The NFL Draft is a sitcom in search of a laugh track.
It's what would happen if you took Howard Wolowitz and Sheldon Cooper from "The Big Bang Theory" and tossed them in a giant blender with a hair stylist, chef-with-anger-issues Gordon Ramsay and Coach Taylor from "Friday Night Lights." Hit puree. Chill for five minutes, because, as we all know, absurd over-analysis is a dish best served cold.
For days and weeks and even months ahead of the actual draft, which begins tonight and goes on until Bill Belichick growls "Knock it off, already," Mel Kiper Jr., Todd McShay and various assistants to the draft gurus slowly have been driving themselves insane trying to know the unknowable. Like, who's got more ultimate upside, Marcus Mariota or Jameis "Hey, Those Aren't My Crab Legs" Winston? Is USC defensive end Leonard Williams the best player in the draft? Who is Leonard Williams? Is he related to the late and dearly missed Leonard Nimoy?
(Sorry about that last one. The Trekkie in me just comes out sometimes. I'm getting help).
Mel and Todd and the assistants consistently guessify these things, conducting all manner of mock drafts (a splendid name if ever there was one). And all the while understanding that the front office people to whom they're surgically attached are probably lying through their bicuspids.
It's surely a hellish existence, relying on the word of people whose job it is to deceive. Must be a bit like covering the Indiana statehouse.
In any case, there are no lengths to which Mel and Todd and the assistants will not go to get it right. Absolutely true story: ESPN actually has something called a Production Analytics crew, and it has actually come up with something called the Total Quarterback Rating, a formula to "help teams reduce the risk of drafting the wrong quarterback." Why ESPN thinks it's its job to do this is a question for another Blob, although it's the oldest of news by now that the Worldwide Leader functions less as a news organization than a carny shouter for its various broadcast properties.
But back to the Total Quarterback Rating. According to ESPN's own website, it takes a player’s college stats (adjusted for defenses faced), physical measurements, scout grades and play-type frequencies in college and throw them into our aforementioned blender. Then it judges a QB's success over his first four years on passing plays, running plays, sacks taken and penalties incurred.
Based on all that, the quarterback in this year's draft most likely to succeed is Gandhi.
OK, so that's a lie. It's actually Mel Kiper Jr.'s bulletproof hair (marketed by ESPN Properties as The Hair Helmet, now on sale at a fine sporting goods establishment near you).
OK, so that's a lie, too. It's Mariota. He'll be better than Winston even though no quarterback who's ever come out of Oregon's spread system has ever succeeded in the NFL. But he didn't steal any crab legs and doesn't have a civil suit hanging over his head for sexually assaulting a young woman, so Mariota's the guy.
What this means is the actual quarterback who'll wind up being the next Tom Brady or Peyton Manning is neither Mariota nor Winston. It will be some guy from Bilgewater Tech who, like Brady, won't get taken until the sixth round.
I know this because I've created my own Total Quarterback Rating, which I've cleverly named the Blob Total Quarterback Rating. It's totally different than the ESPN Total Quarterback Rating. Instead of measuring passing stats, scout grades and play-type frequencies, it measures what I like to call the "intangibles."
Among them:
1. Who's got the coolest name?
(This works except when it doesn't, like with a college quarterback who was named, for real, Prince McJunkins. He never played a down in the NFL).
2. How much does he know about Ryan Leaf?
(If he can quote Leaf's rap sheet verbatim, pass on him).
3. Can he boil water?
(A nod to Peyton Manning's fabled ineptitude at even the simplest household chores. There's a story, probably apocryphal, that his mom had to come up from New Orleans to program his TV for him. So if you're undecided who to pick, go for the guy who's locked himself out of his car).
4. Does he have tight skin?
(True story: During the run-up to the draft one year, Mel or some assistant to the guru actually said former Colts defensive back Marlin Jackson would be a great pick because he had "tight skin." It was almost as silly as hearing another assistant to the guru mark down an offensive lineman because he was a "waist-bender").
5. How does he spend his weekends? Reading the playbook? Watching wholesome Disney favorites like "That Darn Cat" and anything with Hayley Mills in it? Drinking nothing stronger than herbal tea and spending the hours until evening vespers in silent contemplation with the rest of his Trappist brethren?
