My head said back the Colts. It issued stat after stat about Manning’s amazing career, multiple comeback games and his, near psychic, ability to read defenses. My heart said back the Saints. It pointed out the many horrors the citizens of New Orleans have faced and the rich history of the region. It also noted that this wasn’t a bad little team if you wanted to hang your hat on one. My ass said, STFU, sit down, grab a beer and just enjoy the game. After all, you have no money you can afford to lose and there is no clear cut choice. I now know that the next time someone calls me a smart ass I will take it as a compliment.
Somewhere between The Who finishing their collection of CSI theme songs and gratuitous shots of fans, I was settling in for a defensive struggle. Neither side had done much offensively and both teams seemed to have a good bead on what the other was thinking. Then, just as my tiny mind agreed to that concept, the Saints opened the second half with an on side kick. The first, non 4th quarter, one in the history of the Superbowl. Just like that it was, as Garth would say, GAME ON!
DAN POMPEII at the Tribune takes a look at the wild second half.
With 1 minute, 55 seconds left in the first half on fourth-and-a-little-over-1 on the goal line, the aggressive Saints coach went for seven in an attempt to tie the score.
Because Colts corner Kelvin Hayden stopped running back Mike Bell for a slight loss on the previous play, the Saints couldn’t run a straight-ahead plunge or a dive with much confidence. They tried a sweep left, and Colts middle linebacker Gary Brackett tackled Pierre Thomas for no gain.
Payton was fortunate his defense forced a three-and-out and the Saints got the ball back with 35 seconds left. Garrett Hartley saved him with a 44-yard field goal at the end of the half.
Hartley was gambler’s insurance. He had three field goals of more than 40 yards — the first time any kicker has done that in a Super Bowl.
Now Payton was on a roll. He started the second half with an onside kick. To understand just how out there this decision was, consider this: It was the first onside kick in a Super Bowl prior to the fourth quarter.
Hank Baskett had a chance to field it for the Colts, but he couldn’t hang on. After a pileup and scrum that seemed to last as long as the Who’s halftime performance, Chris Reis emerged from the crowd with the football for the Saints.
“We’ve (practiced) the onside kick all week and guys executed it well,” Payton said. “When you do something like that you just put it on the players, and they were able to execute. It turned out to be a big change of possession and ended with a score.”
Six plays later, Thomas, the kid from Thornton Fractional South, took a screen pass 16 yards for a touchdown and gave the Saints their first lead of the game at 13-10.
“It was definitely a gutsy call,” Hartley said of the onside kick. “As a player you have to enjoy playing for a coach who puts it in your hands.”
Payton couldn’t walk away from the table just yet though. After Jeremy Shockey caught a 2-yard pass to give the Saints a 22-17 lead, Payton held up two fingers. They were going for two. The call wasn’t as much of a gamble as it appeared though. The cheat sheet that every coach carries in his back pocket advised Payton to do exactly what he did.
The initial ruling was receiver Lance Moore dropped the pass from Most Valuable Player Drew Brees in the front corner of the end zone. But Payton’s decision to challenge the play — and risk losing a timeout — paid off when referee Scott Green ruled Moore crossed the plane of the end zone before dropping the ball and the initial call was overturned.
Even on the play that put away the Colts, Payton and his defensive coordinator Gregg Williams took a chance. After not blitzing Peyton Manning much through the game, the Saints sent the house after Manning on third-and-5.
Manning threw a short pass for Reggie Wayne. Saints corner Tracy Porter knew he didn’t have much help to make the tackle, so he jumped the route, went for the ball, made an interception and returned it 74 yards for a touchdown.
The team, it is often said, takes its personality from its coach. The Saints, then, dared to be great.
Colts players after the game were still stunned by the onside kick. It just isn’t done. I got the sense that, somehow, they felt that the Saints had displayed bad manners. Like drinking beer in church or something. But, the simple fact is that the play is allowed and the Saints ran it flawlessly.
Also, as a side note to the many irate bloggers I have seen this morning, you can not fumble in the end zone. Once the ball crosses the plane the score counts and the play is over. I’m sorry that you didn’t learn that when you were the water bearers at the Pop Warner level (maybe some of you still are), but that is the way it has always been.
