Grid Effect

It’s a good thing they ended with a preseason game, because this was boring the shit out of me for the first 40 minutes. It wasn’t for a lack of personalities but rather poor execution. We just got regurgitated story about the hardships of NFL players. I could be alone in this but I doubt it: I can have sympathy for a professional athlete, but not over being at training camp for a few weeks in order to prepare to earn millions of dollars. So, in other words, let me take back most everything I said in my first post about this series.

There were a few decent moments in last night’s installment. Most notably someone lamenting the fact that undrafted wide receiver Wes Philips, has always been unfairly compared to Wes Welker. I think it goes without saying that undersized, white receivers from Texas Tech with the first name Wes will always be compared to Wes Welker, from now until the end of time. That is a lot of similarites abnormal to the NFL. We will say this about him, though, Wes Welker would have never fumbled that punt return. See, he’s already combating stereotypes!

The team seems to be selling Pacman’s mindset and ability a little too much. Sure, he could be the next Deion Sanders like he claims, but he could also still be Pacman Jones. No one doubts his football prowess, he was the 6th overall pick for a reason. Thing is though, even with the frequent attendance at strip clubs around the country, Pacman looked rusty in their pre-season game. One would think titty bars would be a supreme motivator, but one would be wrong. Still, it’s not his training camp performance anyone is worried about, its his performance on a Sunday night after a big win against a division rival: can he stay out of illegal and immoral trouble? Jury’s still out on that one.

Hopefully, for everyone's safety, invitations like this are a thing of the past.

From one angst ridden player to another: Tank Johnson loves playing football, and clearly loves that people love that he plays football. But even more than that he loves purchasing, collecting, and I’m sure trading firearms. Its really not his fault though. When you are granted the nickname “Tank”, I think these things tend to happen.

From angst to vanity, Owens also seems admired by everyone on his team, almost to a nauseating degree. I guess that’s what happens when you make a tearful plea to the media to relent on the criticism of a teammate. Speaking of which, here is an exchange between him and Three Six Mafia, if you are not up on the music scene these days, they are the songwriters of such classics as “2-Way Freak” and “Sippin’ on Some Syrup”. In short, their conversation is far more entertaining than this episode.

Not really much to say about last night. I think the intent was for us to laugh, cry and potentially write a decent follow up the following morning, but we’re not doing any of the three. One thing we took away from the episode: Sometimes I wonder if when I reference movie scenes I sound ridiculous or long-winded. After watching Tony Romo awkwardly explain the “Good game, Norm” scene from Major League while his coach or whatever tried to think of a reason to walk away, I now know my narration is impeccable. Comparatively speaking at least.

Also, i already feel better about having Felix Jones as one of my backup running backs for fantasy football. Since anyone who has ever watched a season of football knows Marion Barber is going down early this season with some catastrophic knee injury because they traded Julius Jones, I like having the rookie backup after that debut. I’m pretty sure all of this shit is staged just so ESPN will have something to over-analyze and speculate on for the week in between games. Like it makes more than a negligible difference who you line up at running back.

We hate to go out on a self-indulgent note about our fantasy team, but that’s pretty much it. We’ll try to post something later today to make up for it.