(If you answered "yes" to any of these, run like hell from this guy. Pick Gandhi instead).
Thursday, April 30, 2015
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Echo chamber
They'll play a baseball game in Baltimore this afternoon, and the only audience will be a profound sense of the bizarre. The city burns, but the corporate prerogatives of our national game will be met, no matter how ludicrously. Unfocused rage in the streets continues to obscure real injustices, but the game, as they say, will go on.
With the city in turmoil and the National Guard called in to restore order, Major League Baseball made the curious decision to back up today's scheduled game between the Orioles and White Sox to this afternoon, and to play it in a ballpark devoid of fans. And so pitchers will pitch, batters will bat, and empty seatbacks will be the witnesses.
Baseball is its history. But it's likely never seen anything quite like this.
It will be weird and surreal, but the visuals will be great. And if we've not been reminded these past few days how important the latter is to the sensibilities of American media, we simply haven't been paying attention.
The networks largely missed the peaceful march last weekend that put 10,000 people in the streets of Baltimore calling for justice for a young man named Freddie Gray. But they've been all over the knotheads who've besmirched his memory by trying to burn down the city.
And so you'll see lots of fires and various acts of destruction on the nightly news, but you likely won't see much about the numerous neighborhood citizens who, appalled by what was happening, stood between the police and the rioters. If it burns, it earns. A bunch of people just standing around, not so much.
What that leaves us with is mayhem without context, and there is some. If the application of rage is hideously misplaced here (not to say hideously counterproductive), the rage itself is not. This cauldron's been boiling for awhile, not just in Baltimore but all over the country.
Too many African-Americans routinely going to prison for crimes for which whites never do time. Too much Shot/Choked/Beaten While Black. Too much exploitation of the working classes by a corporate oligarchy that grew fat not because it used the middle class as its private ATM, but because hefty paychecks and benefits made the middle class the engine of the economy.
The first two of those are unconscionable, the latter unsustainable. No nation can remain peaceful and prosperous if businesses don't provide jobs that pay enough to allow consumers to consume (or keep them off public assistance, for that matter). But that's our economy now. And for a variety of reasons, it's impacted black America to an inordinate degree.
The irony, of course, is that some of the very people who could do something about that are the people whose businesses are burning. It makes no sense, but rage never does. The trick is to do something about the sense of powerlessness from which it springs.
In the meantime, there will be baseball in Baltimore today.
Kinda. Sorta. More strangeness in a strange land.
With the city in turmoil and the National Guard called in to restore order, Major League Baseball made the curious decision to back up today's scheduled game between the Orioles and White Sox to this afternoon, and to play it in a ballpark devoid of fans. And so pitchers will pitch, batters will bat, and empty seatbacks will be the witnesses.
Baseball is its history. But it's likely never seen anything quite like this.
It will be weird and surreal, but the visuals will be great. And if we've not been reminded these past few days how important the latter is to the sensibilities of American media, we simply haven't been paying attention.
The networks largely missed the peaceful march last weekend that put 10,000 people in the streets of Baltimore calling for justice for a young man named Freddie Gray. But they've been all over the knotheads who've besmirched his memory by trying to burn down the city.
And so you'll see lots of fires and various acts of destruction on the nightly news, but you likely won't see much about the numerous neighborhood citizens who, appalled by what was happening, stood between the police and the rioters. If it burns, it earns. A bunch of people just standing around, not so much.
What that leaves us with is mayhem without context, and there is some. If the application of rage is hideously misplaced here (not to say hideously counterproductive), the rage itself is not. This cauldron's been boiling for awhile, not just in Baltimore but all over the country.
Too many African-Americans routinely going to prison for crimes for which whites never do time. Too much Shot/Choked/Beaten While Black. Too much exploitation of the working classes by a corporate oligarchy that grew fat not because it used the middle class as its private ATM, but because hefty paychecks and benefits made the middle class the engine of the economy.
