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Friday, November 9, 2007
The Posedown - NFL Week 10
Last Week
Bill: 9-5
Van: 10-4
Season
Bill: 78-52
Van: 83-47
Circle this date on your calendar: December 2, 2007. This is the date that could determine immortality for two franchises.
On December 2, the god-awful Miami Dolphins host the equally god-awful New York Jets, while the winless St. Louis Rams welcome the should-be-winless Atlanta Falcons. That is as close to winnable as it will get for either the Rams or the Dolphins, particularly so for the Dolphins, who face a rather brutal 8 game slate to close the season.
Bill: So now that Super Bowl 41 ½ is over, you are looking to the next great attraction? Roger Goodell might rather talk about dog fighting or LJ’s rap career than the Rams or Dolphins.
Meanwhile, the Patriots are really good, the yaks are really warm, I’m still ahead of Bill (whose picks you can find here), and all is well with the world.
Yahtzee!
Minnesota @ Green Bay
Bill’s Pick: Green Bay
Van’s Pick: Green Bay
Let’s just get the obvious stuff out of the way: if Boo Boo The Fool Childress can get out of his own way, The Real Adrian Peterson can almost win this game all by his own self. Almost. The problem is that Boo Boo The Fool has to run someone out there at quarterback, and then, depression sets in. The Packers’ Aaron Kampman will be all over Minny’s QB like a process server in a trailer park. Greg Jennings is on some serious Cliff Branch stuff, and Brett Favre will never, ever retire. And there is no truth to the rumor that Aaron Rodgers has been counseling Brady Quinn on bench-warming etiquette.
Bill: Until I read your blog, I completely missed that Boo Boo signed Koy Detmer. He probably can’t do the “slap the prostitute” dance without aggravating his sciatica. Yahoo! does not even have a picture of Detmer anymore, so they’re using the little Viking logo (unless that really is Detmer, in which case he certainly went the extra mile to get back in the league). The supposition out there is that Brooks Bollinger is going to start for the Vikings. I’m not accusing the guy of anything, but does anybody find it suspicious that Bollinger has never had any chance of making an NFL team, and yet he does, and that he has never in his career been better than a third-string quarterback but is about to play in his 18th game in three years? I would be terrified of being above him on the depth chart. It would be like being in succession ahead of the Duke of Gloucester.
Philadelphia @ Washington
Bill’s Pick: Washington
Van’s Pick: Philadelphia
For me, it’s simple: if nothing has come up on the police blotter from the Reid household, I pick the Eagles. If something comes up that demands court appearances, lawyers, bail, etc., I pick whoever they’re playing. Since things are fairly quiet in the Reid household this week, I like the Eagles. Besides, they’re a lot of fun when Donovan McNabb is throwing people under the bus like he did earlier this week.
Bill: Don’t get excited. It’s only Thursday. There is still 43% of the week left for the Brothers Reid. The Kray twins would have had a better shot of staying clean for such an expansive field of time. I admit I have some trepidation about this game, since the Redskins did not seem to recover from their epic 300-style beatdown at the hands of the Patriots, but the Eagles have only shown heart a couple of times this season. I take this to mean that they only sack up accidentally and occasionally. Hard to predict when that might be, but if they only do it 15% of the time, the numbers are on my side.
Atlanta @ Carolina
Bill’s Pick: Carolina
Van’s Pick: Atlanta
I don’t know. I really don’t know. I asked the Magic 8 Ball who would win and I got “Bite Me” for an answer ten times in a row. I think I picked Atlanta because their name starts with “A” and Carolina’s name starts with “C.” Yeah. That’s it. Gaaaaaaaah.
Bill: See, Jupiter is in the fifth house and Mars is waning, indicating power to the elderly and wise. That’s Vinny Testaverde. As Scorpio rises and Pleiades sets, the axis around Artemis suggests power in the status quo. That’s the Panthers, who have 100% more wins than the Falcons. Then there’s also a pretty good chance that I made that crap up, and that I took the home team.
St. Louis @ New Orleans
Bill’s Pick: New Orleans
Van’s Pick: New Orleans
For all the Hater-Aid I was drinking about New Orleans earlier this season, there may not be a game on the schedule that I feel safer about. The Saints are clearly back to last season’s form, while the Rams will cure what ails you in just about every department. This game will get ugly in the Crescent City; the Saints might score 100.
Bill: If you had told me five weeks ago that one of these teams would pull out of their death spiral, I would have guessed the Rams. After that, I probably would have gone outside the box, like maybe Kucinich and McCain would come back before the Saints. Failing that, I might have guessed that Robert Blake and Phil Spector…you get the idea. The Saints looked so indescribably bad, so discolored and bloated floating there in the water, that you just had to think they were dead. Turns out that body was actually the Rams. Who knew?
Dallas @ New York Giants
Bill’s Pick: Dallas
Van’s Pick: New York Giants
This qualifies as a big game, because these two teams are pretty good. Not Pittsburgh/Indianapolis good, but pretty good nonetheless. Quiet as it is kept, Eli Manning is all growed up in the NYC, and he’s having a great year. The defense is back to being cantankerous, and there may not be a better pair of pass-rushing ends than Usi Umeniyora and Michael Strahan right now. Dallas will make it interesting because they ain’t skurred, but the G-men win anyway.
Bill: Did you see Umeniyora against the 49ers a couple of weeks ago blow up Trent Dilfer and keep coming upfield (without breaking stride to step over Dilfer) to scoop up the fumble and take it to the house, flashing more speed than any fullback left in the league? Terrifying. All the same, Dallas may be better equipped than any team in the league to handle the Giant rottweilers, having a legitimate offensive line and the NFL’s second-most escapable quarterback in Tony Romo.
Detroit @ Arizona
Bill’s Pick: Detroit
Van’s Pick: Detroit
Fear The Leos. They have already proven that they can win on the road against bad teams (Oakland, Chicago), and make no mistake: Arizona is a bad team. The Lions are surprisingly tough for a team that has been slapped around for the last few years, and that toughness will serve them well in the desert because the Cardinals won’t quit. Shaun Rogers may still be gassed from last week’s interception and score, but he’ll cave Arizona’s O-line just by falling forward.
Bill: I fear the Leos.
San Francisco @ Seattle
Bill’s Pick: Seattle
Van’s Pick: Seattle
The Niners and the Jets belong in the same category: worst teams to have won a game. Nothing, and I mean nothing is going right for San Francisco right now. It’s so bad, the “braintrust” by the Bay is wondering whether Alex Smith was the right man for the job. Meanwhile, the Seahawks are discovering that it just ain’t smart to give a running back a big paycheck (see Edgerrin James, Larry Johnson, Priest Holmes, Cedric Benson) because most of them take too much of a beating over the breadth of their career to be worth the investment. (Stat that may only interest me: in the history of the NFL, out of 1705 running backs, only 25 have ever gotten over 2000 carries in their careers…that works out to about 6 full-time seasons.) Shaun Alexander is a shell of himself, being one of those with over 2000 career carries, and it’s tough lugging the football when you’re also lugging a huuuuuge sack of cash around. Seattle wins anyway, but that’s hardly an endorsement of their team.
Bill: Dude. Did you completely make up that stat so that I could go, “Really?” so that you could answer, “No, not really”? Because I love that joke. Your response is a great example of the challenge of writing this blog – you have to find ancillary stuff to say sometimes because nobody really needs a 200-word explanation of why the 49ers cannot beat the Seahawks (or almost anybody else).
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