Marino Debate?

By Blaidd Drwg

Raise your hand if you would ever thought that the first quarterback to break Dan Marino’s single season yards record would be Drew Brees and not Tom Brady (Brady is about 200 yards from passing Marino also). Brady gets all the press because of the “pass always” offense the Pats run, but it is the high-octane offense in New Orleans that should probably be getting more attention. Heck, you hear about Wes Welker and Rob Gronkowski all the time – name any receiver on the Saints (I had to look them up).

The Saints are now 12-3, have scored 505 points (9 less than the Packers and 40 more than the Patriots) and unlike the Pats, have the best pass offense in the league and the 9th best run offense (the Pats are 19th). That is not really the point of this post.

The point of this post is that, to me at least, it seems like Brees/Brady could be the new Marino/Elway argument on who was better. From a statistical standpoint, they two are pretty close:

	GP	YDS	TD	INT	Rating
Brees	153	40,353	276	145	93.6
Brady	160	39,641	297	114	96.3

The real edge that Brady has over Brees is Super Bowl wins – Brady has 4 and Brees 1. In the Marino/Elway battle, Elway had 2 and Marino failed to win the Super Bowl in his only appearance.

I know that the traditional who’s better argument in this century has been Manning/Brady, but I really do think that it should really be Brees/Brady.

Football this Holiday Season

By Blaidd Drwg

I have already expressed my righteous indignation over the entire BCS system here, and I read something recently in the Seattle Weekly about the entire bowl system that leads me to believe that it makes money for the people running the bowl and screws the schools over.

To make matters worse, this season, the #7 team in the country, Boise State, didn’t get to go to a BCS bowl because they are not in an AQ conference and did not win their conference title. Fine, except that #13 Michigan, a school with 2 losses (more than Boise), who didn’t win their conference, didn’t play in their conference championship game and didn’t even win their division within their conference, gets to go to a BCS bowl. On what planet does that make sense?

Boise State’s consolation prize, a 6-6 Arizona State team in the Las Vegas Bowl. I watched about 2 minutes of the game and it was obvious that Boise was making a statement that they were unhappy about their bowl placement – they essentially ran the Sun Devils out of the building. It would have been much uglier for Arizona St. if it weren’t for the Boise turnovers that did what the Sun Devil defense couldn’t – keep the Broncos offense out of the end zone.

Normally I love watching college football and the bowl games at the end of the season. Based on the stupidity of the system, I think I am going to pass this year. Luckily, thanks to the way the calendar falls, we have NFL games on Christmas and New Year’s weekends this year. I would much rather watch the riveting Colts-Jags game on New Year’s Day than any of the bowl games that are being played.

Assorted Sports Thoughts

by A.J. Coltrane

Mike Leach to the Cougars:

To quote Leach – “You can win here and win big, I believe.”

Washington State football just got a lot more entertaining — I may actually make a point to watch a game or two next year. WSU will throw the ball all over the place, and historically that’s what they’ve done when they’ve been good. At the very least they’ll be fun to watch.

The Sounders get a new keeper:

The Sounders signed 6’5″ Austrian keeper Michael Gspurning. From the Seattle Times: “Gspurning’s size lends to a more aggressive approach in coming out to defend crosses, and he is also more comfortable having balls played back to him and using his feet”

The News Tribune has more information about Gspurning, including this YouTube clip of five of his saves:

I’m predisposed to like tall keepers — Kasey Keller would have had a hard time getting to Save #3 on the video, though Keller likely would have been playing another step or two to his left to cover that angle and would have stopped it anyway.

Gspuring is a 30 year-old veteran keeper. I have high hopes the Sounders won’t miss a beat.

Finally, the NBA is dead to me, but:

The Miami Heat signed Shane Battier. I think this is about as important as any signing in the league this year — Battier is absolutely the perfect fit to go with Wade and Lebron. Battier doesn’t need the ball in his hands to be productive, he’s a very good perimeter defender, he’s a good rebounder, a good passer, and he’s a good 3-point shooter. He may wind up being more valuable to the Heat than Chris Bosh. Really, the Heat are the “Big 2 +1” anyway, not a “Big 3”. As Battier approaches the late phase of his career he could basically be Robert Horry all over again. Mike Bibby just signed somewhere else, and if the Heat can get anything besides a corpse to play the point then they have to be heavy favorites to win it all this year. They don’t even need a traditional point guard, it could be a Steve Kerr equivalent and they’d be fine. (Any of the triangle offense non-traditional point guards would work — Kerr, Paxson, Harper, or Fisher. They just need long-range shooting and (ideally) someone to get in the way of quick little guards.)