Sean Payton refused to let his team give in. He forced them to take risk after risk and you could tell the team was loving it. There was no holding back. Whatever they had they were going to leave on the field. They were not afraid of the Manning mystique, they were not cowed by being the underdogs, they were not overwhelmed by the spectacle surrounding them. Of course, as to the last item, they are from New Orleans; the home of topless women, crawdads and hot sauce. It takes a LOT of spectacle to catch the attention of people from there.
At the end of the game, just because I can be a heartless bastard sometimes, I turned to a buddy of mine who is a die hard Bears’ fan and said, “Now. Just imagine Lovie coaching against either of those teams in a Superbowl.”
He actually cried.
Oh well, it was a heck of a game and no one can take that trophy away from the Saints. Nor should anyone want to. The home of riverboat gamblers finally gambled and won. They earned it.
CLICK HERE TO TELL US IF LOVIE COULD HAVE OUTCOACHED ANYONE YESTERDAY
I was having this really good morning until I opened the paper to the sports section. I was all smiles and sunshine until then. But, one quick scan of the headlines told me all I needed to know. Today is a dark day for Chicago sports’ fans. The clouds will not part, the skies will not open to shades of gladdening azure. The birds are all quiet.
I may be over reacting, but I don’t think so.
Let’s start with the worst news going and work our way down. Less than a week after his agent publicly stated that he had no interest in the job, the Bears hired Rod Marinelli anyway to be their Defensive Coordinator. I am not sure how that worked.
RM: I don’t wanna be the DC.
Lovie: You’ll be sent to bed without your supper.
RM: I don’t care. I don’t wanna be the DC.
Lovie: We’ll take away your clipboard.
RM: NOT MY CLIPBOARD!
Lovie: Yesssssssss.......
RM: (sighing) oh, okay.
Seriously, the best guy for the job was one who turned it down twice in one month? DAVID HAUGH over at the Tribune tries to make sense of it all and fails.
It’s understandable why you wouldn’t endorse the Bears’ promotion Friday of Rod Marinelli to assistant head coach/defensive coordinator a month after he turned down the job. Marinelli’s agent, Frank Bauer, reiterated his client’s reluctance to take on defensive play-calling duties to the Tribune last week at the Senior Bowl. A guy hired to fix a defense shouldn’t have to be talked into the job.
But that’s how badly the job is viewed around the league.
Here’s the description: Stay within the boundaries of the Cover-2 defense. Run everything by a head coach who bristles at the mere suggestion of change defensively. Oh, and find a way to reverse a trend that has been spiraling downward since the Super Bowl three seasons ago — in one year.
What qualified NFL defensive coordinator with experience — what the Bears need — would come under those shaky conditions?
After that one year, there are no guarantees. Lovie Smith’s tenuous job status limited the field of potential defensive coordinators as much as Smith’s stubborn insistence on sticking with the status quo.
Remember when Ted Phillips talked about massive changes back on Jan. 5?
As inspired of a choice as Mike Martz was to run the offense, the selection of Marinelli falls flat. This might even be a bigger risk than Martz will be.
This weakens the Bears’ staff in two key spots. Diverting Marinelli’s attention from the daily chore of coaching defensive linemen takes away one of the league’s best position coaches. Replacing Marinelli with Eric Washington guarantees nothing except the Bears will be trying their fifth defensive line coach of Smith’s tenure.
I am beginning to think that the coaches’ entrance at Halas Hall is a revolving door. While I have to admit that there weren’t a ton of options available, I have to think that there was more than one. Especially when that one did not want the job in the first, or second, place. All this means to fans is that we will suffer through another year of Lovie’s defensive genius being forced down our throats. The, Martz lead, offense may have to score 50 every game just to keep it close.
More good news can be found on the Bulls. With Noah down with a severe heel injury and several other players among he walking wounded, Gar Forman may be forced to trade for someone who can stand upright. Walking and other skills may not be required. The Bulls went down to Georgia last night and fell apart in the fourth quarter so dramatically that they may as well not have played in it. Forget Charlie Daniels while watching this game, fans were chugging Jack Daniels trying to erase the pain.
Back at the Madhouse on Madison, the Hawks looked as though they had lost their contact lenses they spent so much time scanning the ice. Actually, they just looked lost. They should have easily beaten Phoenix. This is not a team that is a contender. It doesn’t help matters when muckrakers can correctly point out that the Hawks haven’t won since they spent the night in a limo with hockey groupies.
