Watching the classless, absolute a-hole move by Belichick, going for it on 4th and 1 with a 28 point lead, I have to say that a bus crash or some other misfortune will be in the Pats future if they keep this up. There was no honor or necessity in going for it on 4th and 1 with that lead, none. Don’t give me any BS about how the game isn’t over until it’s over and how any team could come back. It’s the Bills and you’re the Pats, with the football equivalent of the 2000 Yankees lineup. The Bills are not coming back, and you’re going to put up more points.

The Patriots have no class. They continue to show it every week. This is just the latest example.

Alright, so we finally have the left/right splits for Donovan McNabb after the game against the New York Giants. Here are the new totals:

That means for that game, this was his breakdown:

That’s pretty much what I saw during the game. No passes off the left, which is where the pressure was coming from. Now, looking back I think I was being unrealistic during the game. Call it fan frustration. It’s more likely that the pressure from the left side made it hard to throw that way, plus he did have a few batted down, and it wasn’t like a quick WR screen or out was going to work against press coverage.

The real NFL commentators on ESPN, for example, have been railing against Andy Reid because he didn’t adjust by having a TE cover and help Winston Justice against Osi Umenyiora. That’s a fair point and amazingly obvious in hindsight.

Another correction/observation, McNabb was at least doing one look left on most of the sack highlights I saw, so I was probably wrong about that. Looking at it, he was still holding the ball too long, because he’s used to being able to scramble away. He’s not able to right now, and that looks to be the biggest adjustment he needs to make before they come back off the bye.

Donovan McNabb has the following splits as of the end of last week’s games:

If I remember correctly, passing splits are updated after STATS does their tape review of the games on Monday/Tuesday, so I’d expect it to be updated by Wednesday if not tomorrow. I’ll send out the new numbers then.

I’m a pretty big Donovan McNabb fan. I’m not one of those Eagles fans who wants to run him out of town at the first sign of struggle. So, understand that when I say that McNabb is the reason the Eagles look so awful tonight, I don’t say it with malice or with a predisposition for picking on McNabb.

Couple of observations from tonight’s game (and from the first two, as well — I missed most of last week’s game).

1. His timing is off, he’s throwing late and holding the ball too long.
2. Yes, the receivers aren’t getting open as much as they need to against press coverage.
3. That being said, McNabb isn’t scanning the field like he used to. Too often, he’s only looking right (the natural side for a righty) and isn’t looking left. That’s a rookie mistake. Follow your progressions, Donovan. This is the biggest issue tonight, I’ve seen Curtis, Buckhalter, and others open left during a lot of the sacks.
4. Accuracy is down. He does throw a few into the turf every other game or so, but this year he’s been missing right, high, and behind receivers. This is uncharacteristic.
5. McNabb looks to be slow on his scrambles. Probably due to the injury, but he needs to adjust to that fact, then.

This is a quick list, but item 3 is by and far the most frustrating thing to me. When I’m watching QBs for my fantasy team (stop snickering!), that’s one thing I look for. His head should hit both sides on many if not most of the pass plays. A QB that only looks one way cuts off half his receivers. This also leads to a lot of interceptions.

The easiest way to see if I’m right or wrong will be to see the breakdown of passes by zone. I bet there has only been 1 or 2 attempts to the left side of the field. Pick any other game from last year and I bet that’s not true. (I’ll look this up tomorrow).

11 sacks (and counting) have to more with McNabb’s performance rather than the injuries hurting the team. I’m not saying Winston Justice isn’t making mistakes, or that Brian Westbrook isn’t a big loss. What I’m saying is that McNabb has done better with less. The Giants are good, but they’re not this good.

The good thing is that this stuff can be fixed, especially over a two week break (well, except for the speed issue). McNabb shouldn’t be immune from criticism, and it shouldn’t be we love you or leave town. Let’s go Eagles, this season isn’t over yet. McNabb does his part, the rest of the team does their’s and the playoffs are still in reach.

It seems that Michigan isn’t the most overrated team in the NCAA. With their defeat of Notre Dame, Michigan has proven they are only the second most overrated team in college football. I guess our friends in South Bend have finally proven they are number 1 in something.

Michigan loses again. This time, they lost to a real team. They lost big. Bigger than ever. To say that Michigan is hurting, is an understatement.

