Posted by SuckaFish
Each week SI.com’s Peter King works tirelessly to produce Monday Morning QB ensuring that it will be posted before you get to work in the morning. The next day, Gregg Easterbrook stops watching Star Trek long enough to ensure that Tuesday Morning Quarterback is live on ESPN.com by mid afternoon.
By Wednesday (or Thursday, and the occasional Friday) we’ll finish digesting these massive tomes and will filter out the fat and deliver the only nuggets you really need.
Monday Morning QB
This week Mr. King locks in with just under 6,600 words. We condense it to a bite size 655. You save 90%!
Now, we all assume that no one will ever break this record of Favre’s, but should we? Let’s say Favre plays 16 games this regular-season, then retires. (For good.) That would give him 285 straight starts. Peyton Manning is now at 177. If he starts the rest of this year, he’d be at 192. So he’d need 94 starts to pass Favre; Manning would have to start every game ’til December 2015 to get to 286. By that time, like Favre, Manning would be 39. Now that Manning has started to have knee issues, my money’s on Favre to keep the record, but it wouldn’t stun me if Manning — who is conscious of his place in history and loves football as much as he loves breathing — worked tirelessly to stay healthy enough to play that long.
That’s amazing. And there’s no way Manning plays every game for that long. That record may be unbreakable, as is Favre’s record for interceptions.
Kurt Warner. One incompletion was a “sight-adjust” route mixup with Anquan Boldin, which happens to every quarterback in every game. On the other, Jacksonville was blitzing, and Warner had to throw a fade he knew probably wouldn’t be caught. That’s the extent of his imperfections Sunday. His 24-of-26 day in a 31-17 win at Jacksonville was the most accurate (.923) in NFL history.
Is it possible that I buried the Cardinals too early? The offense is clicking and Larry Fitzgerald isn’t even getting the ball yet, they play in a weak division, have the confidence of a team that went to the Super Bowl last year, and they can still legitimately play the “no respect” card. No, they won’t make the playoffs, they’re still the Cardinals.
1. Baltimore (2-0). When the new regime took over in 2008, coach John Harbaugh and offensive coordinator Cam Cameron told the offense it was long past time that the unit carried its weight. Stop losing to the defense in practice. Stand up for yourselves.
Any doubt now the offense is an equal in Baltimore? The most impressive thing is the offense. At 34.5 points a game, the Ravens are second in the NFL to New Orleans.
Um, if the Ravens offense is actually good that is big trouble for the Steelers.
6. Pittsburgh (1-1). Willie Parker, 12 carries for 47 yards. What happened to the Steelers running game? Second straight game it hasn’t been there.
If the running game is bad that is big trouble for the Steelers. And really? A 1-1 team is no. 6? I realize they won the Super Bowl last year but this is about 2009. So far this season they won a home opener in OT and then lost to the Bears.
This is too good to pass up from Elliott Kalb, my NBC studio partner: Tom Brady has been on the field for 21 offensive possessions this young season. With the exception of his heroic two series in the last six minutes of the win over Buffalo, the other 19 have resulted in no touchdown passes, two interceptions and a 64.2 passer rating.
Of course that number is not as frightening as JaMarcus Russell’s completion percentage in his first two games of the season — 35.2.
If they need to pull JaMarcus Russell’s stats to make you look good your coach is not cheating enough for you to succeed.
OFFENSIVE PLAYERS OF THE WEEK
With apologies to Philip Rivers and his ridiculous 436-yard day …
Eli Manning, QB, New York Giants
Others had better numbers than Manning’s (25-38, 330 yards, two touchdowns), but he put 13 points on the board with three crisp scoring drives in the final 16 minutes Sunday night at Dallas.
Wow. I realize he had a big day and the Giants won a division game on the road but let’s not forget that they have yet to score a TD in the red zone. Redskins fans are ready to jump in the Potomac because they can’t score in the red zone and they have the same conversion rate as the Giants, 0%.
Antwan Odom, DE, Cincinnati
Before this season, Odom had played 60 NFL games and totaled 15.5 sacks. Guess who’s the 2009 sack leader? Odom, the former bit-part Titan, who had five sacks, two additional tackles for loss, and five tackles in the Bengals’ stunning upset at Green Bay. That gives Odom seven for the season, and it gives the Bengals a pass-rushing end they’ve been lacking for years, even when Justin Smith was a moderately successful rush end before leaving in free agency for the Niners last year.
Hmmm, I’ll bet you didn’t think the former Titan d-lineman that would be grabbing headlines would be Antwan Odom. I wonder if Cincy is paying him $100M.
4. Darrelle Revis, CB, New York Jets. Andre Johnson was all-world in Week 2 — after getting manhandled by Revis in Week 1. Randy Moss was All-Pro in Week 1, then got silenced by Revis in Week 2.
I would say that’s impressive. I’m not sure I’d put him at no. 4 in the MVP race, but OK.
