fairweather fan

I live next to the Shirley Barronowski prison, so when the Pats got our favorite bad boy, I told everyone that Shirley had an empty cell for him. (The convicted Pats player committed suicide in that cell.) Just kidding, possibly.

The real reason is that Bellichick is the son of a coach, but he never starred as a player. I have read that he would work with the college players on film study when he was only in the eighth grade. Bill studied football schemes as others studied chess moves. Other sons of coaches have coached successfully, but Bill's father coached at a service academy, which does not have the athletes that ordinary colleges can recruit, because of the selection process and the military time that must be served after graduation. That meant that plays meant more than personnell. I think that also it is evident that BB is not a people person who gets close personally to players, even Tom Brady. I have read that after 17 years, the two have never had a dinner or other party together, unless it was team sponsored. Bill is divorced, and was known to have a roaming eye when he worked with the Giants, which is one reason he was never in the Giants plans as a head coach. That was the main reason for his divorce, along with the fact his wife never saw him because of his ridiculous hours of football study. Bill and Tom get along because Tom, unlike most other star quarterbacks, never challenges his coaches decisions in plays and in personell decisions, even though he is close to many of the players released. Bill has the reputation of not having a large group of successful head coaches who were tutored as one of his assistants, but Coach Saban is a prime example of one who learned and prospered using Bill's system. Others went to programs and did not use, either because of the owner/college president made most of the personell decisions, or they did not have the extensive backgrounding that Bill had as a child. I also believe that Bill could not have been as successful with Bledsoe as well as he did with Brady.

Sure, bring in a defensive coach to replace a very good defensive coach, to a team without a quarterback, an offensive line, and a head coach who had proven his offensive philosopy. It reminds me or the great day of the Tennesee Miracle, when the coach in charge of the special teams, who had the best special teams in the NFL for the previous two years, was fired immediately after that play, while the coaches who did not use Flutie, watched their quarterback sacked five times, allowing the game to be close enough to be lost to a forward pass called a lateral, went back to the best early retirement gig since civil service. Bring in Manning, he is his own offensive coordinator, I am sure with Ryan on the sidelines, those short passes will allow Buddy to gain weight again, because he will not be moving very far up and down the sideline.

From TMQ column: (he said that this would happen at beginning of season.) Skins-Jets note: Pass rush specialist Aaron Maybin, who had zero sacks in two seasons at Buffalo, has six sacks in his first nine games with Jersey/B, leading Rex Ryan's pressure-obsessed defense in the category. Maybin hit Rex Grossman to force the fumble that turned the game in the Jets' favor. Buffalo used the 11th overall selection of the 2009 draft on Maybin, then rarely let him on the field, criticized him relentlessly in public, then waived him early this season. Nonsensical? Not if Buffalo's new front office, which took over shortly after the Maybin choice, is more concerned with protecting its high-paid jobs than with winning. Tuesday Morning Quarterback noted just before Maybin became a Jet, "Making a great show of discussing how bad the previous Bills regime's high draft pick was creates an excuse for [bills head coach Chan] Gailey and [bills general manager Buddy] Nix to present a losing team in 2011 -- 'What did you expect, when the guys who came before us blew the team's 2009 first-round pick?'" The Bills are 5-7 and last in the NFL in sacks. If everything about their season was the same except they'd simply kept Maybin, the Bills might be in the playoff hunt. But to the coach and general manager, lining up excuses for losing was the first priority.

I am surprised by the comments against Harrison. I agree with the article. And Goodell is way out of his element as a commissioner. He acts more like a Kindergarten teacher, and worst, never sticks up for players. I realize that the owners pay his salary, but even the baseball commissioner Selig occasionally goes after an owner, a position he once held.