The first two of those are unconscionable, the latter unsustainable. No nation can remain peaceful and prosperous if businesses don't provide jobs that pay enough to allow consumers to consume (or keep them off public assistance, for that matter). But that's our economy now. And for a variety of reasons, it's impacted black America to an inordinate degree.
The irony, of course, is that some of the very people who could do something about that are the people whose businesses are burning. It makes no sense, but rage never does. The trick is to do something about the sense of powerlessness from which it springs.
In the meantime, there will be baseball in Baltimore today.
Kinda. Sorta. More strangeness in a strange land.
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
A legacy worth remembering
I can’t tell you the last time I ran into Lionel Repka. But
I’d bet the second mortgage he was smiling.
They called him Choo-Choo for the way he churned tirelessly up the ice, and if that and the No. 6 swaying up there in the air currents confer a certain permanence on the man, it goes beyond just a number and a nickname. Minor league franchises are the most ephemeral of things, but in this city the Komets long ago transcended that notion. They’ve become so much a part of our identity that we can no more imagine the town without them than we can imagine it without Little Turtle or Anthony Wayne.
And we have Lionel Repka to thank for that.
He and Lenny Thornson and Reggie Primeau and a whole pile of others not only played hockey here, they lived here, forming a template that Komets players follow to this day. If Repka and Thornson and Primeau stayed – and Colin Lister and Ken Ullyot and George Drysdale, too – so did Colin Chaulk and Nick Boucher and P.C. Drouin. So did Grant Richison and Steve Fletcher and Guy Dupuis, and many, many more.
In the process, they stitched the Komets indelibly into the fabric of the community. And into their own, of course.
That became clear some years ago, when a handful of those who first came and stayed was hit hard by misfortune. Ullyot was fighting a grim battle with fibromyalgia. Primeau had just lost part of his leg to complications stemming from diabetes. And Lionel Repka’s son Ron, 40, had been struck and killed while riding his bike on a county road.
The man was always smiling, save for one notable occasion.
He was damn good at it, after all; from across the room he’d spot you standing
there, and the show would be on.
He’d stick out his hand. His eyes would scrunch down to
happy slits. And then the San Andreas Fault of grins would split his
square-jawed Alberta Clipper mug, and there you would be, totally disarmed,
unable to form any possible judgment but one: Geez, what a nice guy.
He was more than that, of course.
You’ll get the particulars elsewhere today, on the occasion
of his passing from cancer at the age of 80. The 666 games he played in 11
seasons as a Komet. The Governor’s Trophy he won in 1965 as the International
Hockey League’s top defenseman. The 98 goals he scored here, including eight in
the playoffs. The No. 6 he wore, and which now hangs in the Memorial Coliseum
rafters, never to be worn again by any Komets defenseman.They called him Choo-Choo for the way he churned tirelessly up the ice, and if that and the No. 6 swaying up there in the air currents confer a certain permanence on the man, it goes beyond just a number and a nickname. Minor league franchises are the most ephemeral of things, but in this city the Komets long ago transcended that notion. They’ve become so much a part of our identity that we can no more imagine the town without them than we can imagine it without Little Turtle or Anthony Wayne.
And we have Lionel Repka to thank for that.
He and Lenny Thornson and Reggie Primeau and a whole pile of others not only played hockey here, they lived here, forming a template that Komets players follow to this day. If Repka and Thornson and Primeau stayed – and Colin Lister and Ken Ullyot and George Drysdale, too – so did Colin Chaulk and Nick Boucher and P.C. Drouin. So did Grant Richison and Steve Fletcher and Guy Dupuis, and many, many more.
None had any connection to the city, understand, or even to
the country. They were a bunch of kids from Canada – Repka hailed from Edmonton
– who came here to play their national game. And yet they saw something here of
value, something that went beyond the dimensions of a hockey rink. And so they
stayed.
In the process, they stitched the Komets indelibly into the fabric of the community. And into their own, of course.
That became clear some years ago, when a handful of those who first came and stayed was hit hard by misfortune. Ullyot was fighting a grim battle with fibromyalgia. Primeau had just lost part of his leg to complications stemming from diabetes. And Lionel Repka’s son Ron, 40, had been struck and killed while riding his bike on a county road.
