OK, now that the really important things I had going on this week are over, and since life goes on, I figured I’d get back to the smack, even if it is a few days late.
Cleveland got destroyed this past weekend. Big Ben took them apart, and aside from that tipped ball interception Roethlisberger played a flawless game. Does anyone here seriously want to contend that Pittsburgh didn’t get the best quarterback in the draft this year? Where’s Eli? On the bench. Phil Rivers? Is he even in the league? Ben’s the real deal, and if you go back to page one of this thread you’ll notice that I called it right from the outset.
Cleveland, my friends, is in big trouble. Pittsburgh rushed Garcia at will. He was lucky to survive. They couldn’t do anything but watch the Steelers juggernaut go right through them. Too bad, I was hoping for better things from a Butch Davis-coached team.
The end result of all of this is a 4-1 record, sole possession of first place in the AFC North, and a date with the embarassingly pathetic Cowboys on Sunday. My prediction: The Steelers will go into their bye week 5-1. Not bad for a team predicted by most of you guys to be an also-ran in their own division.
Eli’s in the exact same place Big Ben would be if Ernie Accorsi didn’t have such a hard-on about his “legacy”…sitting behind Kurt Warner. I have every confidence that Eli will be good, but believe me I’m cursing EA for that ridiculous trade. I can only hope the Giants do well enough that next year’s FIRST ROUND PICK we gave to the Chargers won’t result in them getting an awesome player we should have gotten. Hell, we could have easily traded down to the Browns (who wanted to get Winslow) and picked up an extra 2nd in this or next year’s draft, plus kept this year’s 3rd and next year’s 1st and 5th. Oh man, Eli had better be awesome. But even if he is, he won’t be better than Big Ben in his first few starts because that is not possible.
My brother-in-law is a huge Steelers fan, and he is one of the “Friday Night Gamers” I get together with. Our respective favorite teams are the Giants, Steelers, Jets, and Bills. The Bills guy had to drop out due to work commitments, which is probably just as well because he’s as miserable as the other three of us are jacked beyond belief. We remaining three are 12-2 collectively…something unimaginable (except for the Jets, who will of course win the Superbowl) in the preseason.
Go Big Blue!!!
I wouldn’t count on beating the Cowboys as a given. I was very nervous with our pre-bye matchup with them, and we were losing for more than half the game with an experienced veteran at QB. Granted, we don’t have the league’s best receivers like you do, but still.
I’d just like to take this moment to bask in the glory that all Giants and Steelers fans are currently enjoying. Who woulda thunk it? And I love the success that Big Ben is having…I’m hoping the 2004 QB class outshines the class (83? 84?) that produced Dan Marino, Jim Kelly, and John Elway. Of note is that I include Losman and count 2004 as the “Big Four” QB draft. (I wanted Losman to back up Collins for the G-Men. Thank god we have Warner instead of Collins! That hurt to type…)
On an unrelated note, I have been pretty disappointed in the decided lack of interest in my NFL Division Rankings thread. I have been rationalizing it by telling myself it isn’t conducive to conversation, being that it is remarkably similar to power rankings, and as such tends to drop like a rock off the first page before I even finish perusing the SDMB, so probably most people haven’t seen it. So this is my shameless plug. Maybe some of you will check in just to subscribbe to the thread? Probably not. whimpers Oh well, like I said in that thread, I’m really just doing it for me anyway. (Shouts out to Hal Briston and ShibbOleth for being the only posters to even notice it.)
What a great game that was, and what a great comeback. With every game Big Ben makes Giants fans (including those in denial like Ellis Dee) cry into their beer, thinking about what they gave up to get a brand name who isn’t even playing when they could have had Roethlisberger on the cheap.
Rookie jitters? Not that I could see. He was throwing darts all day. The only choker on the field was the oldest, most experienced Cowgirl, Vinny Chokeaverde. Duce played through a nasty looking twisted ankle early on, Plaxico came to play, and the secondary finally came through in the clutch, allowing Kimo von Oelhoffen to make Vinny trip over his dick.
Onto the bye week 5-1. The next few games are disgustingly tough, hosting the Patsies two weeks from now and the Eagles three weeks from now. It would take nothing short of a miracle to win even one of those games, but I’m going to go out on a limb and predict wins in both games, because I don’t think the Steelers can be stopped from their date with destiny. Maddox geting hurt, sad as it was, was a sign from above, and it’s hard to argue with a 4-0 record as a starter, especially when it comes with such poise and composure.
In other news, I will not be around for about three weeks starting on Tuesday of next week, so when I get back I’ll have a lot to say (what a big surprise there, eh?). In the meantime, please, feel free to talk amongst yourselves about who’s going to be finishing second in the NFL behind the Steelers.
I’m definitely not a Steelers fan, but that was a great game yesterday, made better by the Cowboys losing. Some great hitting, good runs, heads up play by Ben R (I’m not even going to try and spell Roethlisberger). I especially liked the little dump off to his tight end when he looked as if he was going to be sacked for sure. And I was ecstatic that they ran the time off the clock before scoring instead of giving Dallas a full two minutes to try and get back and score. The only dark spot was the officiating which really seemed to go in Dallas’ favor (as usual).