Where Harvard excels is, due to being the first institution of higher learning in the Colonies, it developed a reputation which drew the cream of the academic crop for more than two hundred years, and due to the amount of money it has invested from donations, it can hire (like the Yankees) the most valuable teachers from law, business, and liberal arts backgrounds. But a scientist or an engineer will accept a scholarship frm M.I.T. before he or she would accept one from Harvard, because that is where science and engineering is taught by the best. I worked with Harvard grads and undergrads, and once you get into the school, the academic rigor seems less than I experienced at a Roman Catholic institution 45 years ago. Harvard graduates are people, people with all of the faults and good attributes of others, but, for the most part, better academic backgrounds which for the most part they received at private prep schools. The "Ivy League" designation is the name of the football conference, which was carried over to the colleges after the football league was named. A captain that I served with in Vietnam who had a Harvard undergraduate degree was a prime !@#$, who treated Blacks and Hispanics as if he were a graduate of Alabama in that period (where the Governor stood in the doorway in a symbolic stand against the integration of Alabama University.) I worked with a Harvard undergraduate who had a nervous breakdown, and I went to various prisons in Massachusetts to bail him out, as he became violent, especially toward women. He called me from a psychiatric institution one day, but I was not at home, so my young daughter told the babysitter not to accept the phone charges. He commited suicide within five minutes of the call. A member of my family by marriage graduated from Duke, and Harvard Medical School, but I have never held his degrees against him. Interestingly enough, Tom Brady, a graduate of Michigan, which is considered an academic powerhouse, worked as hard at academics as he did at athletics, and expects to go into politics when he retires from football. I believe that the reason that Cornell Agricultural students pay less tuition is because the school was funded with Federal land grant monies, the same source of monies that funded all of the "Big Ten" schools, who all started as agricultural colleges.

It is hard to believe, but probably true that abolishing helmets, or going back to leather would cut the problem. In the days of bare knuckle fights, fights went 20 or 30 rounds, because one could do less damage with a bare fist than a heavily padded hand, just as a heavy plastic helmet can do more damage than no helmet. My two sons were injured playing tackle football in high school, and while one has back problems from those days, the other one's concussions are causing him problems as he is just hitting forty, and will probably cause him a shorter lifespan. If I had known, but I didn't, I hope that other parents of todays children are better educated than I was about football injuries. My brother in law, in his sixties, suffers every day from playing sem pro football out of high school.

Buffalo endured its third consecutive "Monday Night Football" loss in the final minute. The killer mistake didn't come when Leodis McKelvin ran a kickoff out of the end zone with the Bills ahead by five at the two-minute warning. Sure, the Buffalo "hands""team was in, so McKelvin had no wedge, but he's a good return man. The killer mistake was when McKelvin struggled to try to gain an extra yard after he was under tackle by two Patriots. Get on the ground! He'd brought the ball back to the 31-yard line -- reaching the 32 was completely irrelevant. He's a super-highly-paid first-round-drafted NFL player -- doesn't he know the desperate Patriots will try to strip the ball? Get on the ground! Often all a football team needs to do is the obvious, and things will be fine. Had McKelvin simply gone to the ground once he was hemmed in, Buffalo's chances of victory would have been good. Instead, it's yet another humiliation for a squad that once operated in the NFL's elite. Buffalo lacks the football IQ necessary to win. Easterbrook in his TMQ column in ESPN page 2 The Bills' no-huddle offense only resulted in the Patriots running 29 more offensive plays and holding a 14-minute edge in time of possession. Predictably, this caused the Buffalo defense to tire at the end; Buffalo's defenders played well for the first 55 minutes, then in the final five minutes they surrendered 112 yards and 12 points. The no-huddle is supposed to make the opposing defense tired -- but often it makes your own defense tired, because quick three-and-outs send the defense back onto the field. To compensate for tired pass rushers, Buffalo began blitzing in the final five minutes, and of course you know how that worked out. After a shaky start, the New England offensive line returned to normal form in the second half. After a shaky start, Tom Brady returned to his 2007 form in the fourth quarter and did what smart quarterbacks do -- he took what the defense offered. Buffalo was blitzing linebackers but keeping its safeties deep to prevent a long strike to Randy Moss. That meant the short throws had to be open, and here are the completions by Brady on the Flying Elvii's final two drives: 18 yards, 16, 13, 10, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 6, 5 and 4. You don't see many dramatic comebacks based on 8-yard flare passes to the tailback. But Brady has football IQ, so he took what worked. And when he recognized that Buffalo blitzing meant tight end Ben Watson was covered by a linebacker, he looked to Watson for both last-minute touchdowns. Every NFL quarterback has a strong arm -- seeing the field and knowing where to put the ball is the greater skill. Brady sure has that.

