1 Seed

The win at Georgia was a big one. It would have been an ideal game for Wisconsin to choke on; a tough road match-up against a decent team (that they should beat). As the #4 ranked team in the country, there aren't many teams that the Badgers shouldn't beat. Anywhere.
As Bo Ryan's team took to the court on Sunday, their fresh #4 ranking still drying on Jay Bilas' prompter and New Years Eve in "Hotlanta" providing an even bigger distraction than the "Girls Gone Wild Invitational" in South Padre TX, they provided a perfect opportunity for the Bulldogs to rebound from back to back road losses vs. Georgia Tech and Clemson. Georgia had however, outscored Gonzaga a few weeks earlier in Athens, and Wisconsin, a team whose only convincing road win was a home game against Marquette, would've been a quality win for a tournament resume.
They didn't. The Badgers hit key free throws and played solid defense to hold on and put themselves in a position to begin conference play with a near perfect record.
I'd like to believe that this years Badgers will handle such a high ranking differently than their predecessors. Not that they've ever been ranked #4, but it is a long standing Wisconsin sports tradition to handle any and all pollster praise with a sloppy and unnecessary loss. Basketball, football... even hockey (except when they win national championships).
This Georgia win, although not too impressive, was huge. I was certain they would lose. I was pleasantly surprised when they won. If it hadn't been for Nick Collins' "freaknik" in the south end zone at Soldier field Sunday night (and the 3 bottles of champagne I drank early Monday morning), I might have actually remembered it before Wednesday.
Aside from having his team playing at a high level early in the year, it seems as though Bo Ryan has found a way to focus this team. Maybe all he has to do is remind them of last year’s disappointment and squandered opportunity. Or, maybe he's pointing out the fact that we are playing for a #1 seed in the NCAA tournament and have been since October. Hopefully both. The Big Ten sucks this year and we have a real shot at a #1 seed. The Badgers don't need to choke. The #4 ranking shouldn't really mean that much to them (outside of national coverage). The real focus should be making it to March with no more than 3 losses.
I know it sounds ridiculous, but its what they need to do. The "tournament selection committee" won’t be handing any 4 loss Wisconsin team a #1 seed. Not when the Pac Ten has already received 2 of them in early January (AZ and UCLA). We should lose to Ohio State on the road and maybe someone else. If we have more than 3 losses, one of them better be in the conference tournament, and even then the committee will probably screw us.

First things first

Much has happened in the past two weeks that is worth discussing, too much for one post. (Sorry for the absence-- Christmas with family and New Year's in London with old friends, where I apparently picked up the Black Plague.) I shall approach things in proper chronological order. That begins with the UW Men's Basketball team, and their exploits over the holidays.

First, Bucky managed to beat a relatively underperforming University of Pacific team in Madison on the 23rd, in a game I managed to attend. That was a pretty serious beatdown. Wisconsin managed an absurd 1.4 points per possession in a 36 point victory over a Pacific team that had qualified for the NCAA tournament the past three years, and was picked to win its conference this season. While Alando was relatively off, missing the intermediate shots you now expect him to make, the scoring got spread all around, with Kam, Bohannon and the Hoft hitting a few 3s each, and Butch and A-Tuck both reaching the low teens in points. Pacific never looked comfortable offensively, and we held them to an extremely low 35% from the field. The rebounding stats, including .46 offensive rebounding and .80 defensive rebounding, are both totally absurd, in a good way. (The highest these stats were for the Big Ten season last year were .36 and .72 respectively).

Then the Badgers laid down a complete and absolute beatdown on Gardner-Webb, a young (just four upperclassmen) and struggling team (only two wins), winning by the absurdly lopsided score of 98-40. Put into persepctive that's a little over what you would have expected. Wake Forest beat them by around 30, UNC by about 50. What was fun about this game was that we weren't reliant on Alando or on our bigs inside dominating. No, here we let it rain--shooting 60% on three pointers, making 12 of 20. Rain dance! Butch was 3/3, Bohannon 2/3, Kam 3/5, Flowers 2/3. It will be interesting to see whether people start coming out on Butch more, pulling the other team's big men away from the paint and thus opening up the post for guard on guard match-ups for guys like Flowers. (Wait, that happened the next game with less than quacktastic results, see below).