Can anyone say “Big 9 Conference.” Don’t worry, running back Mike Hart promises that they will win next week against Notre Dame. Well, they might have a shot as they are playing the second most overrated team in college football.

I’ve written about this before, but the New England Patriots are truly the least classy “dynasty” in modern sports history. I’ve never seen a bigger bunch of whiney, sorry players with as much talent as they have. LaDainian Tomlinson was right to get mad, and it’s no surprise the Pats acted like this. The Pats are ridiculous, and it starts with the coach and the veterans on that team who consistently play the victim. There are very few franchises I don’t respect. The Pats are one.

It seems that a few people just don’t like the guy. I can’t imagine why.

I hate making big predictions about players. In fact, I think it’s so hard that I wanted to build a fantasy game around big predictions. So many things go into a career that it’s hard to say what someone will be at the end of their run.

With that said, I was reading Page 2’s Goats, gaffes and blunders article and I can’t help thinking what I said to a friend last week: Tony Romo is overrated. Way, way overrated. He’s not going to be great.

I’ve watched him quite a bit this year and while I recognize the talent, and I see how good he could be, I also recognize something else in him: a lack of preparation and seriousness about the game. He reminds me of Rex Grossman or any number of talented QBs who just don’t quite make it to the big time.

The mistake this past weekend was a case in point. He’s going to make mistakes like that, not because he’s trying to make a play, say like a Brett Favre, but because he’s not always giving his best. Maybe this weekend will scare him into fixing this, but I’m not holding my breath.

This is great stuff:

Love working here… smart people everywhere. Whoever got him to make this announcement here was brilliant.

At least I had one prediction on FatMixx that turned out right. The scoring on the crazy McNabb/Brown/Buckhalter TD was corrected to reflect a tipped ball and completion to Buckhalter. Here’s the full impact of the scoring change:

OFF Phi +35.0 Passing Yards for Donovan McNabb
OFF Phi +1.0 Passing Touchdowns for Donovan McNabb
OFF Phi +1.0 Receptions for Correll Buckhalter
OFF Phi +55.0 Receiving Yards for Correll Buckhalter
OFF Phi +1.0 Receiving Touchdowns for Correll Buckhalter
OFF Phi -1.0 Receptions for Reggie Brown
OFF Phi -20.0 Receiving Yards for Reggie Brown
OFF Phi -1.0 Fumbles for Reggie Brown
RET Phi -1.0 Fumbles Recovered (Own Team) for Correll Buckhalter
RET Phi -37.0 Fumble Recovery Yds (Own Team) for Correll Buckhalter
RET Phi -1.0 Misc Fumbles Recovered for Correll Buckhalter
RET Phi -37.0 Misc Fumble Recovery Yards for Correll Buckhalter
RET Phi -1.0 Fumble Return TDs for Correll Buckhalter

Told ya so.

NFL.com has the updated GameBook if you’re interested.

That amazing Eagles TD by Correll Buckhalter is right now scored as a fumble recovery for a TD in the official GameBook. I think that this is going to get changed during the week as the NFL has a chance to review the film. I would’ve scored it as a tipped ball and a completion to Buckhalter. I was watching the game live and I’ve watched the play on several different highlight packages and every time I don’t think that Reggie Brown ever had possession of the ball. He was juggling it, tipped it into the air, where Buckhalter grabbed it and took off.

My bet is a scoring correction and 6 more points for McNabb on my fantasy team.

Update: As luck would have it, my game this week is tied. This could be a big scoring change…

So, before I really talk about the Arizona Cardinals implosion last night, I want you to watch Denny Green at the postgame press conference:

He’s referring to this preseason win against the Bears, in case you’re wondering.

So, they folded, sure. And killed my fantasy team in the process (no hard feelings). But the thing that baffles me is that for a team that talks so much about finishing games off, I don’t understand the second half game plan. It’s important to run, but my God, when your running back has 55 yards on 36 carries (an amazing 1.5 yds/carry), it’s time to do something different. I don’t care how much Edgerrin James whines.