It was a gray autumn afternoon when I drove out to Lionel’s
home in Fox Chase to talk about all that. We sat at a table in his living room,
looking out at woods bright with October fire. Lionel greeted me with his
trademark grin, but then we started talking about the day of Ron’s funeral, and
the grin vanished and his voice grew soft.
There on a hilltop overlooking the gravesite that day,
Repka remembered, sat a small rumpled figure in a wheelchair. It was Reg
Primeau. He was still in the hospital, but when he heard what had happened he
climbed out of his bed and came out to the cemetery to be at his teammate’s
side.
“That just …” Repka began.
And then he stopped. His hand covered his mouth. His eyes
began to glisten.
And now?
Well. All these years later, a whole city knows the
feeling.
Expectation anticipation
And Tom Crean thought they warmed his chair with a flamethrower this past season.
Now comes the springtime of his true discontent, because the Coach Knight Would Never Have Lost That Game Nuclear Clock just ticked a second closer to midnight. On the one hand, Yogi Ferrell, James Blackmon Jr. and Troy Williams are all coming back, to be joined by a legit big man (Thomas Bryant). On the other hand ... Yogi, James and Troy are all coming back, to be joined by a legit big man (Bryant).
What that means is there again will be expectations in Bloomington this year, and this time they will be, you know, expectations. Plenty of IU fans called for Crean to be loaded into the tumbrel even this season, when he won 20 games with a team picked to finish ninth in the Big Ten, then outcoached Greg Marshall in a gritty NCAA Tournament loss to Wichita State. What's it going to be like next season, with the core of that team back and a platinum-grade presence on the blocks?
Already the Hoosiers are being picked to finish in the top four in the conference next season, and early polls have them ranked as high as 15th. Hopes are soaring. Excitement is building. Skepticism ("Let's see how Crean screws this up") is rampant.
Look. It's not like Tom Crean didn't know what it was going to be like when he arrived in B-town. One of the reasons he got the job, after all, was because he instinctively understood what Indiana basketball means to its acolytes. And yet his continuing education since has been illuminating to say the least.
He got his first real taste of it after the top-seeded Hoosiers were bewitched by the Syracuse zone in the Sweet Sixteen in 2013, and it has never really abated through the two pale seasons since. The litany of complaints is long, but it can be crystallized into three essential points:
1. He's no Brad Stevens.
2. He's no Brad Stevens.
3. He's no Brad Stevens.
Stevens, of course, became everyone's darling (and Crean's presumptive replacement) after he turned humble Butler into a national power. The problem is, he's, well, everyone's darling.
That includes his current employer, the Boston Celtics, who are surely not going to let him go anywhere after he took a team of spare parts to the playoffs and emerged as one of the brightest young minds in the NBA. To think he'd return now to Bloomington, even if the alumni ponied up a mountain of cash, is a fairy tale worthy of the Brothers Grimm -- and probably a few Grimm cousins to boot.
So Crean remains the man. And if the griping about him subsides a bit now, it's not as if it's wandered very far off. The loudest sound in Assembly Hall next winter will be the collective tapping of 17,000 feet as the faithful wait for the Hoosiers to lose a game they believe a better X-and-O guy would have won.
Crean, of course, will profess not to hear it. But he'll know it's there, just as every IU coach who isn't Bob Knight will know it until the Hoosiers again cut down the nets on the first Monday in April.
The feet are tapping. The clock is ticking. Crean has to win now, and win a lot, because he'll again have a team capable of doing so -- and if that is his blessing, it is also his curse.
Tap, tap, tap.
Tick, tick, tick.
Strange how much alike they sound.
Now comes the springtime of his true discontent, because the Coach Knight Would Never Have Lost That Game Nuclear Clock just ticked a second closer to midnight. On the one hand, Yogi Ferrell, James Blackmon Jr. and Troy Williams are all coming back, to be joined by a legit big man (Thomas Bryant). On the other hand ... Yogi, James and Troy are all coming back, to be joined by a legit big man (Bryant).
