Memo to New York Jets Head Coach Rex Ryan:
Calling the Wildcat (as Miami runs it) a “gimmick,” throwing your defense under the bus, saying they made Chad Henne look like Dan Marino, and saying you were embarrassed to lose must be part of your media strategy to keep those starstruck yet fickle New York sports reporters on your side while you figure out where the holes are on the S/S Gang-Green. It’s one thing for idiot beat writers to expect a Xerox copy of your 2008 Ravens with Haloti Ngata and Ray Lewis and T Sizzles and Ed Reed stopping the 2008 Dolphins Wildcat with Chad Pennington at QB and Samson Satele at Center.
But surely a defensive genius like you would have made special note of the upgrades in the 2009 Dolphins’ interior line, the arm strength of Chad “Marino” Henne and the experience of Dan Henning. Surely you know that the Miami Wildcat is no gimmick, but just a power running formation with a beast of an offensive line and 3 great running backs along with varying degrees of misdirection – no different than the Redskins counter-tray.
Surely you’re not buying into your own hype and not preparing your team for an in-division dogfight. I mean, I would understand the machismo were this the first game of the season – but surely you saw what the Dolphins did to the Colts and Bills defense from a running standpoint and were ready for THAT Wildcat and not the Mildcat from last January.
See the thing is – bigchestedness and assholery in not giving the other guy credit may be all Soprano-like while you’re winning. But when you’re 6-10 and people are expecting 10-6 it’ll just give them a wider platform to hate your guts. When Miami holds your Golden Child QB to 50% completion and 172 yards while their QB goes 20-26 for 240 yards, 2 TDs and a 130.4 passer rating, you need to accept that you got beaten by the better team that night, despite the referees assisting your cause.
Oh, and you need to recognize that Miami’s Wildcat is not a gimmick. Your 2 fake punts are gimmicks. And you can tell your loudmouth LB Calvin Pace that too. Maybe next time you guys will look at the YEAR AND 2 WEEKS WORTH OF FRIGGIN TAPE ON THE WILDCAT OFFENSE AND PAY ATTENTION TO PERSONNEL CHANGES before you call the Wildcat a gimmick. New England could have done that last year. You cannot now. Maybe you’re still mad that your dad rolled his 11-0 Bears into Miami in 1985 and got taught a lesson on “crushing the 46″ by Dan Marino himself. Maybe not. Either way, I’ll be eating popcorn watching your short career in New York.
Memo to Monday Night Football “Analyst” Ron Jaworski:
I understand that MNF will never be what it was – the cultural touchstone that told us that John Lennon died and the must-see vehicle that was America’s only source of video highlights for the week’s NFL action. The spectacular boneheadedness of thinking that Dennis “Carrot Top” Miller and Tony “Kornholer” Kornheiser could replace the failures of Dan Dierdorf and Boomer Esiason are evidence of that. So I was glad that ESPN chose to go to a booth of you and Jon Gruden alongside Mike Tirico this season. I could finally unmute my TV when I chose to tune in.
But after listening to your commentary on the Miami offense, I am very disappointed. In 2 Dolphin broadcasts now you’ve completely discounted the personnel moves Miami has made (namely getting rid of Samson Satele and getting Justin Smiley and Donald Thomas back and getting Jake Grove from Oakland) wrt the effectiveness of their running game. As an X&O guy I would expect you to see past your “dynamic passing game” biases and give the Dolphins some credit. Not only did you not do that, you seemed intent on ignoring all the Jets’ deficiencies and even assisting the poor refereeing – namely agreeing with the phantom 43-yard PI call on Will Allen that got Braylon Edwards off the hook for dropping a sure touchdown, and insisting that Edwards’ second leg was down on his first touchdown. It wasn’t. Not a blade of grass was disturbed. I could tell and Jon Gruden could tell. But to you it was as invisible as the poor to Ronald Reagan. What I saw was not an objective analyst – it was a dude bent on looking for every opportunity to discredit an offense that didn’t fit his world view.
Now I expect that from those blackberry warriors like Mort and Schefter who take opinion polls from their “league sources, or from Stuya Booya and that idiot Chris Berman who read off their marketing-approved northeast-biased scripts. I also expect to hear as much from those ex-player “pundits” like Steve Young and Matt Millen who don’t look at too much film themselves but rather consume the analysis of others (I include Marshall Faulk from NFL Network here). I mean, for the Worldwide Leader, who better to hire to analyze the league than the brains behind Detroit’s 0-16 season!
But Jaws, you were different. On Edge NFL Matchup and on Monday Night Countdown you were always the port in the storm of the maniacal ESPN monarchy that increasingly told us what to believe (on every platform imaginable) instead of why we should believe it (see Jason Whitlock). You were the guy who I would pay attention to. Until this season, that is. It’s only CBS, Fox and NBC I’ll listen to from now on, as well as the radio.
With NBC, despite their abysmal pregame show (awful highlight packages, Peter King’s Namedrop Theatre, and the no-value-add analysis of Tiki “my team won a ring once I left them” Barber and Jerome “I’m from Detroit” Bettis), at least I know I can count on Al Michaels to be unbiased and Collinsworth to only annoy the shit out of me once in a while. But if the Dolphins ever head back to MNF, it’ll be back on mute for me.
The Four-letter network has done it again. As it is I only consume the Jim Rome show and the few dwindling soccer offerings and maybe a bit of ATH, and I already swore off Sportscenter (the regular version and the TRL version). But after this week ain’t no way I’m watching MNF off mute again.
Maybe Rod Martin will be around to intercept your biased takes next time.
now i’m done
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