NFL Playoff Power Rankings ....But first!....

The charm of the Nation's traditional pastime resonates in the contrast of black and white numbers with ethereal sensory experience. Time was men of any age connected like a heartbeat through a national obsession with baseball. Call it ignorant empathy; baseball made boys feel like men, and made old men feel like young boys. My dad always liked to keep scorecards when he was at a game. I think it helped him watch the game better, to keep his awareness in step with the rhythm of play. "If your paying attention" he would say, "in every baseball game you will see something that you have never seen before". Baseball has always had an intimacy to it like there is more to baseball than what is going on the game. Strange but tru is the other hand(mostly) the game within the game of statistics. The realm where even the emotionally challenged have been drawn to baseball is the oceans of statistical data. In baseball stats tell stories. As time passes and and a nations romance with baseball steadily fades the same men and boys and women and girls find a new national romance. Football is not remembered through numbers they way baseball is. Strange but true stories in football can almost never be told statistics alone. In football the reality is often much stranger than the myth. Stats are a foreign concept for football. They fail as proof of any trend or talent. They mislead in any evaluation of skill. Contrary to being a foundation of assertion in football it seems statistic fuels misappropriation like kindling. The set of data is always limited, the team dynamic of football distorts the dimensions of statistical meaning. I guess to be fair football makes more sense in the physical world, or in other words...in baseball stats are responsible accounting, in football stats are sales......All that said let me be clear about one thing. In neither baseball nor football nor life no statistic should ever be interpreted as prophecy, but no matter the domain a set of data always tells story. Ask any millennial who they want to tell the story. Stephen Hawking or Chris Nolan

Here's your Stat of the Union Address

I'm certainly not the first to point out that the Kansas City Chiefs did not have a receiver score a touchdown the entire season. The trick here is applying context. It kinda feels like a low blow to put up a gif of Dwayne Bowe Fumbling on the goal line in week 17...preserving the sort of immortality in perpetuity only deserved by the sort of city that names itself after a state that is nearby. By the way....Same logic applies to the Jets and why they deserve the butt fumble. So instead of doing that, because that requires IT skill, I'll shame them with Cleveland Browns starting quarterbacks.....no skill required there.

The Browns notoriously have had 22 starting quarterbacks in the 15 years since reanimation. Of course the REAL Browns well, they were possessed by Ray Lewis' soul and used just like Voldemort did when he moved from Cleveland to Baltimore in those Twilight films.
 Anyway 4 of those 22 guys Cleveland benched threw a touchdown this year to a wide receiver. Colt McCoy, Brian Hoyer, Brandon Weeden, and Derek Anderson...all these Willy Lomans made a wide Receiver smile this year. Chiefs QB Alex Smith? No way, not on my watch. No love for armed receivers. That is receivers who have arms.
 Wanna know who has caught more touchdowns than all of the Chiefs Receivers combined? Andy Dalton Has. Who threw that pass? Muhammad Sanu, Bengals WR who along with catching TDs, threw one more TD this year than all of the chiefs Wideouts caught all season. Chiefs Receivers combined for 1744 yards on 152 catches. JJ Watt caught 3 passes for 4 yards and 3 scores. The moral of the story is this....
  when they are trying to score the chiefs can go a whole season without a wideout getting into the end zone. JJ Watt can't avoid the end zone. Even when the other team is trying to score JJ Watt gets in the end zone more than a chiefs receiver with his 1 interception for 80 yards a selfie and a salute.
 By week 3 all other 31 teams in the league had a WR with a TD....it's starting to occur to me I'm not designed to understand how absurd a feat of mediocrity this truly is. I think they literally picked the perfect march madness bracket of mediocre. A team with no TD by wideouts? Now that's a horse of a different color!  Some wheeere Oooover the Dwayne Bowwwweeee.

The sky is not falling in Foxboro, those are just leaves

Stability is a fickle friend indeed. An illusion of control within this infinite storm of chaos and complexity. No sport more complex than American Football, No league more chaotic than the NFL. And at least in this millennia there's no constant quite like September in New England. Students from worlds over descend on Greater Boston annually around Labor Day kicking off another school year.      Summer has ended, football has begun. Trees are still green, sun dress season still in session, sunset still at a pleasant hour. 16 Games from now New England will be a motherfucker. 16 Games from now we win or go home in football games that resemble September football about as much as New Years eve resembles the first day of school. 16 Games from now we will be freezing cold drinking winter lager and getting ready for the NFLs second season. The hoody makes more sense in December anyway. But as old man winter will surely be here soon, ask yourself this. Will you still believe in Bill once Tom has gone.

For second straight day Kansas City Forgets identity, steals show

While A's sweat it Out.....Billy Beane watches Big Bang Theory

Royally Screwed

Tonight is moneyball versus traditional baseball values in the under the perfect microscope. 1 game playoff, small market vs small market. Built to last vs built to win today. And Oakland is in rough shape. Only 3-2 after 3 but they might as well be finished. In games like these their philosophy breaks down. They cannot hit consistently with RISP. They cannot create opportunities to score so they struggle against elite pitchers And vanish against elite bullpens. Power numbers are fine but that is the only offense they get. And power goes too against the pen. KC however can compete without outplaying Lester. 3-4 RISP so far, 2 of those at bats created by moving runners over in some form of aggressive "run creation" in reality it's opportunity management. Oh and about that bullpen? KCs is elite, best In the majors good. How, you may ask, can a small market team afford to be elite in talent and depth in the pen? It's cheap, and allegedly dispensable, or overvalued or whatever market trend Mr Beane may have created while being played by the most popular kid at the dance in his movie.