What that means is there again will be expectations in Bloomington this year, and this time they will be, you know, expectations. Plenty of IU fans called for Crean to be loaded into the tumbrel even this season, when he won 20 games with a team picked to finish ninth in the Big Ten, then outcoached Greg Marshall in a gritty NCAA Tournament loss to Wichita State. What's it going to be like next season, with the core of that team back and a platinum-grade presence on the blocks?
Already the Hoosiers are being picked to finish in the top four in the conference next season, and early polls have them ranked as high as 15th. Hopes are soaring. Excitement is building. Skepticism ("Let's see how Crean screws this up") is rampant.
Look. It's not like Tom Crean didn't know what it was going to be like when he arrived in B-town. One of the reasons he got the job, after all, was because he instinctively understood what Indiana basketball means to its acolytes. And yet his continuing education since has been illuminating to say the least.
He got his first real taste of it after the top-seeded Hoosiers were bewitched by the Syracuse zone in the Sweet Sixteen in 2013, and it has never really abated through the two pale seasons since. The litany of complaints is long, but it can be crystallized into three essential points:
1. He's no Brad Stevens.
2. He's no Brad Stevens.
3. He's no Brad Stevens.
Stevens, of course, became everyone's darling (and Crean's presumptive replacement) after he turned humble Butler into a national power. The problem is, he's, well, everyone's darling.
That includes his current employer, the Boston Celtics, who are surely not going to let him go anywhere after he took a team of spare parts to the playoffs and emerged as one of the brightest young minds in the NBA. To think he'd return now to Bloomington, even if the alumni ponied up a mountain of cash, is a fairy tale worthy of the Brothers Grimm -- and probably a few Grimm cousins to boot.
So Crean remains the man. And if the griping about him subsides a bit now, it's not as if it's wandered very far off. The loudest sound in Assembly Hall next winter will be the collective tapping of 17,000 feet as the faithful wait for the Hoosiers to lose a game they believe a better X-and-O guy would have won.
Crean, of course, will profess not to hear it. But he'll know it's there, just as every IU coach who isn't Bob Knight will know it until the Hoosiers again cut down the nets on the first Monday in April.
The feet are tapping. The clock is ticking. Crean has to win now, and win a lot, because he'll again have a team capable of doing so -- and if that is his blessing, it is also his curse.
Tap, tap, tap.
Tick, tick, tick.
Strange how much alike they sound.
Monday, April 27, 2015
How you gonna root?
It was always easier when you didn't know so much. Blissful ignorance meant you could wear an athlete's cap or his jersey with the lack of ambivalence imperfect knowledge imparts, drawing comfort from it even if it was false comfort.
Things were so much brighter when you didn't see the darkness in a man's (or woman's) soul. Home truth.
Now, of course, we do, the all-encompassing 'net being what it is. And if you can rightfully argue that we see too much, it's better than not seeing enough.
There may be ambivalence now where there was none before, but I'll take it. I'll take the queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach whenever I hear a bunch of lacquerheads spin a narrative about someone that's 90 percent bunkum.
That's what I heard yesterday when Kurt Busch landed in Victory Lane at Richmond, and that's what I'll likely hear this week about Floyd Mayweather Jr. from the carnival shouters trying to squeeze a few more bucks out of the Pacquiao fight. Pardon me if I choose not to play along.
Busch led 295 laps at Richmond and drove a masterful race, but, please, don't sell it to me as some sort of redemption tale. Busch is and always has been the architect of his own troubles, and that especially includes the domestic violence beef he just ducked when the authorities chose not to prosecute. That didn't mean he didn't smash his ex-girlfriend's head into the wall, as he was accused of doing. It just means it wasn't a gold-card lock for the state to prove it, so the state chose not to try.
As with anyone in his situation, Busch chose to see that as vindication, even if we'll never really know if it is or not. That why it's always best not to lean too hard on the redemption thing. And yet that's what media in all its forms tends to do these days, because it's a lot harder to sell nuance than to craft a simple one-size-fits-all narrative, whether or not it remotely squares with reality.
So, yeah, watching Busch celebrate in Victory Lane made me a little uneasy. Watching the run-up to Mayweather-Pacquiao, on the other hand, will make me feel downright disgusted, because there's no uncertainty at all about who Mayweather is and what he's done.
