It's Got To Be the Morning After
Oh, God, what an awful, excruciating, painful, embarrassing weekend of football. We don't think we've ever been more pissed off come Monday at the doings of the NFL than we are today. How could we ever bench Eli Manning for Brad Johnson? What the hell were we thinking? Why should we ever listen to those "Fantasy Football Gurus" who claim to know what the hell they are talking about?
And then there's the doings of our local 11 (22? 44?). Let's just say not a great weekend for football by (and across) the Bay as both teams got spanked and spanked some more. How bad was it? The combined score of the two games was 67-13 as both teams competed to see who could out-suck the other. And the verdict? Well, the Rai-duhs, of course.
How bad was their loss? They played against a team that had only won two games, had the 31st ranked offense, lost seven in a row, lost its best player (Curtis Martin) before the game, and featured the third-string quarterback, the Rai-duhs lost and lost badly. Lamont Jordan was out-rushed by the Jets QB, there were a total of 13 penalties called, and the Raiders could only score a TD late in the fourth quarter when it was pretty obvious the game was over. "We obviously have to play better," said Marvelous Norv Turner after the game, which besides being an understatement is not something a coach should be saying after the 14th week of the season.
And how did Tui the New QB do? Fourteen for 26 for 124 yards, 1 TD, two ints, and two fumbles. In other words, not so good. But the most damning stat was that he got sacked six times. So much for going with the more mobile QB. "We put Tui in a tough spot, from a protection standpoint" said Norv after the game. Do you think? Memo to Norv: the person who is responsible for making sure a QB has more protection is you, the head coach. Hearing him complain about lack of protection is like hearing the President complain about the Federal Government's response to Katrina. Try doing things like adding blockers. Or throwing short passes. Or committing to a running game. Or, hell, committing to any sort of game as once again, the game plan seemed to be made up on the stop. Say goodbye, Norv, and maybe take Al with you.
Speaking of hassled QBs, we now go up to Grungetown for the Niners drubbing at the hands of the grooving Seahawks, a performance Patrick Hruby of ESPN described as "football-ish." The Niners were pretty much unable to do anything or stop anything all game as Alex Smith was sacked four times. And his totals? Smith went 9-for-22 for 77 yards, fumbled three times, and threw an interception. Once again, we have to ask about the coaching as it's pretty much known that when facing a rookie QB you send everybody and everybody's mother and everybody's mother-in-law out on a blitz. Which is exactly what the 'Hawks did all day, blitzed. And yet, the Niners were completely unprepared to stop it. They also know Alexander was going Student Body Left all day and once again, did nothing to stop it, although Alexander's been doing that to everyone all season.
How bad was it? The Niners had a total of 113 offensive yards, the seventh time all season they failed to get above 200 yards. And they once again played a game in which kicker Joe Nedney got all the points, the sixth time that's happened. It was also the third time the Niners gave up more than 40 points. Right now, it's a matter of debate as to who the worst team in the NFL is, with the Niners pretty up there. Or down there as the case might be.
We hate to say it but the worst thing that could happen to Reggie Bush just might be being drafted by the Niners. Which is looking more and more likely as the Raiders took the Jets out the Reggie Bush race by losing to them and the Packers made the mistake of winning their game, much to the chagrin of a Packers fan we watched the game with.
One more note--with the Niners game pretty much over, sometime around the second quarter, we checked to see if KTVU decided to give some mercy on the fans and switch to another, more exciting game. Like the Giants/Eagles barn-burner. They didn't. Which is fine. But when the Niners game ended and the Giants/Eagles game about to go to OT, did KTVU show us football until the game ended? Nope. Instead, they switched to the Niners post-game show. We're sure there's a bunch of masochistic Niners fans out there who would rather watch the post-mortem instead of an epic clash between bitter and historic NFC foes but screw 'em, we say. It's football we want to watch, not Ronnie Lott and Mark Ibanez.