Finally, UW played Georgia in allegedly lovely Athens, Georgia on New Year's Eve, getting out of town with an ugly and hard fought 64-57 win. I managed to Tivo this game, and after watching it live, was underwhelmed by UW's victory. First, Georgia has not been a good defensive team this season, but managed to hold us to 41% shooting. Second, Georgia is noted for being a perimeter-oriented team, but they outrebounded us badly, getting 19 offensive rebounds out of 43 chances. If the other team is able to get their own misses almost half the time, that's not good. Third, I think they played the most effective style of defense I've seen against us this season, which other teams may very well duplicate. It was man to man with quick double teams on the inside (pretty typical), but they didn't play off anyone anywhere. Instead, they'd play tight defense on whoever had the ball, pressing that person and looking for steals. They even got right up in the faces of our big men when they had the ball on the perimeter, preventing them from being the typical fulcrum in our ball movement. This is sort of what I thought might happen when people figured out our big men are good passers and shooters. You'd think that we'd have been able to take advantage of this tight pressure defense, maybe by exploiting the space left inside or driving to the hoop more, but instead we just looked uncomfortable and turned the ball over an inordinate amount of times in the first half. Thus, Georgia was actually beating us at the half, was up one with four minutes left, and the game was tied two-and-a-half minutes left. (To be fair, the closeness of the game wasn't all due to their style of defense; for some reason, they played some zone in the second half, maybe to conserve energy).
Toward the end of the game, we got some clutch play from Alando and Landry, who Kam found all alone by the basket on a half-break for an "and one" dunk, to pull out a more comfortable than it looked seven point win. All in all, the performance was kind of worrying, although it was great to see Alando and Kam play like seniors--stepping up on offense on a night when the team ball movement simply wasn't there.
I fear we're going to see a lot more of that type of close-up mam to man pressure defense, throughout the Big Ten season. It definitely seemed to throw off our typical ball movement. Must learn how to deal. Perhaps Bo should show the team the Mandy Moore movie of the same name. (Not her best work).

Anyhow, the Big Ten Season is now upon us! Michigan has already beaten the FIBS in that dirty whore Ann Arbor, Ohio A&M beat Indiana, and Sparty lost to Iowa in the City of Iowa. Bucky is apparently seeking delayed gratification-- our first conference game is Minnesota on Saturday afternoon in Madison. I know very little about the Gophers this season, except that they've changed coaches in mid-stream. Not a good sign for their season, although, quite surprisingly, they did just manage to beat Purdue, though the game was in Dinky Town. They're currently 7-8.

Then, on Tuesday night, the first match-up with Ohio A&M. It's probably best that we're getting one game against them early, with Oden, with his eyepatch and ravens on his shoulders (sorry, until he declares there are going to be a lot of Norse mythology references when THE Ohio A&M College is mentioned), still playing one-handed, and the smackdown against Florida still relatively fresh in their memories. That'll be a tough game, regardless.

After that, in about a week, we play the Wildkits in Evanstonia, where we (meaning both UW and myself) have had terrible luck in recent years. The quasi-existential crisis involving myself, potential attendance at said game, and the Man they Call Craig, will have to be discussed sometime next week. Until then, represent, les Badgers.

U-G-L-Y

we are not in possession of any alibi. And neither are the Vikings, although they have some fine defensive players. Yeesh. As most readers know, the Packers managed to squeak by an offensively pathetic Minnesota Vikings team, 9-7 on Thursday night, with both teams performing terribly on offense. But maybe I'm being overly harsh. As we all should know, when one side of the ball is dominating the other side, oftentimes it's hard to tell how it plays out-- is the dominator (the one doing the dominating) really outstanding, or is the dominatee (the one being dominated) just awful. It's tough to judge, at least for this non-professional talent evaluator. Let's think back over the last game (I know, you may not want to) and see how it plays out.