The second thing is that you play to win the game. I know that you want to be safe, and you have a great kicker, but with 2nd and 3 at the Chicago 24 with 1:04 left, you don’t settle for the field goal. You go for the first down. And if you’re going for the first down in last night’s game, you trust Leinart. Edge is a pretty good receiver, by the way. I’m not sure if Denny Green realizes that.

Anyway, the Bears are good, but their offense showed what happens when you get cocky. Pregame reports had the defense talking about a shutout and quotes from Grossman saying that if he saw Muhsin Muhammad single-covered, he would consider him open. The number of bad passes of over 20 yards was ridiculous. He was pressing and it showed. They’re just lucky Denny Green doesn’t trust his offense and tightened up in the fourth.

(Via Deadspin)

From King Kaufman’s Week 6 picks (winners in caps):

N.Y. GIANTS (2-2) at Atlanta (3-1): The Giants’ strong defensive front and weak secondary is perfect for a quarterback who makes good decisions, gets rid of the ball quickly and has an accurate arm. Oh.

Of course, I’m still picking the Falcons, but hey. By the way, he’s still my favorite sports writer. If you’re not reading Kaufman, you’re missing out.

It’s so weird seeing Al Michaels on NBC. Oh, and it’s weird seeing NFL football on NBC.

At 2:30 PM ET ESPN will broadcast the UEFA Champions League Final live. If you don’t know what that is, here’s an explanation from an internal email yesterday:

Tomorrow ESPN will televise live the UEFA Champions League final, the equivalent of the Super Bowl to soccer fans, in more than 100 countries and territories around the world. The match can be seen on ESPN International networks in Latin America, Africa, and the Pacific Rim; ESPN Star Sports networks in Asia; TSN and RDS in Canada, and on ESPN2 and ESPN Deportes in the U.S. The match will be simulcast in high definition for the first time ever on ESPN2 HD.

…

This year’s final features FC Barcelona of Spain’s La Liga against Arsenal FC from England’s Premiership. I invite you to tune-in at 2:30 p.m. EST on Wednesday and watch some of the best soccer players in the world battle for Europe’s top prize.

You may not care much about soccer, but if you’re a sports fan and you’re near a TV, you will want to watch this. At about 2:45PM ET, I expect productivity around ESPN to drop significantly as TVs flip on at every desk and office.

European soccer has among the most interesting league setups in professional sports, and I’ve learned a lot since working here. In some leagues, teams can move between the equivalent of our major leagues and the minors depending on performance (in both directions). A bad season could drop a team from one league to another. Can you imagine that in baseball? Do you think that those MLB teams that sit on their revenue sharing dollars would continually field bad teams if they got demoted to triple-A for poor performance? That would be nice.

I’ve been hearing jokes about how no one cares, or that soccer sucks because the scoring so low and I’m a bit surprised. Are Europeans and, well, pretty much all of the other people in the world that much different than us? I find it hard to believe, but the ratings say that’s the case.

I’ll be watching as much as I can today (damn meetings), and I highly recommend it for everyone else.

You can learn more about the UEFA Champions League at Wikipedia or the UEFA league site. As always, you can keep up with the scores and news at ESPN’s Soccernet.

Nice defense in the 4th quarter, defensive genius.

By the way, Donovan McNabb, I hope you were watching. See how good you could be? Like this Vince Young guy, you can run. Unlike this Vince Young guy, you can literally own a defense with your arm. If you somehow did both in a game, you might be pretty much unstoppable. Really. Think about it. Thanks.

One last thing… A lot of people at work think my Patriot hating is because they beat the Eagles last year in the Super Bowl. Not true. The loss to the Pats sharpened the Pats hating for sure, but I was getting tired of the Pats before that. Mostly because I hate dynasties with a passion. H-A-T-E them with a passion. It’s part of why I hate the Yankees. It’s why I always rooted against the Niners in the Montana/Rice and Young/Rice days, for example. I actually liked those players, but just got tired of the predictability of the seasons…

So, obviously, I was rooting for Texas all the way tonight. And, boy, was it fun to see Texas prevail over the favorite. Cocky punks showing their three-peat signs on the sideline after Dwayne Jarrett scored the last TD. Hope they enjoyed their 10 minutes leading the game at the end there.

