Beaneball

John Clayton criticizes Marty Schottenheimer for being too conservative and "playing the field position game" while praising the Patriots to high heavens for knowing how to win in the playoffs. John Clayton a few paragraphs later points out that the "strangest" play in the game was when Marty went for it on 4th and 11 early in the game. Uh, Mr. Clayton, that's not conservative play-calling. Besides which, it wasn't necessarily that strange. The Patriots, as I recall, had the wind at their backs in the first quarter, which might be one reason why Schottenheimer didn't want a 49-yard field goal try. Meanwhile, LDT called out Bill Belichick because of what the Chargers perceived as a classless celebration on their logo at midfield (apparently, it included finger-pointing and mocking Shawne Merriman's sack-dance), saying, "They showed no class and maybe that comes from the head coach." The Patriots are just making enemies left and right, aren't they? The Jets (with the Mangini feud), the Colts (with constantly whooping their asses in the playoffs), and now the Chargers.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Football at 12:01 | |

There's no doubt that the Chargers lost their game to the Patriots. The punt-return fumble was especially crucial. But can I just ask whether the conspiracy theorists are going to come out of the woodwork for this game like they do every year in the NBA? I refer, of course, to those two awfully borderline personal fouls called against the Chargers. One Charger appeared to be celebrating a bit too much, but how could the referee not notice that it was the Patriot player who reached out and shoved the Charger? And as to the push in the pile-up that led to the Chargers having to kick off from their own fifteen yard line, I can't remember a game in which I haven't seen a little extra roughness in the pile, especially with players trying to get opponents off of their teammates (which is exactly what was happening there). I'm of the belief that if you're going into an inherently rough game and calling unnecessary roughness on somebody, that roughness had better be damn well unnecessary, not maybe-probably-kinda unnecessary. This is all particularly true if you're going to ignore "Roy" Hobbs taking a swing at a Charger receiver downfield blocking on a running play. If you ignore things like that (which happen multiple times every single game), then you have to ignore all the marginal stuff. But, boy, it was all worth it to see Indianapolis and New England back together again, right? yawn

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Football at 01:14 | |

I have no documentation of this, but I had both the Colts and Seahawks in yesterday's games (the Colts because they're a vastly better team than the Chiefs and the Seahawks because they were playing at home). I figured the Seahawks game would be close, but obviously you can't anticipate the craziness that ensued. I'll try to go 4-0 today as I pick Philadelphia and New England to win. Those aren't exactly controversial picks, although some people will get seduced by the Giants' offensive talent. The Patriots-Jets game is tough because while I'm not a Patriot-hater, they're not my favorite team to root for, and I really like Chad Pennington and Eric Mangini, so I'd like to root for the Jets, but I just don't think they're ready to beat Bill Belichick in the playoffs.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Books, Football, Law, Magazines, Movies, Non-Fiction, Reading at 12:39 | |