With all the absolutely terrible sports we had to endure in 2008 there has been one issue alone that has driven me to near homicidal levels of anger.  This post is an attempt to purge my system of this terrible ball of hate from last year.

Let’s ease into this with one of those blind stat comparisons:

Here we have the 2008 season stats for 3 NFL starting quarterbacks

QB 1-3653 yds, 67.4 CMP %, 19 TD, 7 INT, 97.4 QB RATING (2nd in NFL)

QB 2-4038 yds, 63.6 CMP %, 28 TD, 13 INT, 93.8 QB RATING (6th in NFL)

QB 3-3472 yds, 65.7 CMP %, 22 TD, 22 INT, 81.0 QB RATING (22nd in NFL)

Now how about the last 5 games of the season when it really matters

QB 1-Record (5-0) 187.6 yds per game, 64.8 CMP %, 8 TD, 1 INT, 106.5 QB RATING

QB 2-Record (1-4) 287.8 yds per game, 63.9 CMP %, 11 TD, 4 INT, 101.6 QB RATING

QB 3-Record (1-4) 202.2 yds per game, 56.7 CMP %, 2 TD, 9 INT, 55.8 QB RATING

Wow QB 3 seems like a real piece of shit compared to the other 2 guys.  In fact I would imagine he is hated by nearly everyone and is considered to be a huge cry baby ego maniac piece of shit.  Oh really, you are telling me is he beloved by the media and is going to the Pro Bowl and the other two aren’t.  That seems fair.

The 3 quarterbacks

QB 1- Chad Pennington- The guy who was cut from his team of 8 years the day the messiah landed in New York.  The very same guy who lead the Dolphins (1-15 a year ago) to a victory against his old team to secure an 11-5 season and a division championship.

QB 2- Aaron Rodgers- The guy who was booed at practice, at games, and pretty much everywhere else he went in the state of Wisconsin before he even started a game.  The guy who has been blamed for their digression and lack of playoff appearance despite having a slightly better statistical season than their QB from last year.  It is worth noting that the Green bay’s scoring defense went from 4th in the league in 2007 to 22nd in the league in 2008.

QB 3- You guessed it…Brett Favre.  The incredible Quarterback of the New York Brett’s.  The QB who was tortured and killed on the cross for our sins only to rise again 3 days later and assent to his Heavenly throne.   The guy who can’t walk down the street without a sportscaster trying to mouth-fuck him.

Now we have arrived at the true heart of the issue.  I just don’t understand why people don’t hate Brett Favre.  It makes no sense to me.  How has America not joined together on this seemingly obvious issue?

Why does he get a free pass for being an absolute jackass to the Green Bay organization after 16 years?  He said he was done in Green Bay and they moved forward in new (and correct) direction and then he basically rallied the fans against the organization when he realized he couldn’t live without the ego trip football gives him.  Oh look at his love for the game what a fiery competitor, no what a primadonna selfish asshole.

Why does the fact he plays like a complete retard get glorified as if it is one of his qualities as a quarterback?  If any other QB in this league throws a stupid pass into double coverage and it gets picked off he is an idiot.  Favre does it and that’s just the old fearless gun slinger coming out.  Sports media has such a hard on for him he can do no wrong.  The Kansas City game this season was a great example of this.  He led a last minute touchdown drive to win the game and all you heard was how Favre was the hero once again.  What they never mentioned was that he threw 3 terrible interceptions (1 returned for a touchdown in the 4th quarter) and that was the only reason the game was even within 20 points.

www.favresucks.com

I realize he has been lingering around to break Marino’s records.  That fact doesn’t bother me.  I understand that all great players eventually get old and start sucking.  I am in no way trying to say that Brett Favre was not a hall of fame quarterback and one of the all time greats.   My problem is that he’s been praised so much lately when for 3 out of last 4 seasons a he has been an absolutely terrible NFL quarterback.  The fact he happened to have a good season in 2007 doesn’t change the fact that he has been absolutely stinking up the league before and after that.  Again I don’t care that he has been sucking, I care that I have to listen to how awesome he is every week.