I am sorry, but after the Dallas game, the playoff game against Tennessee, and keeping a coach who has never, never won, it is time to give up, give in, and live up to my name. Edwards, who I watched in his first game against the Patriots, when he could and did go downfield, now makes short passes that are just long handoffs. The Patriots are not that good now, especially on defense, and will have a winning record, but only because of a fortunate schedule. I cannot and will not waste more time on a team I was buying the NFL ticket to watch.

Although I am a Tom Brady fan, I believe that Edwards with a good line and a coach (any coach) will be a better keep than getting Cassel. I never remember Genus Bill drafting high for a quarterback, he seems to like line choices in the draft, even in the Browns days, which gave the Cleveland/Baltimore team a head start for the future. Cassel was the subject of speculation until the final cut day that he would not be with the Patriots in 08. What I have seen in limited instances of watching Edwards, was that he would do very well on the Patriots, given good health. I admire Cassel, but I do believe that both he and Tom Brady had the one thing that Belecheck requires, a great work and practice ethic. Brady did not have the long ball his first year as a pro, yet now, with Moss receiving, is considered the most accurate in getting the ball down the field. The hundred million quarterback you got from the Patriots had a helicopter idling in the parking lot on the last game of the year in 2000, waiting to take him to a private jet going back home to Washington. I am suprized that he did not do well with Dallas, as both he and TO believed that they were calling the plays.

Jon Gruden has a hell of a mind for offense. Unfortunately, his personality believes that he is the quarterback on the field, and he has second guessed, chewed out, pulled, put down, and alienated every offensive player who has played for him. He lets others coach the defense, so you hear no defensive players criticizing him. In Gruden's mind, every offensive play should gain 30 yards, so if it doesn't, it is the fault of the players, and not of anything in his play calling. He got along well with Rich Gannon, because Rich was older than Jon, and had absorbed bs from many coaches in his career, so it was like water off a duck's back. With a young quarterback, Jon is a disaster, and in a job that requires first and foremost, supreme self confidence, Jon does nothing but tear the quarterback down. Bill Belechick was not a great coach in Cleveland, but he did learn some people skills along the way, so that when he got another chance, he was ready with leadership skills and the ability to put players in position to succeed, which was reflected in the gain in confidence of each player he has coached. Belechick believes that the best training for a head coach is special teams coaching, because you have to coach both defense and offense, and at speeds that are much greater than coaching from a snap. I would rather have coffee with Jauron, have my team coached by Belecheat, and stay the hell away from Downer Gruden.

On TMQ on ESPN Page 2, Gregg Easterbrook made this comment: Watching Bill Belichick utterly outcoach Dick Jauron at Buffalo was like watching Itzhak Perlman give a violin lesson to an 8-year-old.

Agreed, some quarterbacks take several years to "get it". Look at Jacksonville's starting quarterback. Unfortunately, there are usually only two quarterbacks carried on most rosters (with a reciever who played the position in college penciled in as the third quarterback), and first string only practices with first string. Looking back, I have seen many quarterbacks who could have made a large contribution, but due to the system, the coach, and scout's asses on the line for their picks for the draft, they never got a chance. Tom Brady would be in his fourth year of selling insurance, if it wasn't for the hit on Bledsoe.

Actuallly pro players take HGH for quicker recovery, although you are right about steroid use to treat injuries. The problem is, if they are used for body building, the muscles get too large and strong for the surrounding ligaments, and when they tear during use, it is major, major.

Based on Willis's opinon of himself, Buffalo is not big enough. Willis wants to beat Wilt Chamerlin's record.