Let the emotional e-mails begin. In the MMQB book, I pick the Top 100 Players in NFL history. Here are my top 12 players of all time at the quarterback position.
2. Sammy Baugh. Had the best season of any player ever in 1943. Led the NFL in passing, punting and, as one of the best safeties in football, in interceptions.
I’ve probably read about that season 200 times and I still get surprised by the facts. Go Frogs!
Shawne Merriman is tied for 218th in the NFL in tackles after two games with six. And zero sacks. Dude, there’s going to be an APB out on you soon. I mean, Antwan Odom is leading you in sacks right now — by seven.
I blame Tila Tequila. Go Terps!
Good story by buddy Mike Silver, who reported Browns coach Eric Mangini fined a player $1,701 for not paying for a bottle of water he took from a hotel minibar during the preseason . As Plain Dealer columnist Bud Shaw wrote, it’s like killing a fly with a sledgehammer.
And bottled water is bad for the environment, too. Has a coach ever fallen faster than the “Man-genious”?
2. I think I haven’t seen a win that seemed so much like a loss as Washington’s 9-7 snoozer over the Rams.
I think KilgoreTroutIII summed that up pretty well.
Tuesday Morning Quarterback
Mr. Easterbrook finished with more than 10,000 words. That’s more than 3,300 words for each “g” in his first name.
Of course, he reduces his effort by spending the first 800 words rehashing his “go for it on fourth down” columns he has seemingly written 30 times previously. And nearly 2,800 words were on his pet topics; politics, entertainment, science, pizza, the economy, Christmas Creep, and fast food. Monday night’s game between Indianapolis and Miami was good, but probably not worth 1,500 words.
We knocked the whole thing down to 450 words. TMQ is 95% off!
Stats of the Week No. 3: Going back to the beginning of last season, the Tennessee Titans have followed a 13-2
stretch with a streak of 0-4.
That’s not good.
Stats of the Week No. 4: Going back to the beginning of last season, the Tampa Bay Bucs have followed a 9-3 stretch with a streak of 0-6.
That’s worse.
Stats of the Week No. 7: Cleveland has one offensive touchdown in its past eight games.
Maybe things aren’t so bad in DC after all.
by the way, the Saints already have 12 touchdowns this season
That’s more than the Patriots, Steelers, Rams, Browns, and Redskins COMBINED.
Sweet ‘N’ Sour Play No. 1: San Diego won its opener on a touchdown run up the middle by Darren Sproles with 18 seconds remaining. This week, San Diego trailed Baltimore by five, with 37 seconds remaining, and the Bolts faced fourth-and-2 on the Ravens’ 15. San Diego tried to run Sproles up the middle, and Baltimore’s Ray Lewis, remembering what San Diego did the previous week in that situation — the Chargers had also run up the middle on two previous short-yardage downs in the second half — guessed the play correctly, shot the “A” gap between guard and center, and dropped Sproles for a loss, ending the game. That was sweet. No one from San Diego even attempted to block Lewis. That was sour. The Bolts had two offensive linemen pulling right; Sproles was supposed to run “underneath” them, with the play designed to make Baltimore think the run was going right when actually it was going up the middle. The result was plenty of blocking on the right, but no blocker in the “A” gap. When you watch the ball on this play, it appears that Lewis did something spectacular — somehow he got into the backfield to tackle the runner for a game-winning play! Take your eyes off the ball and instead watch Lewis — all he does is run straight ahead at the snap through an opening left by the San Diego offensive line. No one so much as stepped into his path.
So many things here, I’ll just go with this, isn’t what makes a great play by a defender the fact that he got in the backfield without someone blocking him?
Adventures in Officiating: With the game tied at 31, Tennessee punted to Houston on the final snap of the third quarter. Houston’s Jacoby Jones signaled fair catch; the ball popped out of his hands and into the hands of a Titans player; initially, zebras marked it as Flaming Thumbtacks’ ball on the Texans’ 9. But a player who signals fair catch receives an “unimpeded” opportunity to catch a punt while it has not yet struck the ground. So officials correctly overruled themselves and flagged the Tennessee player who snatched the ball for fair-catch interference — since the ball hadn’t yet struck the ground and only Jones had the right to the catch. Jeff Fisher went ballistic, though after the game, acknowledged the ruling had been correct. Houston went on to win 34-31.
Raise your hand of you knew that rule.
Why Certain Teams Are On a 5-29 Stretch: Leading by one point with 1:12 remaining till halftime, holding all three timeouts, St. Louis took possession on its 30 — and ran out the clock.
And yet, they took the Redskins to the final minute before losing 9-7. Good luck in Detroit.
There were plenty of instances where he assumed what people were thinking and stated it as fact, typical TMQ stuff, but I was exhausted by the sheer volume of his ramblings. You win this time Easterbrook!
Surrounded by 'Skins 