Via Josh, here’s a good little explanation of how fantasy football works.

the system I’m envisioning would look like so:

Team A, B, and C are interested in player X.
A has 12 cap points remaining
B has 10 cap points remaining
C has 50 cap points remaining

Let’s say that player X is Samkin Gado this past week and all three teams bid “max points” in the style of free agency I proposed. The way this would work is that Gado would go to team C for 13 points. Everyone bids as much as they can until they run out or win. Very simple, right?

Let’s say player X is Wilford and A and C bid 10 points and B bids 7 points, the tie between A and C is resolved using the waiver order.

That’s pretty much the entirety of how complex this proposal is. Let’s take an example sent in an email to me (interpreting what “a max bid up to 22″ means under the current rules):

Side note: In regards to Paul’s statement… yes, he is bidding 22 points regardless of how he writes his statement… the 22 is the bid.Depending on who else bids… if no one does, he pays 1 point… if another person with a lower priority number bids 10, he pays 22…. if a person with a higher priority number bids 10, he pays 11…. as it is stipulated in the rules….. it does not mean “+1″ up to 22 points.

That’s pretty complicated, IMHO, and too complicated. Why is it +1 in some cases and the full bid in other cases? It should either be blind bid or always +1, that’s what I was proposing.

So, in all cases, if the owner with the second place bid offers 10, the winner gets it for 11. The phrase max bid would always mean the maximum I can bid before I run out or I win.

If you’ve ever bid on ebay, you know how they do their blind bids. You bid a number, but only pay what it takes to actually win the player.

To process the free agent requests, you simply take all the bids on a particular player, order by bid (ties resolved by waiver order) and then take the bid in second place and charge the winning owner that bid +1.

We’ve been having discussions in our fantasy football league about how to do free agency in our league. To understand the background of the debate, you need to know a few things about our league. We play fantasy football with a salary cap system that uses an auction draft to determine initial market values and a nightly blind auction system for free agency. The rules for this free agency system are specified as so in our rulebook:

B) Free agents may be acquired between 9:00am Tuesday and 8:00pm on Friday. The Waiver period ends each day at 8:00pm.

C) Dead Weight Cap Hit. When a player is dropped from a roster 25% of their value (drop the decimal point) and carried as cap value. Dead cap space will be halved each week (drop the decimal point). Dead cap space means you have you have that many points less then 150 to spend on any other player.

D) There is no Dead Weight Cap Hit for any NFL player placed on IR and lost for the season.

E) Waiver System. Teams will be given a waiver number from 1 to 12, 1 being the best and 12 being the worst. Original numbers are assigned after the first week of play. The team with the lowest point total will be assigned the first number and the team with the most points will be assigned the twelfth number. Owners can call or email the Commissioner and state which free agents they are interested in acquiring. Along with that request, owners will submit a maximum point bid for the player they want to select. The owner must state the name of the free agent, maximum amount they are willing to spend on the player, and the player being released from the roster. All information must be supplied or the bid will be considered invalid. The owner with the lowest number (closest to one) would have first crack at the player but if an owner with a higher waiver priority number has a higher maximum bid for the player, that owner would jump over the owner with the lower waiver priority number and have to spend their maximum bid on the NFL player. The owner with the lowest waiver priority number (closest to one) will only be charged one point over the next highest bidder for the player if they supply the highest bid. If only one owner bids on an NFL player, the cost of the NFL player will be one point. Once a player has been selected, the owner will move to the number twelve on the waiver priority list.

F) The Free Agent Period ends the Friday night before Week 14.

I’m proposing a rule change to the section E, specifically pertaining to the part I’ve bolded above. In particular, I’m asking to change the bidding system to one where instead of the winning bidder getting charged their max bid for a player, they will only get charged the second-highest bid plus 1 point. I just sent a mail to the list that explained my logic thusly:

So… the question will come down to whether we like this type of Free Agency or not. I was going to propose this in the offseason as a rule change/clarification, but here it is now.

I’m clearly in favor of what I’m calling the “Ebay style” free agency, where the winning bid is the second-highest bid plus 1 point (or in the case of ties, the high bid with the highest waiver priority).

The system we have now I’ve dubbed “Rosenhaus” Free Agency, where the free agency process simulates closely what happens in the real NFL where agents are (supposed to be) the only ones that know the competing bids coming up for their player.