A side note here. As someone who has been in the music industry for over 25 years, I can safely say that I have seen godawful cover bands, that couldn’t make it through The Standell’s Dirty Water without screwing it up, score better looking babes than the Hawks found in Vancouver. I have been in bands that had no hope at all and still nailed hotter looking chicks than that. Hell, one night in Ypsilanti Michigan, I wasn’t even in the band and ... oh, wait, never mind. Back to the blog.
The Cubs signed Kevin Millar yesterday. I have lost count but do believe that this signing gives them 14 first basemen, 11 of whom are at the end of their careers. If I’m Derrek Lee I am on the phone to my agent before sunset yesterday. There’s writing on the wall and then there’s a bullhorn in in your face. What other reason could they have for this plethora of first basemen unless the Wonderful Mr. Lee is headed for greener pastures against his will? Anywhere else Lee would be a player that you build around. Here? Not so much so.
Over at the Cell, MLB.com’s very own SCOTT MERKIN took time to interview Brooks Boyer (Sox Chief Marketing Officer) and he admitted that he screwed up the budget projections for the 2009 season. However, since he wasn’t off by much and the team was not unduly burdened with bloated contracts, they were able to work around it. It is a very good read if you have the time. Taking the interview out of context would cause more confusion than anything else, so I won’t clip any of it here.
Actually, all of this makes me wonder; do sportswriters have groupies?
Before we get to the point of today’s missive, I want to pass along my personal kudos to Carlos Zambrano for his, under the radar, appearance in Arizona this week to begin early training. All accounts say that he has lost weight, put on muscle and is looking like the the pitcher the Cubs were promised lo those many years ago. If, as some are whispering, Big Z is a threat to win 20 games this year, then things might be looking up for the Cubbie Nation. On the South Side, kudos are also deserved, and are hereby delivered, for Freddie Garcia who went to an off season camp and showed up lighter, stronger and with his throwing shoulder completely healed. While he is slated to pitch in the 5 slot, many are saying that he looks more akin to a 3 or 4 pitcher and could win the team an additional 15 games. Considering that the 4 & 5 positions cost the Sox almost 30 games last year, this would be a marked improvement.
Yes, I know that Spring Training is still two weeks away. But, it is cold and blustery outside and I thought a little heartwarming news might be appreciated.
Now, on to the crux of today’s blog. Ron Turner, the mastermind behind the Devin Hester experiment, was hired by the Stanford Cardinals to have something to do with their offense. No official title has been announced. Now, please keep in mind that Hester signed a new contract because of his move to the offense that is predicated on him meeting certain goals as a wide receiver. It seems that Hester would gladly toss that particular piece of paper into the fire and get back on Special Teams. DAN POMPEII of the Tribune has the whole story.
Devin Hester is excited about Mike Martz’s arrival as the Bears’ new offensive coordinator, but said Thursday that he would like to go back to having a bigger kick-return role.
“I would love to get back in that situation with the return game,” Hester told “The Waddle & Silvy Show” on WMVP-AM 1000. “But at the same time, I’m a team player so wherever y’all want me to go, I’m ready to do it.”
Hester hasn’t scored a touchdown on a kick or punt return since 2007 after running back 12 for TDs in 2006 and ‘07, including a kickoff return in Super Bowl XLI. He said becoming a full-time receiver has taken its toll.
“I know what I’m best at,” Hester said. “The return game is my bread and butter, so if I had to cut back on receiving and go back to returns, that’s something I would love to do.”
So, let’s see if we all have this right; Hester wants to be a return specialist, every person on this blog has wanted him out of the offense and back on Special Teams and, judging by the posts on the Bears’ site, the opinion is pretty much unanimous. So, how did he end up being touted as the #1 wide receiver?
Turner.
It was his call, his demand, that Hester use his blazing speed on the offense. Never mind that the guy was a defensive back and return specialist with no coaching at any level to play offense, this is what Turner wanted and Turner got.
And we all saw how well that worked out. So, Good for Devin for speaking up. My guess is that Martz will listen. After all, he has enough on his plate right now without trying to instill a difficult offense into the head of a guy whose head is clearly not in it.