Bleh.

The BCS Needs To Go

By Blaidd Drwg

The process is entirely to skewed to hand out bids to the “power” conferences and really goes out of its way to prevent deserving teams from getting into the big bowls in favor of lesser teams from the big conferences. There are 10 spots in BCS bowls – numbers 1 and 2 in the rankings play in the national championship game and there are automatic bids for the Big East, Big 10, Big 12, ACC, SEC and Pac 12 conferences. There are also 2 at-large bids, only one of which goes to a non-AQ conference if it is ranked in the top 10. The only up sides is that no conference can have more than 2 BCS teams, unless the conference winner is not ranked #1 or #2 and the top 2 teams are also from the same conference.

Here is how bad it looks right now:
There are 2 non-automatic qualifier schools currently ranked in the top 10 of the BCS standings – Houston at number 6 , and one of 2 undefeated teams left in college football, and Boise State, who’s only loss this season is by 1 point to the 18th ranked TCU Horned Frogs. Both teams have one game left against tough opponents and if they both win, only one of these teams is going to make it to a BCS bowl game. The other gets to go to a second tier bowl.

The Big East does not have a team currently ranked in the top 25, yet will be sending a team to a BCS bowl. The conference winner has the potential of being the 7-5 Louisville Cardinals, who are in 1st place and their season is done, and could end up there depending on what the teams with remaining games do this weekend.

Thanks to USC being ineligible for post-season play, the inaugural PAC 12 conference championship features the 10-2 Oregon Ducks vs. the 6-6 UCLA Bruins. If somehow UCLA pulls off the upset, you will have a 7-6 team from the PAC 12 in a BCS game.

Right now, the at-large bids are predicted to be Houston and Michigan. Michigan, while 10-2, is currently ranked 16th and didn’t even make it to its conference championship game. How does that make sense?

It gets even stranger with the top 2 teams in the country. Alabama is currently #2 and is done with its season. Its only loss was to #1 Auburn, but they finished second in their division and are not playing in their conference championship game. It is unlikely that Alabama will move from the #2 spot after the games this weekend. Auburn, currently ranked #1, plays #12 Georgia in the SEC championship game this weekend. If Georgia wins, they get a BCS automatic birth. The consensus is that if Auburn loses, they would not drop lower than #2, meaning Alabama moves up to #1 (most likely). This sets up a national championship game where neither of the teams involved won their conference.

I don’t care if they are the 2 best teams in the country. If college football wants to have this stupid setup for a championship and all of these mega conferences with conference championship games, teams should be excluded from playing in the national championship games if they can’t win their conference.

Average Would Be Nice

by A.J. Coltrane

	Offense	Defense
Mariners (runs)	30th of 30	15th of 30
Seahawks (points)	26th of 32	15th of 32
Seahawks (yards)	28th of 32	11th of 32

Seahawks (rushing)	27th	8th
Seahawks (passing)	25th	15th

(Stats current as of November 26 pm.)

The first Seattle team to “win” will be the team that can get to at least average on offense. I think both teams are at least two years away from that happening.

Huskies and Being Ranked in the Top 25

By Blaidd Drwg

Hey, the Huskies are ranked! Good for them, but before you get excited and start booking you tickets for a BCS bowl, the Huskies are probably going to make their top 25 appearance a brief one. While 5-1 is a nice start of the season, they have really beaten no one of any consequence – They managed to squeak by Eastern Washington, a FCS team with a 3-4 record and Hawaii, a team that traditionally does not play well on the road, in their first two home games. They then got lit up by Nebraska on the road. They have since strung together wins against Cal, Utah and Colorado who are a combined 0-9 in Pac12 Play. Not exactly facing murderer’s row with that lineup. They now have to play Stanford on the road and this has the potential to get ugly folks. Here’s why:

The Huskies currently rank 77th in the nation in points allowed, giving up 28.5 a game. The only two teams in the top 40 in the nation in scoring they have faced are Nebraska and Hawaii, who hung a combined 83 points on the defense. Stanford currently ranks 5th in the nation in scoring – I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they put up 50 on the Huskies defense. The Huskies offense has only faced one top 25 defense – Utah and only managed 24 points against them (they did score 31 total – one touchdown was on a fumble return). Stanford’s defense is ranked 5th in the nation and has been locking down opponents all season. I just don’t see the Huskies putting up more than 21 against the Cardinal. The short version, the Huskies can’t win the game if they can’t stop Stanford and I just don’t see it happening. My prediction Stanford wins going away 49-24.