Here are his last 4 seasons

2005 – 3881 yds, 61.3 CMP %, 20 TD, 29 INT, 70.9 QB RATING (31st in NFL)
2006 – 3885 yds, 56.0 CMP %, 18 TD, 18 INT, 72.9 QB RATING (25th in NFL)
2007 – 4155 yds, 66.5 CMP %, 28 TD, 15 INT, 95.7 QB RATING (6th in NFL)
2008 – 3472 yds, 65.7 CMP %, 22 TD, 22 INT, 81.0 QB RATING (22nd in NFL)

I will close with the wise words of Jets RB Thomas Jones. “If somebody is not playing well, they need to come out of the game. You’re jeopardizing the whole team because you’re having a bad day. To me, that’s not fair to everybody else. You’re not the only one on the team. So when you get to the wire and somebody is just giving the game up, I mean, it’s just not [fair].”

Good riddance asshole.

Constable Echelon

Why are there only a half dozen decent pro quarterbacks? Quarterback is the most glamorous position in American sports. Thousands of kids want to play qb, and sure most of them aren’t 6′2+” or blessed with a cannon for an arm, but enough people are that the Dolphins shouldn’t have been barely able to fill the position last year.

I think a major reason that quarterbacking is such a disaster in the NFL is that GMs have become infected with a couple of ideas that impose artificial restraints on qb development. For some reason, teams throw in rookie quarterbacks and expect them to produce right away. When they inevitably don’t become Tom Brady they are branded failures and sentenced to a lifetime of third stringdom unless a highly unlikely string of injuries provides them with playing time somewhere down the line. Second, NFL GMs appear to value a balance of performance and potential more than pure performance.

Is there any chance that Matt Hasselbeck would be a successful NFL quarterback if he were given the opportunity to play right away? No. He was a pedestrian producer at Boston College who possessed just slightly above average measurables. The Packers drafted him, gave him a playbook, and told him to watch. When Hasselbeck finally got his chance a few years down the line he played so poorly that a Seahawks crowd was screaming for Trent Dilfer (who I’ll get to shortly).

It took two years of watching football and one year of sucking before faith in Matt Hasselbeck started to pay off. And he only eventually got his chance because of a fluke preseason injury to Trent Dilfer. Contrast this with a John Beck or Alex Smith who are both already out of their starting gigs. How do they know that neither of these guys can actually play? Both Beck and Smith were thrown into terrible offenses and asked to immediately improve them as rookies.

The reason these rookies are playing in the first place is because the worst thing that an NFL team can possibly have is an “old” quarterback. Having an old quarterback is worse for a gm than losing games.

I was talking with Tubby recently and he raised this question, “If you had a quarterback who threw for 28 TDs with 15 INTs and almost 4200 yards last year, would you want him back?” Um, yes.

So what gives, Green Bay? You’re bringing back a team that is loaded with young talent on both sides of the ball. As a bonus this young talent after last year’s run to crunch time of the NFC championship game is now PROVEN young talent. You are one of the few teams at the beginning of this season that can legitimately say “Our goal this year is to win the Super Bowl.”

Why give the keys of this potential juggernaut to a Jeff Tedford quarterback? Akili Smith, Joey Harrington, and Kyle Boller don’t exactly predict NFL success for the new man in Wisconsin. And I recognize that Brett Favre’s 2007 season was likely an unrepeatable statistical anomaly. But still, at least you know whatever the rare quality is that makes a winning QB resides somewhere in Favre.

You have no reason to believe it resides in Aaron Rogers, for the simple reason that factor apparently doesn’t exist in 99% of quarterbacks. Throw in the fact that if the number one rule of holding an NFL front office gig is “Keep Your Job”, and I just can’t understand the logic behind running out the unquestionable greatest player in the modern history of the franchise coming off of a vintage campaign.

Also unique to the Favre situation is the fact that he has been facing the retirement line of questioning since the early part of this decade when he was still in his early 30s. You could argue that the media artificially created the critical mass that forced Brett Favre to prematurely announce his retirement after last year. But enough about that tired story.