The man's a woman-beating punk. There's no way to paper over that, although God knows the entities that stand to make major coin off Saturday will try. One representative of those entities, Stephen A. Smith of ESPN, has been a Mayweather toady for years, consistently sneering at the numerous complaints lodged against him.
And yet: Since 2002, Mayweather has not only been accused of slugging women, he's been tried and convicted of it. He pleaded guilty in two incidents, and in another was convicted but threw enough lawyers at it to get the charges dismissed four years later. Most recently, in 2010, he belted his ex-girlfriend around in front of two of their children, drawing a 90-day stretch in the Graybar Hotel.
Floyd Mayweather Jr. is no one anyone should be rooting for, but of course people will. We'll hear a lot this week about how we should give him the benefit of the doubt in his numerous instances of punching women in the face. We'll hear he's a changed man, and we should respect that. We'll hear he's a good guy at heart who's paid his debt, and so we should let bygones be bygones.
Shoot. We might even hear there's a giant invisible bird in the sky that flaps its wings and makes the wind blow.
Now that I believe.
Things were so much brighter when you didn't see the darkness in a man's (or woman's) soul. Home truth.
Now, of course, we do, the all-encompassing 'net being what it is. And if you can rightfully argue that we see too much, it's better than not seeing enough.
There may be ambivalence now where there was none before, but I'll take it. I'll take the queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach whenever I hear a bunch of lacquerheads spin a narrative about someone that's 90 percent bunkum.
That's what I heard yesterday when Kurt Busch landed in Victory Lane at Richmond, and that's what I'll likely hear this week about Floyd Mayweather Jr. from the carnival shouters trying to squeeze a few more bucks out of the Pacquiao fight. Pardon me if I choose not to play along.
Busch led 295 laps at Richmond and drove a masterful race, but, please, don't sell it to me as some sort of redemption tale. Busch is and always has been the architect of his own troubles, and that especially includes the domestic violence beef he just ducked when the authorities chose not to prosecute. That didn't mean he didn't smash his ex-girlfriend's head into the wall, as he was accused of doing. It just means it wasn't a gold-card lock for the state to prove it, so the state chose not to try.
As with anyone in his situation, Busch chose to see that as vindication, even if we'll never really know if it is or not. That why it's always best not to lean too hard on the redemption thing. And yet that's what media in all its forms tends to do these days, because it's a lot harder to sell nuance than to craft a simple one-size-fits-all narrative, whether or not it remotely squares with reality.
So, yeah, watching Busch celebrate in Victory Lane made me a little uneasy. Watching the run-up to Mayweather-Pacquiao, on the other hand, will make me feel downright disgusted, because there's no uncertainty at all about who Mayweather is and what he's done.
The man's a woman-beating punk. There's no way to paper over that, although God knows the entities that stand to make major coin off Saturday will try. One representative of those entities, Stephen A. Smith of ESPN, has been a Mayweather toady for years, consistently sneering at the numerous complaints lodged against him.
And yet: Since 2002, Mayweather has not only been accused of slugging women, he's been tried and convicted of it. He pleaded guilty in two incidents, and in another was convicted but threw enough lawyers at it to get the charges dismissed four years later. Most recently, in 2010, he belted his ex-girlfriend around in front of two of their children, drawing a 90-day stretch in the Graybar Hotel.
Floyd Mayweather Jr. is no one anyone should be rooting for, but of course people will. We'll hear a lot this week about how we should give him the benefit of the doubt in his numerous instances of punching women in the face. We'll hear he's a changed man, and we should respect that. We'll hear he's a good guy at heart who's paid his debt, and so we should let bygones be bygones.
Shoot. We might even hear there's a giant invisible bird in the sky that flaps its wings and makes the wind blow.
Now that I believe.
Sunday, April 26, 2015
Meanwhile, in Philadelphia ...
I saw a brief clip of Tim Tebow running in the rain the other day, shirtless. His shoulders looked like the Himalayas. His chest was so broad you could have put a picture of a local insurance agent on it and used it for a roadside billboard. The man looked nothing like any quarterback I've ever seen, anywhere.