That actually consoles me because its not the Raiders or Chargers leading the Div.
All I have to wish for is that the Chiefs claw their way into a semi respectable second place by beating the Chargers and Raiders. Frankly, after yesterdays meltdown, they are capable of losing to anybody (Anybody meaning anybody but the Cardinals, but then again I’m talking pro teams).
Straight up. Another year bears out my algorithm of picking games. Going into tonight I’m 58 for 87 (66% accuracy) and in 2nd place in a confidence league and 5-1 with a 3-game lead in the AFC West in Hal Briston’s head2head pool.
It was nice to see Bettis get yet another touchdown, even if my FF opponent had him on her team. He’s not washed up yet! Maybe Duce could get a few, too.
That truly was a great game. I tape all the Giants games, and as such never leave the house on Sundays. But since Big Blue was off yesterday, I went to my buddy’s house and watched 5 games on Tivo in shorty format. (The NFL package on DirecTV is better than crack.)
The Jets got their win, though they didn’t look that impressive. Gang Green has seemingly tranformed their tendency to start the season slow into a tendency to start each game slow. That precedent was set on the opening kickoff of the season, when Jonathan Carter fumbled the return before he was touched by the opponent. But I still have every faith that The Chad can lead the Jets to a victory over the Pats at The Razor next week. Curtis will run roughshod over them without Ted Washington.
I watched every snap Kerry Collins took. All I can say is, how about that Kurt Warner? Oh man, my heart goes out to Oakland fans, especially now that Gannon is officially done for the season. I truly wanted Collins to do well, but now it is looking more and more like Ernie Accorsi was eerily prescient when it came to Scary Kerry. Everyone thought he was washed up – especially Giants fans – when EA brought him to the New York, but Kerry won the hearts and minds of Giants fans. Most people figured this season was a write-off when we signed Eli and lost Collins. but apparently Kerry was finished, and the only person who realized that was Ernie. Good calls both, Ernie, on bringing him in when he still had game left and letting him go when he was done. I don’t know how he knew it, but he did good on both counts.
It’s almost like we watched two different games. I’m a fan of Big Ben, and I’m enjoying his success, though I admit I was rooting for Dallas for three reasons: 1) Parcells, Vinny, Ritchie, Keyshawn, go Jets! b) Pride of the NFC East, since the Cowboys are currently no threat to Big Blue, and III) I didn’t want Phil Simms’ great start matched. But oh well, the Steelers certainly played well.
But, to think that Big Ben would have that same success as a Giant, Bill, or Charger is simply ridiculous. Did you watch the game? How many passes were a overthrown/underthrown and still caught? Ben is not the most accurate passer, and if he had to rely on Toomer and Hilliard to bail him out, he’d be 0-4 instead of 4-0. Actually, like I said in a previous post, he’d be 0-0 because Warner has earned the job convincingly. But make no mistake, Airman Doors, Big Ben is having the success he’s having for 3 reasons, and 3 reasons only: Hines Ward, Plaxico Burress, and Antwan Randle El. However, give him this season to get acclimated, and the Steelers are staring directly at a decade of winning seasons to come regardless of who is on the team at WR, because Big Ben is a legitimate contender. As far as this season? Well, you still have to face the rest of the AFC East and NFC East, so you still have some losing coming your way. Your final four games (Jets, Giants, Ravens, Bills) could all be losses. Not to mention the Patriots and Eagles in the near future. But hey, on any given Sunday…
Clearly, we were watching different games. Didn’t you see how many spectacular catches your top 3 WRs made? You know what you need to have in order for there to be a spectacular catch? A bad throw.
“His styles are incomplete, just like Vinny Testeverde.” I thought Vinny played fine. His didn’t choke, nor was there a great play by the secondary. A fluke fumble is all that was. I expect more from a Parcells team than to allow a fluke turnover, though.
All in all, I have to say that the thread title is not entirely unwarranted, even though the Superbowl winner will so clearly be the J-E-T-S JETS JETS JETS.
You’re kidding with this, right? No spreads and your algorithm only gets 66%? I’d bet you that simply picking the favorite to win outright would have a better win percentage than 2 out of 3.
You’d think, wouldn’t you. Calling it an algorithm is a little tongue-in-cheek, but it’s more accurate than picking favorites — if you went with that, you’d be at 53 out of 84 (not counting Bal/Was in week 5 and Was/Chi in week 6, which were even) or 63%.
So I rest my case. (Oh, and bump me to 67% with tonight’s win.)
And as an additional alliterative addendum, since I was a little too loopy at 3 am to properly respond, the ‘algorithm’ was devised for confidence leagues, and it works amazingly well there. In those cases, I don’t care if I get the 1, 2, and 3 point games wrong as long as I get the 12, 13, and 14 point games right.
It’s just icing on the gravy that it also works well enough in straight-up picking.
Congrats to the Steelers on surviving the grueling bye week.
Man, have the Broncos been playing this bad the whole season and I just didn’t know it because this is the first game of their’s I’ve seen in six weeks, or is this just an off night? Because, man, I don’t know what’s going on with the defense and the offensive play-calling. Third and 1 and you pass instead of giving the ball to Droughns? :wally
(Oh, and bump me to 67% with tonight’s win.)