      To be clutch, one must believe in clutch

Tommy Two-picks and the Missing Mojo

       Remember in Space Jam when the tiny evil aliens steal the mojo from Charles Barkley, and Mugsy, and Sean Bradley, and Tom Brady and it turns them into talentless nobody's? Yeah I don't remember Tom Brady being in Space Jam either. After Monday Night I may need to netflix it just to be sure.
       He looks like Tom....wearing Tom's trademark 12. But that's no Tom Brady. Tom Brady makes decisions in micro seconds, good decisions. Tom Brady makes everyone around him better. Tom Brady goes months without being picked off. Tom Brady would rather be sacked than picked off. Tom Brady doesn't know how to lose. That guy last night was no Tom Brady, he just looks like him. That guy he just some wannabe. Be gone wannabe!
       I'ts easy to rationalize individual performance in football. Easy to reason that a player is not completely responsible for his play. Its easy to believe in what is known...to a point. Late in the 4th quarter finally we got to see what a quarterback is supposed to look like. Jimmy Garrapolo is NOT great. To be clear I am not elevating him even to good enough to start in the NFL. This is isn't about him. He was the patriots throwing the white towel and the defense let up on him, sure, he wasn't special he just played well. 6/7 70 yards and a TD. Respectable line, but I told you this isn't about Jimmy. Tom Brady has lines that look like; 28/31 415 yards 4 TDs.... Yet Jimmy's line is better than any 7 throw sequence Brady has had all year.
      This is about #12. One quarter of the year gone and not one drive of typical Tom Brady. The guy wearing 12 is broken. Two drives of a productive, efficient, one step ahead of the D rookie backup made it all too clear. Tom Brady reacts to nobody, defenses must react to Tom Brady. That guy out there tonight, he's no Tom Brady...

I hope we find him soon, wherever he is, and I hope he hasn't run out of Michael's Special Stuff. 

Lebronzica: The Saga Continue's

We all want what we want.

What I want is probably not what you want

What Lebron James wants, its pretty safe to say, is unclear to every single basketball fan, journalist, school teacher, entourage member, and perhaps most mysterious of all; Lebron James. He speaks on "Lebron James" like a superheroic alter-ego. King James and Lebron Kent.

I wonder if Delonte West could've banged Lois Lane

better than kryptonite.

So to say...What you and I want is either one of two things.

1. not in the same fucking continent as what the King wants.

or

2. it is exactly what Lebron would want

So to say...The only way this whole situation makes any sense to the average fuck is if we ask ourselves what we would do if we had millions of dollars and a bunch of friends on the free agent market. Wouldn't you want to play with two of your closest friends for the prime of your career? Isn't that what we dream about as kids? We ask our athletes to act like CEOs and little boys all at the same time. Lebron James comes as close as anyone has. So why are we so mad? How has our hero fallen so hard by popular opinion? Easy. The Decision. the one hour primetime unveiling of, well, nothing until The Bigger 3 start playing basketball sometime in late October. This is blatant evidence, to the average basketball fan, that Lebron does not think like us. No, none of us would be dumb enough to pull that egotistical bullshit. nah, never. Ever.

So now we don't understand what Lebron wants. And we Fear what we don't understand. So...

Lebron is our villain.

This shit is big. Real big. Like, what if TheRock had accidentally killed Trish Stratus on Smackdown! David Stern is Vince McMahon. Lebron is the former fan-favorite fallen from grace. Lebron will receive death threats coming back to Cleveland. Paul Pierce got stabbed in Boston and he plays here. Try telling me there isn't a Lee Harvey Oswald somewhere in Northern Ohio ready to go postal. Jordan played in the 3rd largest city in America. When he left (retired, retired again) the city didn't reeeaally need him economically. Cleveland needs Lebron...needed Lebron. This is deeper than sport for Cleveland. This is like if instead of going bankrupt GM was flourishing and then decided to leave Detroit for Southern California in a One hour special on CNN...

General Motors has decided in the fall it will take its talents to the Hollywood Hills.

Eminem would have a field day.

This is a recurring nightmare. Less than 20 years ago the Baltimore Ravens played in Cleveland. Baltimore has seen 2 Superbowls. Even won one. Cleveland hasn't had a title in over 50 years. My father hasn't lived for a championship season in Cleveland. Lebron didn't deliver, and then abandoned ship. Understandable, but not for those sad souls who live in Ohio. When Art Modell moved the Browns there was an understanding that he was no longer welcome in the city of Cleveland. There can be no such understanding with Lebron. He must return.

For the first time in my life i WILL be buying an NBA season package. That must mean something right? Kobe was the evolutionary Jordan, except as Kobe fades into his 30s its becoming clear that Jordan was better. No matter how many titles Kobe wins, Jordan never lost in the finals. Jordan was better. Hands down.

Lebron James is an evolutionary Magic Johnson.

And hes only 25. Lebron is a traitor i guess. So is Kevin Garnett, and Chris Paul. We value loyalty as fans but there is no selflessness between players and owners. 7 years into Michael Jordan's career he had no titles. Sure, he handled everything better than Lebron has. But so did his front office. They hired Phil Jackson, then signed Scottie Pippen to a long term contract. Cleveland failed as an organization bringing in a championship caliber cast. Mo Williams and Mike Brown is close as the Cavs came to Pips and the Zen Master. Fail.

I haven't been this excited about the NBA since i saw Ron Artest go Waterboy in detroit.

Isn't this a better reason? So say what you want about Lebron Favre, I'm tired of the saga too but your lying if come halloween your not in front of somebody's flat screen watching the carnival in South Beach. This is must see TV. Undeniably. Your excited too, don't lie, and if your not then I'm afraid there's something wrong with your medulla oblongata. Just don't tell RonRon