NFL Parity and The Big Man Folly

Let me just say how disappointed I am in the NFL this year. Here I am, only 3 weeks into the 2008 season and I have already chosen to play video games or watch reality shows on television instead of my traditional glued to football Sunday noon to Monday midnight. I've spent the ends of my weekends this way since I was my daughters age, and with exception to a few Sunday's as a result of blackouts or horrible matchups, have rarely been distracted.

However it seems that my greatest joy of watching the Baltimore Ravens win the Super (fill in the blank) has now almost a decade later tarnished the sport I love. How has it done this might you ask, well follow with me here?

The big advantage the Ravens possessed in winning that title is they featured a tough smothering defense that would frustrate the opponent into making a mistake and capitalize upon it, usually in the manner of excellent field position and the occasional defensive TD. Oh what excitement!!! The anchor of this smothering defense was the giant defensive tackles that would absorb double and triple teams and stuff running lanes, freeing the linebackers to chase down unsuspecting running backs as they tried to find daylight on the outside. A scheme that worked so well that most teams are now trying to emulate it.

This is where we now run into a problem. Now don’t get me wrong I love this style of play, but Sam Adams and Tony Siragusa were also pretty good athletes. So many teams have run out and tried to find Sam Adams-isk interior lineman thinking this would make them a great defense and catapult them to football greatness. But stuffing twinkies into a couple fat guys does not a great defense make. While head coaches and defensive coordinators have been over inflating they’re run stuffers they’ve forgotten to introduce them to a wonderful invention called a treadmill. We now have a bunch of ninny’s the size of sub-compacts with a lung capacity that can’t keep up with my 2 year old. We now have games not decided by a more dominant or better prepared team, but games that are kept close using overweight sumo wrestlers and then decided by who gets the ball last. Teams run they’re traditional offenses run stuff after quarter back sack taking as much time off the clock as they can before punting, then as time expires run their 2 minute offense and turn the game into a track meet, while the wonderful big men the defense has counted on the entire half are left dazed with visions oxygen tanks dancing in their head.

Kudos to the first team to figure out introducing their players to something called cardio-vascular exercise, while turning up the intensity the entire game to wear out the other teams Little Debbie stuffing orcas. Till then I’ll be watching just to watch and praying for someone to once again get smash mouth football right.

Football Season is upon us!!!

It is finally that time of year where extensive research, countless injury inquires, preseason previews, hypothetical mis-matches, and hated rivalries, culminate into a weekly ritual of 10+ hours of yelling at the television while my wife lies asleep next to me, oblivious to the angst of my first round fantasy pick stinking up the joint. Ode to football. Seventeen wondrous weeks of agony and exhilaration, topped by six lustrous weeks of pure heaven when I can just pick my favorite team of the week to route through the playoffs. (Ordinarily, the team of the week would be replaced by the Ravens, but even my 2 yo son knows they don't have a snowballs chance this year.) A wonderful time of year where holiday's occur every Sunday and Monday, and Tuesdays are a bummer because there is 5 more days till kick-off. And what makes this year especially gratifying, I have a daughter who is developing a pecking order of favorite teams and a son who loves to yell at the TV just like his daddy. What a glorious time of year, long live football!!!!