and informed person, discontinue your reading of this beaten to death and obvious argument because it will surely make you run towards the nearest living thing and kill it.

   Anyone who knows me and sees this title will immediately right it off as me hatin' on that boy. But bare with me and ye shall be saved.

   If I hear one more Texans fan say that they would be better with Vince Young at QB, I am going to disown Houston and move to Peoria. People in Houston are obsessed two games in his non-NFL career in which nothing happened except him being huge and fast and owning the game. Those games are Madison vs. North Shore his senior year in high school. A game that is kind of legendary here in Houston, where VY was the only kid with facial hair. And the National Championship game against USC where he went into God-mode and could not be stopped. And do you VY lovers have any idea what those games have in common? Not one D-Coordinator in the NFL gives a flying crap about any of that.

   By all physical aspects and accounts, Young should be the best QB in the league. Compared to Manning, Brady, Brees, Rivers, Rodgers, Ryan, Flacco... I will stop because I do not want to type the name of every starting QB in the NFL right now, he is the most physically gifted guy in the league. And yet you always hear those other names in front of his. Why do you think that is? Because he is unintelligent in every sense of the word unintelligent. Frankly, he is just not smart... at all. But the worst part of it all is that being dumb can be overcome. Just look at Dan Marino. His Wonderlic scores (15) were the lowest ever for a QB. The difference is the reason VY is truly unintelligent. He does not work. He is not prepared. Dan Marino might have had an extra chromosome--but he was smart enough to know he needed to work his ass off, even when he could not tell his ass from a hole in the ground. So he busted it and became one of the greatest quarterbacks ever. VY works from 9-5. Drew Brees works 6am to midnight. Peyton Manning prepares 25-8. That is what separates VY from the best... or even the marginal.

   So you keep the constantly most overrated QB ever and I will keep Matt Schaub or anybody else....ever.... And to you Houstonians and other people who think he can be a decent NFL QB, STOP!!! You need to try to separate your emotion from your arguments. VY lovers are caught up in what you saw before he started playing against athletes equal to him. He will never be great, because he does not want to be great.

Excuses: The Texans Safety Net

Congrats Texans fans!!! You have been given another excuse for losing a game. You have been given another incident to bring up when some fans from other teams ask you why you have finished 8-8.....again. The conversation will go as follows: “The Texans are awful. They are 4-5.” Then the response from delusional Texans fans, “Yea but that was a one in a million play,” and “Well they played well in the second half." You can use those along with the excuse made popular last year which was, “Yea but or kicker blah blah blah,” or some perennial favorites such as “I can't believe that ball stayed in bounds,” or “That was a terrible call,” or “Some of our starters were injured or suspended for shooting HGH into their eyes." We can keep using these excuses as a way of protecting ourselves against actually putting a winning team on the field. God forbid we stop making excuses for our team and start holding players and coaches accountable for mediocrity.

I do not want to name drop any names of teams that do not make excuses and strive for excellence year in and year out.....STEELERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! PATRIOTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! EAGLES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! COLTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! GIANTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...................

and I do not intend to. The fact of the matter is this, the Texans are never going to be great with a coordinator at the head coaching spot. Go ask the Cowboys how that worked out. I implore you Bob Mcnair, swallow that Kubiak contract and give Jon Gruden a blank check. We have the talent and the systems to be great and we have a window for the next couple of years to stay that way. I do not want to see the Texans turn into the Chargers (who currently have a coordinator at coach and are 3-5) or Cowboys who have crazy loads of talent and nothing to show for it. But hey, we are Houston!!! Little brother to the Dallas Cowboys!!! We do not truly care about winning! We just want to get drunk and tailgate and make-up outrageous reasons for losses!!!! Yeehaw!!!!!!!

So get your excuses ready Houston for when you go to work this week or when you go out with your buddies. My best advice to you would be to come up with some new ones because you are going to need them when you try to defend your underachieving, over-hyped and overrated team.