I prefer the Ebay style for two reasons:

1. it’s the most beneficial to the owners both in terms of time and also cap space (lowers the research demands, makes it easier to get a keeper bargain)
2. We’re not dealing with real players and agents. The goal is to make a competitive game. If you’ve managed your cap space effectively, we should do the most we can to allow you to use it. You shouldn’t miss out on a player because there’s no agent saying, “I just got a better offer, do you want to counter?” for one or two points.

I have several other reasons, but those are the two most important ones to me.

I know there are former NERFL players that read this along with some pretty avid fantasy players, so I thought I would open up the discussion to the wider audience. Feel free to leave comments, disagreements, rants, whatever on this topic. I’m curious what folks will say.

I’d also like to mention that this is probably the easiest unofficial way to get ideas or feature suggestions to the ESPN.com League Manager team. While this site is independent of ESPN.com, some of those aforementioned readers are on the LM team.

Man, what a sad, sad way to end a football game: McNabb injured, defense impotent on the deep ball, and a late lead change when it seemed all was going Philly’s way. Damn, that sucked. I’m not quite ready to throw in the towel on the season, but the way things are going, I think it’s pretty unlikely that Philly will make the playoffs. Heck, they might not even get out of the cellar in the East, which is shocking to say the least.

The most interesting thing about this situation is that one of my coworkers, a fantasy football guru, mentioned to me in August, right before the season started, that the loser of the Super Bowl hasn’t made the playoffs the following season for the past 5 or so seasons. That’s a bit depressing…

The story line tomorrow will likely be about Terrell Owens and the fact that he was missing from the game. Perhaps someone will dig him up in Atlanta and get him to critique McNabb’s performance on camera. Unfortunately, Owens will have a point even though that point will further reinforce the fact that the team is better off without TO.

See, the biggest problems with the Eagles of old was the lack of good receivers. Pinkston and Mitchell were pretty much the worst 1 and 2 receivers in the league. Getting TO was the answer to that problem. Unfortunately, getting TO allowed the fans and the team to ignore the other glaring problems that plague the Eagles. There are several important ones, but by far the most important is to figure out what happens to the Eagles under 2 minutes. Half of the problem seems to be poor clock management which start at the head coach and goes down. It’s the stupid punt coverage at the end of this game where the players waited for the ball to roll that one extra yard instead of pouncing on it quickly to stop the clock. It’s the complete lack of urgency in the Super Bowl or in several other games this year. The other half is McNabb. It’s McNabb’s consistent brain freezes on critical throws late in games that have directly lead to the most painful postseason and regular season losses.

For this is the painful truth: Donovan McNabb has a problem leading comebacks. He must sort those out if he wants to win the big game. The fans need to acknowledge this and, more importantly, the team must acknowledge this. All the other problems fall second to this. Don’t get me wrong. I love watching McNabb, I love rooting for the guy, and think he truly is one of the great quarterbacks in the game. When he’s settled, even the greatest pass rush won’t prevent him from simply destroying the other team. But he’s not the same in critical game situations. It needs to get fixed or else his legacy will be the guy that couldn’t hack it under pressure.

This may seem pretty harsh, but I think it needs to be said. The other problems facing the team are simply cyclical… Yeah, the defense isn’t that strong. The line is thin, the corners exposed too often, and the running game needs help. Perhaps we need that other playmaker on offense. These can all be fixed year over year. McNabb, though, is a franchise guy. He’s nearly the perfect QB for this team. He just needs to work this out. And the only way the team will is if the team acknowledges it and we talk about it. Because ignoring it will bring us yet another late game interception.

Don’t know if you all saw this, but the Globe is running a profile of Scouts, Inc., one of the companies that provides extra analysis to ESPN.com. Check it out.

I just wanted to point out that there is a dearth of good software or web site tools that work well for a live, in person, auction draft. I’m working on my cheat sheet tonight and am thinking about what an ideal software package would do for me. Ideally, it would contain a screen that could be projected onto a screen for the rest of my league members to see. Currently, I get the ESPN.com Draft Board and try to run it during the draft while managing my own draft, but I would LOVE it if there was a software package that would do this while letting me run my draft.