Which, of course, is the whole deal with Tebow. He's really not a quarterback, but both Tebow and a lot of other people insist on treating him like one.
The latest is Chip Kelly, head coach of the Eagles and the inventor of everyone's favorite parlor game these days. It's called "What The Hell Is Chip Kelly Thinking?", and it proceeds from one of two premises:
1. Chip Kelly is way smarter than the rest of us, so shut up already about what he's thinking.
2. Chip Kelly is so smart he tends to outthink himself, which is why he signed one quarterback who's broken all the time (Sam Bradford) and another who's really not a quarterback (Tebow) but who, because he's Tebow, will bring media hellfire to rain on the Eagles for as long as he's there.
Which is to say: Chip Kelly is crazier than ten bedbugs. Or, again, he's a flipping genius.
I've got a feeling it's the latter more than the former, although what mad genius was behind signing Sam Bradford is beyond my feeble powers to comprehend. He arrived hurt and he's gonna get hurt again, because that's just what he does. So then you've got Mark Sanchez and you've got Tebow, who, again, isn't really a quarterback -- although maybe that's precisely why Kelly signed him.
Here's a thought: Maybe Kelly really is a mad scientist. Which means, this very moment, he's got Tebow stretched out on a table in some dank castle keep, and he's cackling madly and mumbling to himself the way mad scientists do.
"He'll be my greatest creation!" Dr. Chip raves, "Voila: The NFL's first Q-back! A quarterback who lines up in the gun and sometimes will take direct snaps and sometimes will go in motion and sometimes will run seam routes! And, sometimes, especially in the red zone, he takes handoffs and either runs at the goal line or executes that jump-pass thing he did in college!"
Then he cackles madly again and Igor hits the switch and, OK, enough with the Frankenstein meme.
Instead, let's consider that Kelly might actually be planning on using Tebow as some sort of elaborate hybrid. His skill set -- and he has one -- certainly seems to lean that way. I've always maintained that he's more a Gronkowski-like hybrid tight end than a quarterback, and that's where his future lies if he has one. You move him around, you line him up in various places, you use what he has to your best advantage.
He's never going to be your classic pocket passer, or any kind of passer, really. That's fairly well established. But you can use him in that role in certain situations, and maybe that's what Kelly envisions.
Then again, maybe there's nothing more to it than what Sanchez said the other day.
"Another guy to throw (while Bradford heals)," was Sanchez' verdict.
Oh, that Chip Kelly. Always thinkin'.
Which, of course, is the whole deal with Tebow. He's really not a quarterback, but both Tebow and a lot of other people insist on treating him like one.
The latest is Chip Kelly, head coach of the Eagles and the inventor of everyone's favorite parlor game these days. It's called "What The Hell Is Chip Kelly Thinking?", and it proceeds from one of two premises:
1. Chip Kelly is way smarter than the rest of us, so shut up already about what he's thinking.
2. Chip Kelly is so smart he tends to outthink himself, which is why he signed one quarterback who's broken all the time (Sam Bradford) and another who's really not a quarterback (Tebow) but who, because he's Tebow, will bring media hellfire to rain on the Eagles for as long as he's there.
Which is to say: Chip Kelly is crazier than ten bedbugs. Or, again, he's a flipping genius.
I've got a feeling it's the latter more than the former, although what mad genius was behind signing Sam Bradford is beyond my feeble powers to comprehend. He arrived hurt and he's gonna get hurt again, because that's just what he does. So then you've got Mark Sanchez and you've got Tebow, who, again, isn't really a quarterback -- although maybe that's precisely why Kelly signed him.
Here's a thought: Maybe Kelly really is a mad scientist. Which means, this very moment, he's got Tebow stretched out on a table in some dank castle keep, and he's cackling madly and mumbling to himself the way mad scientists do.
"He'll be my greatest creation!" Dr. Chip raves, "Voila: The NFL's first Q-back! A quarterback who lines up in the gun and sometimes will take direct snaps and sometimes will go in motion and sometimes will run seam routes! And, sometimes, especially in the red zone, he takes handoffs and either runs at the goal line or executes that jump-pass thing he did in college!"
