First of all, I totally get the "why" as it relates to everyone and his brother (and uncle and dog and gerbil) coming up with a "Winners and losers" of the recent NFL Draft.
The above information indicates there are more than 5 million "experts" on this topic, give or take a few hundred thousand.
But acknowledging why it happens -- hits, baby -- doesn't preclude us from acknowledging the stupidity of the exercise.
Unless there have been some NFL games played this week I haven't heard about, it makes no sense to pay any attention to ironclad judgments of the draft selections by a bunch of sportswriters who are issuing these judgments based on ... well, uh, not sure on that.
It'd be one thing if you had a former GM or front-office person doing it. And maybe in some cases that's what's going on. But mostly it's just dudes like me trying to give hot takes on something that's largely a crap shoot anyway.
Look, we hear enough all-over-the-map blather BEFORE the draft. Not much interest in hearing more of it afterward.
OK, off the grumpy soapbox.
A few Thursday links:
Couple of newspaper fronts from the Tom Brady news:
This New Jersey columnist tries to have an open mind about this whole thing but says there is no logical defense for Brady.
I read the report, and it's safe to say the word "probable" is underselling its contents. Wells painted a damning picture of a guilty man, one who declined to hand over his cell phone to investigators and repeatedly called and texted low-level New England employees Jim McNally and John Jastremski in the days after the AFC Championship Game when the accusations of wrongdoing first surfaced.
"You good Jonny boy?" one of the texts read. "You doing good?" read another. This sure looks like Brady was trying to reassure a nervous accomplice, and while there is no smoking gun that Brady explicitly told them to underinflate his footballs, there is a mountain of circumstantial evidence that New England broke the rules.
There is certainly enough to permanently tarnish Brady's image, that's for sure. Let's not forget that performance in Foxboro after the allegations first surfaced, when Brady put on his best Eddie Haskell face and insisted he was just as confused as everyone else.
"I feel like I have always played within the rules. I would never break the rules," he said in January. "I was very shocked to hear it, so I almost laughed it off thinking that was more sour grapes than anything. And it ends up being a very serious thing when you start learning the things that were ... just the integrity of the game."
And this:
So just follow along here. A man who called himself "the deflator" in a May 2014 text message to a colleague takes the game balls out the officials locker room without permission and disappears into a bathroom for one minute and 40 seconds. The same man had received two autographed footballs and an autograph game-worn jersey from Brady just days earlier.
I'm comfortable jumping to a conclusion. And I'm also comfortable in saying that Robert Kraft shouldn't be sitting next to the fax machine awaiting that apology from the NFL offices.
And this:
No one comes out of this looking worse than Brady. Sports fans will tolerate a cheater to a degree, but have a much harder time stomaching one that had such a high level of success and natural talent already (see Rod, A-).
Brady didn't need slightly deflated footballs to beat the Colts in the AFC title game. He didn't need that extra advantage to own the AFC East (and, it turns out, the Jets). Still, he apparently lowered himself to pressure a couple low-level employees to do his dirty work, and then paid them off with some autographs and gear.
For that, he has slapped an asterisk on his Hall of Fame career.
For that, he deserves to sit out a few games to start the 2015 season.
Hard to disagree. And that's coming from someone who -- don't shoot me -- has been a fan of Tom Brady.
-- Florida State's administration rebuts yet another report on Jameis Winston.
A statement released from president John Thrasher’s office exclusively to the Palm Beach Post read: “FSU administrators said today they have contacted the ‘Morning Joe’ program to provide their view of the facts and have directed the producers to the public statements the university has released regarding the case.”
Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski went on a three-minute rant this week strictly off watching “The Hunting Ground,” a documentary film about rape on college campuses, in which Winston’s accuser, Erica Kinsman, was interviewed.
Kinsman accused Winston of sexual assault in December 2012. Winston was investigated three times, including by the district attorney, who could not find enough evidence to charge Winston after a three-week probe, and by a retired state Supreme Court judge who determined Winston did not violate FSU’s student code of conduct after hearing from both parties and reviewing more than 1,000 pages of testimony and evidence.
-- This Indianapolis columnist says Brady is feeling, well, deflated.
There will be no apology coming from the National Football League or anybody else, something he demanded at the Super Bowl should the league exonerate his club.
If anything, Kraft should be offering organizational apologies for a team that has now been found guilty of circumventing the rules twice in recent years.
How about an apology from Tom Brady, who lied through his perfect pearly whites before and during this process?
The Patriots cheated, and it's fair to assume they've been cheating – specifically, playing with deflated footballs – for a very long time. This is not a minor issue; we're talking here about the integrity of the game, about maintaining a level playing field. Nobody ever suggested the footballs played any role in the Patriots' 45-7 battering of the Colts, but if I'm, say, the Baltimore Ravens, I'm absolutely furious. If I'm any of those teams the Patriots beat over the years on their way to all those Super Bowls, I'm furious. And if I'm Roger Goodell, who was directly challenged by Kraft but properly hired independent investigators to pursue this case, I'm furious, too.
Bottom line, his league's Super Bowl champions have a Scarlet Letter, another asterisk to add to their growing collection. This couples up with SpyGate, another misdeed that cost Bill Belichick a half-million dollars, and it makes it more likely that the league will bring the hammer on a recidivist organization.
-- David Hale of ESPN examines Miami's inefficient 2014 offense.
For one, Miami’s rate of 6.58 yards-per-play on first down was the second-best in the ACC (trailing only Georgia Tech). Good first-down plays tend to lead to manageable third-down plays. As such, Miami ran just 4.6 third-and-longs (8 yards or more for a first) per game last season, which was the sixth lowest average among Power 5 teams. Of the five teams that ran fewer, four won 10-plus games and three played in New Years Six bowls.
So if it’s not the number of third-and-long situations Miami found itself in last season, perhaps it’s how the Canes handled that adversity. And in that department, Kaaya has a legitimate point.
Last season, Miami converted just 16.7 percent of its third-and-long attempts. That ranked 58th out of 65 Power 5 teams -- just behind Wake Forest. But here’s the thing about Kaaya’s role in that: He really wasn’t that bad.
So how does it make sense that a quarterback who completes 60 percent of his third-and-long throws converts just 18.8 percent of those chances? The answer is play-calling, where Miami took virtually no chances with Kaaya in key situations. According to ESPN Stats & Info, Kaaya's average pass on third-and-long traveled just 7.5 yards in the air -- 63rd among 67 Power 5 passers with 25 such attempts. Twenty-seven of his 45 throws on third-and-8 (or longer) traveled less than eight yards. He completed 18 of those, but just three went for first downs. How much of that is the play call and how much is Kaaya checking down too quickly is an open question, but either way, the results are atrocious and Kaaya wants things to change.
-- And for today's musical selection, we'll stay on the main topic of balls.
LW