Here are some things it should probably do:

• Traditional live draft features – Pre-ranks, including dollar value, stats, any updated news, etc. should be a part of this application’s database.
• Projectable/Public Screen – A two screen application would be ideal where one screen could be projected onto a wall during the draft. It would function similar to the draft board we use now, but keep me from searching for the right sticker among all the sheets. It could also show the current player up for bidding. The second screen would be private, allowing me to manage my own draft, including budgeting, remaining cap space, and other features.
• Team Assistant – The planning tools for live, online drafts are pretty good at getting a sense of what your team is made of now. Auction drafts, on the other hand, have the whole cost and salary cap variable thrown in. So, it would be nice to know, based on your current cap limits, the best way to split up the remaining budget based on, say, your un-drafted positions and TD projections.

This is one of those, “when I have spare time projects,” but I already have three of those right now (and I’m planning for my fantasy draft instead, go figure). It would be nice to build this one. Of course, it would ideally hook into ESPN.com’s online game so that there wouldn’t be that post-draft roster entry pain, but I can help whoever add that functionality in later.

One of the bits of information that goes into drafting that perfect fantasy team is interest in players when they hit the free agent market. You look at the contracts of folks like Shaun Alexander and Edgerrin James and look at how teams are evaluating their talent and durability. Today, though, John Clayton writes about the difficulties that running backs are facing when looking for contracts after reaching 27 or 28 years old. The length of the deal, it seems, often reduces the yearly contract values even though the running back may be a great draft pick for the next year or two.

Looks like Javon Walker and Bubba Franks are joining the list of NFL holdouts this year. I think Shaun Alexander is also holding out while Terrell Owens looks likely to hold out for a while.

Anyone have any other significant holdouts that I didn’t mention?

According to the ESPN Fantasy Football Guide, the Vikings play all but just 3 games on artificial surfaces. 13 of their games are on turf: 8 at home, 5 on the road against Cincy, Atlanta, the Giants, Detroit, and Baltimore. In case you’re looking at the running backs or the wide receivers from this team (you are, aren’t you?)… Several other teams are close (basically any team that has turf at their home stadium), but I think the Vikings have the most extreme tilt.

This is going to seem like a shameless plug, but I assure you that it’s sincere. ESPN is coming out with the premiere issue of the ESPN Fantasy Football Guide. The fantasy team here gave out early copies in the office so I’ve been reading it over the past week or so. My feelings so far: It rocks!

Normally, even though I get the ESPN.com draft kits for free, I use The Sporting News Ultimate Draft Kit for one simple reason: it comes as PDFs that I can print out and take to my draft. The league I play in has an in person draft and ESPN.com’s Draft Kit offerings have traditionally been geared for viewing and using online. That doesn’t help me at the bar when the clock is ticking, so paper is the way to go. This year, I won’t be getting that but instead will be bring the magazine, tearing out the cheat sheet insert, and using that to organize my draft.

Can I also say that there’s nothing like reading about fantasy football to get you all excited for the start of fantasy football season. They should give these things out at pro sporting events to get more players to play and buy more teams. At this point of the year, all you want to do is draft… then draft again, then again… just to play out strategies. Maybe it’s time to organize a mock draft for NERFL? I can get a league setup online, I guess and we can just keep resetting it.

Anyway, I’m ready for football and because I’ve gotten the magazine so early, I’m already preparing (instead of my normal process of buying the draft kit the week before). I’ll probably still draft two kickers again or maybe two TE or something else equally silly, but at least I can feel like I tried.

I almost forgot to post this, but after getting the first pick in my fantasy baseball draft, I thought of this article. The Economist, of all places, described a study being conducted by two B-school profs that seems to support what we all intuitively know: the first pick in the NFL draft isn’t necessarily as great as it could be. The profs used the salaries of vets to map fair market value for different levels of performance and then compared that to intial contract offers and signing bonuses. As you might expect, the top picks are vastly overpaid. The full paper can be found at http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/edo1/massey.pdf.

I haven’t read the whole thing, but it looks like it might be pretty interesting. Most of you are probably familiar with Bill James and his band of merry followers. Mark Cuban and folks like John Hollinger are bringing similar techniques and, more importantly, similar mindsets to basketball. It’ll be interesting to see if it pays out in other sports the same way it has in baseball. I’m still not convinced that player stats are as powerful as they are in baseball though…