First, our defense on their offense. Was it our dominating, or their terribleness? The Vikings did almost nothing, gaining 104 yards on 42 plays, a bit over 2 yards a play. They only passed for 27(!?) yards on 20 attempts, but ran the ball with slightly more success, averaging a decent 3.5 yards on 22 carries. Plus, off the top of my head, I can think of several good cut back runs that Chester Tyalor broke for about ten yards a pop. Hmm... So the way it looks from the stats and through cloudy-hindsight, our run defense was ok, nothing spectacular. Now the Vikes' pass offense, with true rookie Tavaris Jackson at the helm, was certainly shut down. But was this all because of us? Al Harris and Chuckie Woodson played solid games, and Kampman and the other linemen did a fine job keeping pressure on the rookie. But how many drops did they have? I can't find a stat for it, but I do remember that bomb earlier in the game where Troy Williamson was behind all of our DBs, failed to adjust to a well thrown pass, and tried to catch it off his left shoulder pad. Instead of a 50 yard pass play, just a standard incompletion. The Saucer (Klein-whatever) had a drop that initially looked like a good play by Hawk. Hawk also blew a great chance for a pick. And lets not forget the 'Queens had 10 penalties for 68 yards. Remember that one that wiped out another deep completion in the third or fourth quarter? I think it was an illegal procedure penalty. Based on this, I think we were a little more lucky than good. That is, our "success" against the 'Queens was more their inability to execute than our domination. I don't want to take anything away from the defense, many Packers had excellent games or made excellent plays-- Kampman, Jenkins, et al getting good pressure; Pickett's fine run defense-- scrambling down the line to grab Taylor on several different plays; Collins' fine tackle of a scrambling Jackson that stopped him from picking up what looked like a sure first down; Poppinga's manhandling of Jackson on a similar play (speaking of which, those plays definitively convinced me that Tavaris is not going to take us back to Dante Culpepper days of yesteryear-- there's no way Culpepper would get handled by Poppinga like that; a rookie Dante Culpepper would have got the first down). All in all, however, it looks like the Pack played a decent game, but against a offense that was clearly struggling. More them being awful than us being great.

How about our offense against their defense? I know our offense wasn't completely awful. We did manage to gain 319 yards, and the O set us up to score 15 points in total. (Rayner hit a field goal off the uprights and his plant foot slipped on another). But we had three turnovers, including two interceptions that looked just terrible, an utterly inopportune fumble, and should have had another fumble lost (the 'Queens player had a toe on the line when he recovered a Franks' fumble). Plus, we were absolutely terrible in the red zone and were completely unable to run the ball. Now, as to the latter issue, I'm willing to give it to the Vikodins on this one. Pat Williams is an awesome force, or at least annihilates our interior offensive line. His second cousin, Kevin Williams, also made our attempts at blocking look silly. Their linebackers, like E.J. Henderson, did a fine job of flowing to the ball. We missed some blocks, and had a down or two where it looked like there was miscommunication about where the play was going. But their run defense is amazing this year. Football Outsiders (this is an informed statistical analysis) has the Vikes with the best run defense in the league by an enormous margin. Even with a leaky pass defense, because their run defense is so outstanding, they still rank as the 4th best D in the league. Given all of this, I'm willing to give it to the 'Queens. Our run offense isn't great, but they made us look bad on the ground; we didn't do that to ourselves.