TomD has already started a thread, so CLICK HERE TO CELEBRATE HESTER’S GENIUS.
A lot of blog space has been taken up around the world worrying about head injuries incurred by NFL players. Anecdotal evidence would seem to suggest that they suffer more than their fair share. RICK TELANDER at the Sun Times took some time to interview Alan Schwartz, a legally blind mathematician who has put in several years of study on the effects of head injuries to NFL players. And, after some fun stories about his youth, he gets directly to the crux of the matter. I’ll let him and Rick tell you all about it.
Schwarz’s dogged, smart, mathematically-grounded pursuit of the rising brain trauma and dementia issues in the NFL has put him at the journalistic forefront of the hottest ethical topic in the football world. Nor is it a coincidence that Schwarz is a football outsider, having for 15 years been a writer for ‘’Baseball America.’’ He brought to football a foreigner’s perspective and a logician’s trust in things like batting averages and ERA, equations which can’t be chop-blocked.
In a metaphorical sense, Schwarz entered the football brain debate with an infinite legion of co-workers. Numbers.
‘’I can look at a page of numbers and say, ‘They’re lying,’’’ Schwarz says. ‘’Then I can work backward and see why it’s wrong. Then I can go on to find what the motives of the person who did it might be.’’
Schwarz has now written over the course of three years some 30 articles for the Times on the connection between brain damage and football—and, he insists, it is no longer a connection, but a fact.
The numbers he has looked at from retired players lists and the NFL’s documents and independent researchers like Dr. Ann C. McKee, co-director for the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at Boston University, a specalist who has studied the brains of deceased NFL players, tell him what only people ‘’with no horse in the race’’ seem willing to acknowledge: This is undeniable stuff.
Schwarz’s a-ha! moment regarding the bad math of the league came at the NFL brain trauma summit meeting in Chicago in June 2007.
‘’The fourth deceased player between age 36 and 56 had just been determined to have this incredibly rare condition, chronic traumatic encephalopathy,’’ he says at the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention Center. ‘’CTE. You get it from head trauma, no other way.’’
‘You don’t need more data’
According to Dr. McKee, who has seen 12 football players’ brain slices under the microscope, all of which showed signs of CTE, it is essentially nonexistent for those who haven’t been battered. In an interview she tells me that other similarly damaged brains she has studied include ‘’a boxer, an epileptic with seizures, two people who were developmentally impaired—head-bangers—a wrestler, physically-abused wife, a circus clown shot from a cannon.’’
Schwarz made his point to NFL medical representatives that such statistics were irrefutable evidence of the football/dementia connection. He grimaces when he relates their response. ‘’’That’s only four guys,’ they said. ‘We need more data.’’’
This nearly drove formula-man Schwarz batty.
‘’But you don’t need more data,’’ he nearly shouts as we eat lunch outside the media work room. ‘’I know probability! A million-to-one shot doesn’t come up four times in a row. Not on a roulette wheel. Not anywhere. I knew they were wrong.’’
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell even asked Schwarz: ‘’How do you know they did this from football and not swimming?’’
Schwarz sighs now. ‘’OK, each one can be explained away individually. But not collectively. No. Way.’’
Put it this way, for the visually inspired, I put four straw colored needles in a 3 foot high hay stack and you, lucky reader, grab only the four needles and never any hay. And you do that every attempt. That should give you an idea of how unlikely it is that that many cases of CTE showed up in such a small sample.
What is galling to Schwartz is what is galling to all of us up here; the NFL is lying. And lying consistently just to cover their collective asses. I guess they have their heads so far up theirs that they do not see the need for any special padding. They have plenty and that is all that matters.
More importantly is the fact that men are dying very young, as noted by the age ranges above (36 to 56), and their families are being denied husbands, fathers, uncles and so on just because of a game. Granted, a wildly popular and profitable game, but it is still just a game.
With the amount of money the NFL takes in each year, there is no valid reason for them not to be more proactive about this. As to the apologists who insist that the players “man up” and just deal with it, allow me to introduce my little silver hammer to your head a few times so you can think more clearly.