More heartening news on this front coming out of Arizona of all places, where QB of the future Matt Leinart has lost his starting gig to Kurt Warner. Why? Because Kurt Warner consistently outproduces Leinart, and that is all that should matter. Does this mean Leinart is damaged goods and should never get another shot in the NFL? No! The NFL more than any other pro sport changes so much from year to year that your only concern should be to win right now.

Which brings me to Trent Dilfer. In his 4th and 5th seasons in the NFL with Tampa Bay, Trent Dilfer started 32 games throwing for 42 TDs against 26 INTs. In his 7th season for Baltimore the team went 7-1 in games he started and won the Super Bowl. He was promptly run out of town to clear the way for Elvis Grbac, Jeff Blake, Kyle Boller, and Anthony Wright. Brian Billick was under pressure to recreate some semblance of the record breaking offenses he presided over in Minnesota that got him his starting job, so he sacrificed a solid-not-spectacular starter/proven winner in 28 year old Trent Dilfer for….well nothing, as it turned out.

Dear NFL, you are not fielding fantasy teams. Good enough has to be good enough at some point. No one will have anything negative to say to you if you are winning. This idea of playing to win now is often irreconcilable with the goal of building for the future. So while first round qbs may briefly fire up the fan base, it’s probably a better idea to enlist the “past his prime” player another team has cast off because of the perception that they’re middling.

You hear me Oakland? Play Tui!

(Stats courtesy of Pro Football Reference)

Miracle, White Buffalo and Decider of the Fates of Men

Let’s dive into this a little further. The basis of this theory comes direct from my friend and bona-fide Cheesehead Holzie. I’ll let him explain:

Let’s look at the timeline, shall we?

August 4: Favre is officially back (Coach McCarthy’s conference began at 9:15 EDT). In Milwaukee, also at 9:15 EDT, Prince Fielder and Manny Parra get into a fight in the Milwaukee dugout during the Brewers-Reds.

How does this relate to the White Buffalo? Step into the Circle, where all things are one:

On August 20, 1994, just days before the Packers’ season opened, a white buffalo calf was born on a ranch in Janesville, Wisconsin.

The Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota Nations (known collectively as the Sioux) were considered Miracle’s primary spiritual guardians and she played a pivotal role in the fulfillment of their most revered prophecies.  However, her place in the prophecies and beliefs of many tribes made her a highly sacred symbol to many of the American Indian Nations across the continent.  She was seen by a vast number of people as a symbol of hope and renewal for humanity and for harmony between all peoples, all races, in our world today.

However, just nine days earlier the Milwaukee Brewers, who had made the playoffs just two seasons prior, played their last game in the strike-shortened 1994 season. Feeling abandoned by Major League Baseball, the Sioux, buoyed by the birth of Miracle, threw the entirety of their support behind Favre. He promptly led the Pack to their second straight playoff appearance.

Clearly, the Great Sioux Nation had turned its mystical fortunes to this strange quarterback from deepest Mississippi. How could they not? They, like the rest of us, were unsure if baseball would ever return.

The Brewers, forsaken by the natives of the good land, remained mired in mediocrity for years.

And so it remained, until Favre announced his retirement. With him gone, the Brewers possessed a full complement of Sioux mysticism — which they used to bring the NL Central to its knees. Everything was going swimmingly until, as outlined above, Favre announced his desire to be reinstated.

Instantly, all of the Sioux magic flooded out of Miller Park in an awesome torrent. The Brewers, now unprotected against the cruel Universe, promptly imploded.

It became clear to all parties. The Brewers would not — indeed, could not — succeed while the Bearded One roamed on the shores of the Great Cold Bay.

Favre to the Jets was not a football decision. It was a necessity. I believe the Sioux Elders, who of course control all of Wisconsin, met in secret and engineered the trade to New York. Favre had to leave Wisconsin or risk meddling in powers he couldn’t possibly understand.

With Favre safely stowed away in the East, the Brewers escape the wrath of the White Buffalo, whose spirit still roams the plains from Eau Claire to Appleton. Let them enjoy their period of prosperity, from now until the last buffalo roams the Great Plain.*

Sitting Bull, the greatest of the Lakota Sioux

*Or until Milwaukee gets a Major League Lacrosse franchise.