I think our passing game's struggles were due to our terribleness, however. Jennings and Favre look completely out of sync, and Greg needs a hyperbaric chamber to go with his blessed oil. Except for a blip of positivity against Buffalo, Greg has been out of it since hurting his ankle. Both of Favre's interceptions were on passes to Greg, and the first, returned for a touchdown in the 'Queens only score, was clearly on him. It was an unblocked blitz--Greg has got to be aware of it, and get ready to catch the ball quickly. He kept running his route like it was a normal play. Mr. Double-Headed-Donger, Fred Smoot, kept his eyes on Favre, said thank you very much, and took the ball back all the way. Favre's next interception was just him being pissed off and throwing it up. Even if Jennings screwed up there by stopping on the route and sitting down in an open area of the zone, it was still a dumb throw. Jennings isn't going to outjump Sharper for a bomb. 95% of the time, that's an interception or an incompletion. Jennings also dropped a clear 15-yard gain in the first half. He jumped up, had the ball, and let the covering back jar it out of his hands when he came down with it. We haven't even got to Bubba. Dear God, he looked abysmal. Fumbling twice, dropping catchable balls, only showing good running after the catch on the play where he fumbled as he was about to score a touchdown! Can you get less clutch? Argh!!! Just awful. Only Driver did anything, and they kept an eye on him this game, allowing him to catch short passes, but not break anything long. (He had 9 catches for 99 yards, irritating fantasy owners anywhere). And, he got hurt, going to the locker room dragging his right arm. It was a miracle that Favre was able to lay that nice long pass into Ruvell Martin's arms in the fourth quarter. Without that play, we lose the game, despite only giving up 104 yards on defense. Eeesh. Now Sharper played a decent game, I thought, and that corner of theirs, Antoine Winfield is one feisty midget. Seriously, how good a football player do you have to be to be a starting corner at Ohio State, sorry Ohio A&M, (where Winfield went to college) when you're 5'8"? He's a fine defensive back, who played an excellent aggressive game, and I wish he was on the Packers. But all in all, our passing struggles were our own problems. No one gets open consistently but Driver. When guys do get open, they aren't catching balls. There has to be a defensive breakdown and Favre has to make perfect throws in order for us to get big gains. If David Martin were healthy, that would probably help. But he's not, and hardly ever is. In all, I put the blame for our offensive struggles on us. We knew going in we couldn't run against them-- no one can. We would have to pass well, and as proven previously were capable of doing that, but didn't. We gave them their only points in the passing game, and couldn't hold onto the ball, even though Favre got good time to throw.

Finally, its not even debatable that our special teams problems (missed field goals, lousy punts, dropping downable punts, good punt returns called back on penalites), were our own fault. Bottom line--although the defense has been decent, we have not looked good since the win against the Niners. Our poor performances the past two weeks are not making me enthusiastic for a sneak into the playoffs. Yes, and that's because we'd get killed. (We have yet to beat any winning team). I wonder-- can anyone think of a less-impressive two game winning streak by the Packers?

Pro Bowl and Bean-Town College

So the Pro Bowl announcements are in! What's that? There are two games (one/eighth of the season) remaining! What does that matter? They've been voting since the first month of the season. Two Packers made the cut-- Donald Driver at WR and Aaron Kampman at DE. Congratulations to them both.

It's time for some blunt analysis about what being in the a "Pro Bowl Player" really means. My theory is it comes down to two factors--either (1) you are having an outstanding statistical year or (2) you have an excellent reputation. Our selections made it as a reward for having excellent stats. DD leads the NFC in receiving yards, and Kampman is tied for 2nd in the NFL in sacks. Selections based on reputations are evident from other choices-- Tony Romo, for example, starter of only 8 games, made it because of his new reputation as "rejuvenator of the Cowboys."
Sometimes reputations for excellence are deserved, and sometimes they are far more the product of a merely good player being placed in the middle of a good team or a player coasting off of previous accomplishments. Lets consider Romo more closely. Apparently everyone ignored the fact that he stepped into the middle of a loaded offense (two good young RBs, two excellent veteran wideouts, a solid line and an excellent TE), and was merely less terrible than 34 year-old statue Drew Bledsoe. I do think he's a good player--but choosing him over Michael Vick is absurd. Vick will rush for over 1,000 yards this season (at 990 with two games left) and has already broken the season record for rushing yards by a QB. He has 19 TD passes to 11 INTs. Romo has 16 to 10. Hmm... those passing stats aren't comparable at all, are they? I know Romo's completion percentage is higher. But he has far better wideouts (Michael Jenkins vs. TO), and plays on a more talented team. Romo would look terrible if he were the Falcons' starting quarterback. I don't condone people wantonly spreading herpes either, but Romo's selection over Vick is silly.

Simiar to that is the selection of DeAngelo Hall. He's a talented young-ish cornerback, but he cannot shut down receivers like Al Harris. Hell, he's not even having that great a season. TO beat him for TDs twice on Saturday night. He's tied for 14th in the league in interceptions, well behind Charles Woodson. Even comparing Hall to Al via raw stats, Al has one fewer interception but more passes defended. Hall made his reputation last year when he had 6 interceptions, reinforcing his rep as a first-round draft pick, and seems to be coasting off it this season. Al and Vick got screwed, as did many other deserving players, like Roy Williams (the one remaining great player on a terrible Detroit team) and Terrell Owens (who's reputation actually worked against him). Hopefully, someone will get mildly injured, and Al will make it as an alternate.