Then he cackles madly again and Igor hits the switch and, OK, enough with the Frankenstein meme.
Instead, let's consider that Kelly might actually be planning on using Tebow as some sort of elaborate hybrid. His skill set -- and he has one -- certainly seems to lean that way. I've always maintained that he's more a Gronkowski-like hybrid tight end than a quarterback, and that's where his future lies if he has one. You move him around, you line him up in various places, you use what he has to your best advantage.
He's never going to be your classic pocket passer, or any kind of passer, really. That's fairly well established. But you can use him in that role in certain situations, and maybe that's what Kelly envisions.
Then again, maybe there's nothing more to it than what Sanchez said the other day.
"Another guy to throw (while Bradford heals)," was Sanchez' verdict.
Oh, that Chip Kelly. Always thinkin'.
Saturday, April 25, 2015
Horse sense, Part One
So it's come to the Blob's attention that we're only a week away from the Kentucky Derby, which means it's high time I got cracking on my Derby prep. The one thing you never want to do when you write about the Derby is sound like a complete goober who doesn't know anything about horse racing, even if you're a complete goober who doesn't know anything about horse racing.
Besides, I have money riding on this. Two bucks doesn't just grow on trees, you know.
And so, for my edification as much as yours, here are a few early, early tips from a guy who used to get his Derby intel from a talking horse named Ted, until Ted wised off one too many times and ended up as a 12-pack of glue sticks:
1. The Derby favorite is a horse named American Pharaoh.
No, I don't know why. What do I look like, the Racing Form?
2. There are three contenders with war-like names: Bold Conquest, Firing Line and War Story.
This is important, because if you sound fierce, you run fierce. OK, I don't know if that's true at all. But it sounds like it could be true, so we'll go with it.
3. Firing Line is trained by an English guy who looks like he should be at the prom, and it's ridden by Gary Stevens, who starred in "Seabiscuit."
The English guy is named Simon Callaghan, which is pretty English as names go. Stevens wore a big cowboy hat in one scene in the movie. I don't know what significance any of that has. It's just sort of cool.
4. Metaboss is a really pretty horse.
Also, it won the El Camino Real Derby. Also, it's kind of reddish-brown. Secretariat was kind of reddish-brown. So there you go.
5. Madefromlucky is a really pretty horse, too.
Also, it has "lucky" in its name. Also, Todd Pletcher is its trainer. I've heard of Todd Pletcher.
6. Danzig Moon.
Just because "Danzig Moon" is fun to say. Also, it's not a gray horse. Gray horses are frequently mutts. The last gray horse I saw in the Derby finished in June.
Place your bets accordingly.
Besides, I have money riding on this. Two bucks doesn't just grow on trees, you know.
And so, for my edification as much as yours, here are a few early, early tips from a guy who used to get his Derby intel from a talking horse named Ted, until Ted wised off one too many times and ended up as a 12-pack of glue sticks:
1. The Derby favorite is a horse named American Pharaoh.
No, I don't know why. What do I look like, the Racing Form?
2. There are three contenders with war-like names: Bold Conquest, Firing Line and War Story.
This is important, because if you sound fierce, you run fierce. OK, I don't know if that's true at all. But it sounds like it could be true, so we'll go with it.
3. Firing Line is trained by an English guy who looks like he should be at the prom, and it's ridden by Gary Stevens, who starred in "Seabiscuit."
The English guy is named Simon Callaghan, which is pretty English as names go. Stevens wore a big cowboy hat in one scene in the movie. I don't know what significance any of that has. It's just sort of cool.
4. Metaboss is a really pretty horse.
Also, it won the El Camino Real Derby. Also, it's kind of reddish-brown. Secretariat was kind of reddish-brown. So there you go.
5. Madefromlucky is a really pretty horse, too.
Also, it has "lucky" in its name. Also, Todd Pletcher is its trainer. I've heard of Todd Pletcher.
6. Danzig Moon.
Just because "Danzig Moon" is fun to say. Also, it's not a gray horse. Gray horses are frequently mutts. The last gray horse I saw in the Derby finished in June.
Place your bets accordingly.
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