Football Blues
NFL football, usually a source of joy in my life, has been treating me rough lately.
Prior to the season I had pooh-poohed the idea of a "Super Bowl Hangover" coming to Chicago, because most of our key players are still fairly young and we brought back the entire offense except for Thomas Jones, and the defensive changes mostly looked like addition by subtraction. But in addition to all of the above woes, the play-calling by Ron Turner has looked too timid and conservative to put the fear of God into opposing defenses -- although long passes require better protection than Grossman has been getting, too -- and with Brian Griese's weak arm and not particularly nimble legs under center, this is something that looks to get worse before it gets better.
I invite Chicago fans who were screaming "Grie-se! Grie-se!" along with the crowd at the game last week, just so they wouldn't have to see another game-giving-away INT, to recall the 2001 season, when we had a steady but decidedly unspectacular QB in Jim Miller who threw very few picks -- and very few touchdowns, because on 3rd and 8 situations he was only capable of gaining 3-5 yards on a passing play and turning the ball over to Brad Maynard.
Do we really want to go back to Jon Shoop-style swing passes and WR screens, and playing every single game from behind until the 4th quarter, hoping for last-minute desperation drives to take us into overtime, etc? I'm not saying that leaving Rex in was the right answer, but I am saying that this change doesn't make me feel any better about the offense. Without the threat to make big plays downfield, which is what Grossman contributed right along with his lapses in judgement and inability to move in the pocket, the Bears are moving backwards offensively to a time when we were one-and-done in the playoffs when we were lucky enough to make it there at all.
Perhaps the saddest thing to me about this development is that, with his starting streak ending at 19 consecutive games, Grossman still winds up as only #2 in Bears QB longevity in the post-McMahon era -- behind Erik Fucking Kramer of all people. This is not so much a defense of Grossman as a sad reflection on the fact that Erik Fucking Kramer holds the consecutive starts record at the position for the last two decades.
And to top it all off, when the Bears lose, I don't even want to think about the NFL for at least two days, which means I'm not watching post-game coverage, keeping up with NFL news, or enjoying the Monday night game, thus exacerbating all my problems with 1-3, above.
It's still very early in the season, but being greeted by crapulence and confusion after such a long wait for NFL football to start up again, thus leading to the feeling of having wasted much of the time and effort I put into enjoying the game every week, has put a big damper on my overall mood.
Hopefully an old-fashioned Bears-style pummelling of the Lions on Sunday will help.
--- Ajax.
- I am overcommitted on fantasy football, running one league and playing in two others. The bad part is that this makes keeping up with NFL news much more important, but leaves me even less time to do that.
- In addition, I was playing NFL Pick 'Em (where you try to pick the winners of each week's NFL games) in three different places up until this week. Going 6-10 last week has soured me on this process, though, so now I'm down to 2. The third contest was using some ridiculously byzantine scoring system which rewarded you for making off-the-wall picks and being on the right side of blowouts, and the guy running it was kind of a jerk anyway.
If I don't at least go 7-7 this week I might abandon Pick 'Em altogether. - All three of my fantasy teams are heavily invested in personnel from the Chicago Bears and the New Orleans Saints, both of whom have been playing poorly lately. In increasing order of how much I care: I'm 0-3 in a Yahoo League and 2-1 in the Insane League -- largely on the strength of my individual defensive players, whom I still haven't figured out how to effectively evaluate, and the fact that I drafted first overall in that league.
And I'm 1-2 in the Predicate league (thanks largely to a well-timed matchup two weeks ago with cy_guy, who is loyal to a fault to his Buffalo Bills) and without a starting QB next week unless I can make a quick trade, thanks to the demotion of Rex Grossman. (Brian Griese, Grossman's backup, has been owned by jlg1 since the beginning of the season.) That's the sucky part of a 20-team league: you can be really screwed really quickly with just one or two key switches in personnel by "your" players' NFL teams.
Prior to the season I had pooh-poohed the idea of a "Super Bowl Hangover" coming to Chicago, because most of our key players are still fairly young and we brought back the entire offense except for Thomas Jones, and the defensive changes mostly looked like addition by subtraction. But in addition to all of the above woes, the play-calling by Ron Turner has looked too timid and conservative to put the fear of God into opposing defenses -- although long passes require better protection than Grossman has been getting, too -- and with Brian Griese's weak arm and not particularly nimble legs under center, this is something that looks to get worse before it gets better.
I invite Chicago fans who were screaming "Grie-se! Grie-se!" along with the crowd at the game last week, just so they wouldn't have to see another game-giving-away INT, to recall the 2001 season, when we had a steady but decidedly unspectacular QB in Jim Miller who threw very few picks -- and very few touchdowns, because on 3rd and 8 situations he was only capable of gaining 3-5 yards on a passing play and turning the ball over to Brad Maynard.
Do we really want to go back to Jon Shoop-style swing passes and WR screens, and playing every single game from behind until the 4th quarter, hoping for last-minute desperation drives to take us into overtime, etc? I'm not saying that leaving Rex in was the right answer, but I am saying that this change doesn't make me feel any better about the offense. Without the threat to make big plays downfield, which is what Grossman contributed right along with his lapses in judgement and inability to move in the pocket, the Bears are moving backwards offensively to a time when we were one-and-done in the playoffs when we were lucky enough to make it there at all.
Perhaps the saddest thing to me about this development is that, with his starting streak ending at 19 consecutive games, Grossman still winds up as only #2 in Bears QB longevity in the post-McMahon era -- behind Erik Fucking Kramer of all people. This is not so much a defense of Grossman as a sad reflection on the fact that Erik Fucking Kramer holds the consecutive starts record at the position for the last two decades.
And to top it all off, when the Bears lose, I don't even want to think about the NFL for at least two days, which means I'm not watching post-game coverage, keeping up with NFL news, or enjoying the Monday night game, thus exacerbating all my problems with 1-3, above.
It's still very early in the season, but being greeted by crapulence and confusion after such a long wait for NFL football to start up again, thus leading to the feeling of having wasted much of the time and effort I put into enjoying the game every week, has put a big damper on my overall mood.
Hopefully an old-fashioned Bears-style pummelling of the Lions on Sunday will help.
--- Ajax.