In addition, I love our guys and I think DD and Kampman are good players and fine teammates, but raw statistics are overrated. DD is our only good receiver (Jennings was getting there until he got hurt), and we don't have a very good running game, so he should catch a lot of passes. Plus, we played a lot of teams, like Detroit and Minnesota, that run mostly zone, allowing players to avoid tough man-to-man or bump and run coverage, but preventing big gains. Hence his high number of receptions (80), but limited number of TDs (7). DD's biggest plays have come against blown zone coverage, when he's been able to take a short pass, find a hole in the zone and blow past safeties. It's these highlight, catch-and-run plays that propelled him into the Pro Bowl. He has not made many big plays when matched up one-on-one against decent cornerbacks. He has good stats beause he's our one solid wideout and we've been forced to throw a lot against teams that play zone. Plus, he's broken a few big plays. Is he as good as TO, or Roy Williams, or even Plaxico Burress? I doubt it.

I'm also dubious about Kampman's stats, although I'd have to go back and see how many came on linebacker blitzs or plays when he chased down a QB flushed by another player, and how many were the product of his individual effort against an offensive tackle. Kampman's got a great "motor"-- meaning he rarely gives up on a play (he may lead all defensive lineman in tackles made 5 yards or more past the line of scrimmage, in the wrong direction)-- but I think he lacks the raw talent to beat a good right tackle on most passing downs.

The bottom line is this: would I trade DD and/or Kampman for players that did not make the NFC Pro Bowl team? In regard to DD, hell yes; Kampman, probably. And if you can say or wonder about that with your own "Pro Bowl players" something's fishy. Now I love DD, especially for his quickness, resilency, and energy. But I'd trade DD for Roy Williams or Larry Fitzgerald in a heartbeat. I'd probably even trade him for Plaxico Burress or Darryl Jackson. And I think I'd trade Kampman for Mike Rucker, Osi Umenyiora, or Patrick Kerney. Those are just guys who didn't make the NFC team, and this is a year when everyone agrees the AFC is the stronger league.
So what I'm saying is, this whole process is flawed. They start soliciting votes far too early, and don't base it on the entire season. Injured players who have great first halves and miss later portions of the season (paging Donovan McSchnabb), get left out, while players who are fresh in people's memory (Romo) get rewarded. Players who are in small markets and don't put up big stats (that's you Al!), similarly get hosed. And unweighed statistics are unreliable.
I guess this is what happens when you get a bunch of players, who only watch tape of their opponents or Sportscenter, and coaches, who ONLY watch tape of their opponents, voting on this stuff. Maybe the NFL could take the additional advertising money it makes from stringing out replay challenges (turning them into intensely inefficient, momentum-sapping commercial breaks-- hey guys, you ever watch college replay? It takes half the time and is just as effective!) and use it to hire a dozen retired scouts to watch every game and select the teams.
I'm hoping the All-Pro team is a better indicator of who the great players in the league are.

The other Packer related news, besides the impending Thursday show-down with the ViQueens that much of Wisconsin will have to go to a bar to watch, is that our offensive coordinator, Jeff Jagodzinski, has been hired to be the head coach at Boston College. It's tough to know what to think about this. The general coverage has been he-was-brought-in-to-teach-zone-blocking-all-that-matters-is-whether-someone-can-take-over-that-role. I guess that makes sense given that McCarthy is an offensive coach who calls the plays, and seems very involved in the offense. And if you consider the output on the field to be indicative of someone's job performance, our offense has not been stellar this year. Football Outsiders ranks our offense 21st overall, and our rushing attack 22nd (the run game appears to be largely Jagodzinski's responsibility). This doesn't take into account lack of talent or experience, or injuries, however. And we're having issues with all three of those categories this season. Also, from my subjective evaluation, I did miss the Arizona game, where we allegedly ran wild. Thus, it's hard to gauge his effectiveness this season or determine what the loss to the team will be. I feel comfortable saying that if we develop into an excellent zone-blocking team in future seasons, Jagodzinski can probably take some credit for providing the foundation.