Joakim Noah, Taj Gibson and Brad Miller are all ailing. Noah and Gibson are suffering through plantar fasciitis and Miller has a balky knee. First off, a little background on the disease of the week. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
Plantar fasciitis is a painful inflammatory process of the plantar fascia. Longstanding cases of plantar fasciitis often demonstrate more degenerative changes than inflammatory changes, in which case they are termed plantar fasciosis.[1] The plantar fascia is a thick fibrous band of tissue originating on the bottom surface of the calcaneus (heel bone) and extending along the sole of the foot towards the five toes. It has been reported that plantar fasciitis occurs in two million Americans a year and 10% of the population over a lifetime.[2] It is commonly associated with long periods of work-related weight bearing. Among non-athletic populations, it is associated with a high body mass index.[3] The pain is usually felt on the underside of the heel and is often most intense with the first steps of the day. Another symptom is that the sufferer has difficulty bending the foot so that the toes are brought toward the shin (decreased dorsiflexion of the ankle). A symptom commonly recognized among sufferers of plantar fasciitis is increased probability of knee pains, especially among runners.
When I suffered through it, the cure was easy. Two months of rest and keep it well taped. Anything involving rest is doable by me. You would be amazed at how relaxed you can stay at a local watering hole. However, professional athletes do not have that luxury mid season.
Anyway, as I noted above, the Bulls have two players tormented by their feet and one with a knee that sends occasional shooting pains up the back of his leg to remind himself that he still has that particular knee. Kind of like a rude hello.
Nevertheless, the Bulls took the court against the woeful Los Angeles Clippers last night and proceeded to hobble around like crippled old men. JOHN JACKSON over at the Sun Times was kind enough to fill in the details.
After building momentum and confidence by winning the final five games of a tough seven-game road trip (all against above-.500 teams), the Bulls laid an egg in their homecoming Tuesday by dropping a 90-82 decision to the Los Angeles Clippers at the United Center.
Just about everything the Bulls did well on the trip, they couldn’t replicate at home.
The performance was a reality check for anyone who thought the road streak was a sign the young Bulls had turned a corner and would be consistent for the rest of the season.
‘’We were sluggish from the get-go,’’ Bulls coach Vinny Del Negro said. ‘’We got back into too much holding of the ball—our ball movement wasn’t good enough—and we didn’t make any shots. We held them to 90 points, 45 percent shooting, but we didn’t put enough pressure on them offensively.’’
The Bulls (23-23) didn’t play well on either end, but the most glaring difference was on offense. After making nearly half of their shots during the winning streak, the Bulls were 30-for-79 (38 percent) from the field and committed 20 turnovers.
Maybe the Clippers (21-27) just have a magic spell over the Bulls. The Bulls also lost to them in the game before the winning streak began.
‘’It was just one of those nights,’’ said point guard Derrick Rose, who scored 16 points on 7-for-20 shooting. ‘’I couldn’t hit nothing. I can laugh about it now because I have confidence I’ll come back.’’
Improved shooting was a major part of the Bulls’ road winning streak. In the five games, the Bulls averaged 104.2 points on 49.4 percent shooting—a dramatic improvement on their numbers for the entire season (95.6 points on 44.2 percent shooting).
But aside from forward Luol Deng (team-high 18 points), no one with a Bulls jersey could hit a shot. Deng scored the Bulls’ first 12 points in sparking them to a 12-8 lead less than four minutes into the game.
But Deng cooled off, and the Clippers—behind guard Eric Gordon (24 points) and center Chris Kaman (21)—got hot. They used a 16-4 run to open a 24-16 lead and had a 31-26 edge after the first quarter.
The Bulls pulled to 33-32 early in the second quarter, and the score was tight for the rest of the half. But the Bulls were unable to regain the lead. The Clippers used a 7-2 spurt for a 50-42 halftime lead.
Things didn’t get any better for the Bulls in the third quarter. In fact, things got worse. With the shots not falling, they became tentative offensively, hesitating sometimes and rushing other times. The result was a host of missed shots and turnovers.
Oh boy was it ever. Watching basketballs cascade like psychotic pinballs was entertaining, in the same manner as watching a car wreck is, but was not really conducive to a quality game.
Like Rose, I am going to chalk this up to one of those days and move on. There isn’t any other option as far as I can tell.
That being said, this team needs to get healthy and do so quickly. When they are all upright and functioning at 100%, or close enough not to matter, they are a force on the floor. When not, well, they tend to make the Clippers look good.