On the bright side, the Huskies still have the benefit of playing in a very weak conference and should end up the season 8-4 or 9-3. Of their remaining games, they only have a real challenge in Stanford, Oregon and USC (they luckily avoid having to play Arizona St.) and they should roll over on Arizona, Oregon St. and Wazzu who are just a combined 5-13 and not very good.

And The Kitchen Sink Too

by A.J. Coltrane

According to reports, the Raiders have traded for Carson Palmer. I would have been in favor of the Seahawks acquiring Palmer, but not at this price:

…the Raiders agreed to send their first-round draft choice in 2012 and a conditional pick in 2013 — which could become a first-round pick based on the level of Palmer’s play — to Cincinnati in exchange for the 31-year-old Palmer.

Yikes. Then there’s this:

This had better work for the Raiders, because there’s no cavalry coming if Palmer fails. The Raiders could get a compensatory pick in as high as the end of the third round for the loss of Nnamdi Asomugha in free agency. But for now they’ve traded three 2012 picks for quarterbacks — Palmer (first-rounder), Terrelle Pryor (third-) and Jason Campbell (fourth-) — and lost the second- in exchange for picks this year to take rookie tackle Joe Barksdale and running back Taiwan Jones.

The Seahawks may have actually dodged a bullet. So long as the quarterback position doesn’t become a reanimation of the Kelly Stouffer/ Dan McGwire/ Rick Mirer zombie carousel, anyway.

In other news, boy was I wrong about Aaron Curry, but then, so was everybody.

Raiders fans seem excited though.

The Moron Who Poisined the Trees at Auburn

By Blaidd Drwg

I am trying to figure out which is the worst thing in this article about the poisoning of a couple famous oak trees at Auburn University:

– Someone was despicable enough to poison a perfectly healthy tree because it is on the campus of a football rival.
– Alabama has a law that allows this guy to be tried for the crime of desecration of a venerated object.
– Alabama considers a tree on a college campus a venerated object (how very un-Christian of them, something about false idols I believe).
– The moron who did this named his kids Bear and Crimson Tyde.

He should go to jail on the 4th one alone.

Punt, Punt, Punt, Rinse, Repeat

by A.J. Coltrane

Yeah, I know I’m belaboring the point about Tavaris Jackson, but, as Peter King from SI writes:

Seattle’s possessions at Pittsburgh. They ended with a punt, punt, punt, end of the half, punt, punt, punt, punt, surrendered on downs, punt. Charlie Whitehurst anyone?

Charlie Whitehurst is the better option. He may even prove to have some value. Hopefully the Seahawks go to plan “Charlie” soon.

The Seahawks Keep Getting Bigger

by A.J. Coltrane

On Monday the Seahawks traded diminuitive CB Kelly Jennings to Cincinnati for 300-pound DT Clinton McDonald.

From the ESPN piece:

Clinton who?: McDonald was a seventh-round choice of the Bengals in 2009. The team had released him previously. He played in eight games last season. McDonald stands just under 6-2 and converted from linebacker in college. Nolan Nawrocki of Pro Football Weekly, writing for his 2009 draft guide, lauded McDonald for possessing toughness and a mean streak. He thought McDonald would project as a three-technique defensive tackle in a one-gap scheme. McDonald was not expected to earn a roster spot in Cincinnati.

The trade continues the Seahawks process of getting bigger.

Jerry Brewer hit it on the head about a month ago:

Their goal is to build a championship team with mostly young, athletic 20-something players who possess prototypical size. They want to be an attacking defense-centered team with a mobile quarterback guiding an offense that makes opponents choke on the running game. And they want to build from within, using the draft as their primary resource and filling out the roster with smart free-agency moves that help them acquire players who still have an upside.

…and that’s why Kelly Jennings didn’t fit in anymore.