On an intra-coaching staff level, it was nice that McCarthy supported and encouraged Jagodzinski's career advancement. Specifically, when asked on his TV show about Jagodzinski interviewing for the BC job, McCarthy said "Personally, it's exciting for him. But professionally, I think it's a great opportunity. We wish him luck and we'll help him out any way we can." That's an incredibly supportive stance for a boss to take when one of his key assistants is interviewing for another job. Working for a person like that, who encourages you to follow your professional aspirations even if it means losing your service, is a neat thing. Hopefully, establishing a reputation as a coach who promotes his assistants will help McCarthy attract good coaching talent.

I know this-- I'll be pissed if Jagodzinski starts outrecruiting Wisconsin (Matthew Shaughnessy was down to UW and BC, for example). Back off the Bucky recruits, Coach Jagodzinski.

Neat Article about #4

So, as I undaringly predicted, the Men's Basketball Badgers have surged into the top five in both polls, ranked #4 in the AP, and #5 in the USA Today/Coaches. The Journal-Sentinel did an interesting job of covering this quasi-historic event: by actually interviewing AP voters, focusing on those who ranked the Badgers very high or quite low in comparison to the median. Some voters, it turns out, still have the Badgers below Pitt in the rankings, despite us beating them by 14. One guy gives a legitimate rationale-- Gray was sick, and the game was in Madison, and I think if Gray was well and the game was on a neutral floor, I'd favor Pitt by a point or two. He ranked Pitt one above UW. If you really believe that Pitt was that rattled by the Kohl Center crowd and that Gray would have played better but for his illness, then I buy that. But two AP voters had Pitt six spots above UW. The Journal-Sentinel reporter gets a response from one of these voters. Read it for yourself here, and see if her explanation makes any sense. I have trouble buying it, and upon discussing it with a colleague, he advocated for taking that voter's voting credential away from her. (I'm inclined to agree).

Anyhow, in my previous experience, I've seen lots of articles about rankings where individual AP voters who submitted atypical votes are listed by name and publication. But until today, I'd never seen an article about rankings where these voters were actually asked to explain their votes. Fascinating. Well done, MJS and Mark Stewart, the UW basketball beat writer.

Yea!---Nay!

So I assume anyone reading this watched UW freak out on the Panthers of the University of Pittsburgh. Good lord, that game ruled. As may have been apparent from earlier posts, I was pessimistic. But they did it. Quacktastic.
What a weird game. For a team that usually spreads the scoring around outside of A-Tuck, we operated almost like an NBA team--going with the guy that's hot. A-Tuck, Butch, then Kam, then A-Tuck. The most any other player scored was 5 points-- that was the Hoft, all off of free throws. Flowers- 0 points. Landry- 3 points, off one 3-pointer. Wild. And it worked. Everyone else contributed by playing solid D and not getting demoralized when Pitt was nailing all their contested shots in the first half, and by taking care of the ball and rebounding as well as we could against a big, athletic team. Though Flowers and the Hoft were killing me with some of those free throws toward the end, it was a team effort. Sometimes you have to play your part and let the guys who are feeling it take the shots.
It was also very pleasing to see Butch get quality shots off against Gray; I was dubious about his ability to score against another good big man. (I remain dubious about his ability to do anything against Oden). Also, after plays where A-Tuck would make a very heady maneuver look easy and natural-- cutting by his defender to take a pass for an easy bucket, grabbing a loose ball and throwing in a contested layup without pausing to think-- I found myself thinking about how rare a player he is, and how much we'll miss him next year. Yeesh. Must live in present.
The end result of this: the Men's Basketball Badgers are soon to be ranked higher than they have ever been before. According to various reports, #6 is as high as we've been in the team's history. Since we are currently 7th, and just beat #2 by multiple possessions, likely we'll fly into the top five, ahead of teams like Duke and Kansas. Crazy. Plus, if Pitt performs as expected in the Big East (they're predicted to win the league), come NCAA seeding time, we could get some serious boosts, even if we lose to OSU repeatedly. Knock on wood for everyone's continued eligibility and health, and enjoy the ride that this historic UW team is giving us. (Was that homoerotic or what?).

Alright, now to the Nays. The Packers managed to triumph in a terribly ugly and poorly played game against the Detroit Lions this afternoon. Favre threw 3 picks, taking a large step closer to the career interception record, and actually exceeded Jon Kitna's own turnover-based incompetence. (Favre also screwed me personally by throwing a total of two passes in Greg Jennings' direction-- Jennings is my 3rd wideout in fantasy; he finished with 5 yards on one reception). We also had two fumbles, and committed 9 penalties.
The Pack only managed to win because Detroit outdid us in awfulness, performing pathetically on offense--142 total yards, giving up 6 sacks, coughing up the ball thrice, only giving their best remaining (i.e. non-injured) player, Roy Williams, two touches. (He was also on my fantasy team, and since I got a total of one point from two of my WRs, unless Larry Johnson and Marvin Harrison fumble a combined two dozen times tonight and tomorrow, I will be eliminated from the playoffs).
Favre's poor decision making was quite evident, often gunning the ball into heavily covered receivers, and failing to see much more open targets. Plus, why didn't he throw to Driver more? Detroit's defensive game-plan was apparently to let DD run free through the defensive backfield. As a result of so many poor decisions, McCarthy was visibly angry with Brett, perhaps for the first time.
And what was the end result of this dilapidated double-wide of a game? Pushing Detroit, a division rival, into a tie for the first pick in the draft. And we're now in a tie with 6 other teams for the 9th pick of the draft, which means if it happened today, we could pick as low as 15th. Yick. And our other two games are against a very iffy Vi-Queens team at home, and then against the Bears' second string. We could finish at .500, and be drafting in the late teens. If you find a superstar in the teens of the draft, you've gotten lucky, because most of those guys just turn out to be good, not great, players. And the Packers are in dire need of great players, because the only people on the team who are at all close to that label are in the downslope of their professional careers.
So yea, we beat an absolutely terrible division rival. But nay, say the soothsayers, pack away the party hats: our penchant for winning late in the season, when playoff chances are mathematical delusions, will screw us for years to come. I am such a Cassandra. Don't wheel the horse inside the gates, you morons!

We Better Not Storm the Court

Yes, i'm jinxing the game, but I don't care. This is bigger than that.
No fans of a team in the top 10 (top 25 really) should be storming the court when they beat someone at home that isn't ranked #1. And even then, it should be a pivotal game in their season.
I remember storming the court after we beat Minnesota in 1997. They were ranked #2 at the time. It was the last game of the season and helped us get the 8 vs. 9 matchup in the first round of the tournament. We lost to Texas. I'm still embarassed about it. Yes it was a big win and an exciting game (Ty Calderwood threw up the deepest most playground three ball i've ever seen to give us a 1 point lead with :04 left. We won 66-65), but it was Minnesota. Of course we should beat Minnesota. Bobby Jackson was good. In your face Bobby Jackson. But they are a conference rival. We should beat them, cheer, and go get drunk. More drunk.
If you're Wisconsin, you should enjoy beating #2 ranked Minnesota (at home), but don't go storming the court. That's a little excitable. A little needy. A little much. Nothing puts storming the court in perspective like a little perspective.
They went to the Final Four, and I don't think Jackson ever asked Calderwood to, "run that one back".
I love college basketball because there are so many great matchups. The teams that you want to see play each other usually do. Rivals play and upsets happen. Actually they happen all the time, all year. This is why the court storming thing is so tired. It seems forced.
Relax, Western Central Foothills Academy, Seton Hall is still trying to figure out where the hell their sleeping tonight.
Who stormed the court for Athletes in Action? Nobody.
And how excited can the Northern Iowa student section possibly get about beating Arizona State? It's December! Oh... your ticket stub's good for free Dilly Bars? Alright then, there's the other teams assistant coach go give him a reason to blast your face with his elbow.
So when we kick the crap out of Pittsburgh (the team that ended our season 2 years ago and beat us last year and that we already owe an ass-kicking) today, i hope our fans don't storm the court. That's the kind of shit the 0range crush does.
Sincerely,
Jason Johnsen