Going Favre Beyond the Call of Duty

I complained several months ago that Brett Favre needed to add some new wrinkles to his offseason playbook. In that post, I posited that "Favre-watch" is one of the most interesting things to happen in the otherwise dull and football-less offseason. So far this offseason had been a bust for one of football's greatest entertainers, and needless to say we here at Dank Game were dissapointed. Well maybe Brett reads Dank Game, because in the last couple of weeks he came through in a big way!

The difficulty with this offseason was that Brett was still under contract with the Minnesota Vikings, the only team he was at all likely to play for in 2010. Unlike in 2008, when the Packers made it clear they were hoping he stayed retired, or in 2009 when the Jets drafted a first round rookie quarterback and a new head coach, Favre couldn't cook up interest based on where he'd play. And the sole notion of if he'll play is an old storyline now. He's been reliving it for about six straight years.

But if you thought Favre was done keeping us guessing, you were dead wrong.

AFC East Preview

Number four of Mustache's season preview, winding down the AFC in its Eastern division. This is clearly a three team race, with Buffalo down and out in an otherwise very strong division. The Patriots have the rings, the Jets have the defense and the Dolphins have a talented young quarterback and a very solid nucleus of young playmakers. This division will almost certainly yield two playoff berths.

Division Winner: Miami Dolphins

This is the underdog team of the East's big three, but ultimately that's why I think they'll succeed. Despite a serious rash of offseason arrests, the Dolphins have had back-to-back-to-back solid drafts under the guidance of Bill Parcels and made all the right moves in free agency this season. This is as balanced a team as you're likely to find, including back-up quarterback - the Dolphins are the only team in division, if not conference, that have a solid back up QB in former Jets and Dolphins starter Chad Pennington. Finishing third in their division last season, Miami has the softest schedule of the big three too. This will be a close race, but I think the Dolphins steal back the division with eleven wins.

Division Runner-Up: New York Jets

The Jets won nine regular season games and two playoff games last year on the strength of the league's best defense and a top-notch running game. And all with an error-prone rookie quarterback, Mark Sanchez. If he improves much at all this season the Jets should be back in the postseason. It's hard to imagine the defense will deteriorate much if any next season after such a dominate showing throughout last season. The Jets really only lost when Sanchez made too many mistakes. Through injury the team found its running back of the future in Shonn Greene. The only thing working against New York is free agency - they spent a lot of money on a lot of players who are supposedly post their primes. If even half of these guys can prove their skeptics wrong, New York is headed for at least ten wins and a very close race with the Dolphins

Division Third Place: New England Patriots

The Patriots just can't stay good forever, and I'm boldly predicting they miss the playoffs this season. Although they still have Tom Brady at QB, their defense has slowly fallen apart over the last few seasons and no longer resembles a Bill Belichick squad. While this team is still some ways off from being outright bad, like the Browns or Bills, one just gets the feeling that for the first time in a long time things aren't the way they have been in Bean Town. After watching the Ravens dismantle New England in last year's wildcard game in Foxborough, I can't give this team more than nine wins, and I'm actually only going to predict eight. Wishfull thinking? Maybe.

Division Basement: Buffalo Bills

If the Bills do any better than last place in the Eastern division, it will be a miracle. Their new coach, Chan Gailey, might have inherited the most helpless and talentless roster in the NFL this year. And I wouldn't say their draft converted any non-believers. Buffalo has the worst quarterback situation and possibly the worst offensive line in all of football. I haven't yet seen a prediction for Buffalo of even seven wins. And I'm only going to give them four. Nobody would be surprised if the Bills won the fewest games in the league this season.

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Other AFC previews:

West
South
North

2011 NFL Gambling Guide

What is the steal of the 2010 Gambling season?

Bodog Sports, a Vegas sports gambling outlet, is giving the Cincinnati Bengals 30/1 odds of winning the next Superbowl!  Can you even imagine the payoff when the Bengals cross the NFL finish line in first place.  Guys, you could turn $100 into $3,000 or $100,000 into $3,000,000.

Take it from me, and my surprisingly slightly-more-than-half right 2009 NFL predictions.  Let's review!

First I picked the playoff teams for the AFC teams.  And oh boy did I nail four of the six playoff teams!  I missed the Colts as the top seed - I thought the loss of Tony Dungy and some of the rest of their coaching staff might actually disrupt the continuity Peyton Manning has enjoyed since coming into the league.  My theory finally paid off when the Colts lost the Superbowl . . .

I thought the Titans would would have a great in place of the Colts.  And they did, but only after losing the first 6 games and replacing their starting quarterback.  I feel I should get a mulligan on that one.  Same with the Texans, one of my wildcard picks, who came damn to close to the post season.  They posted the same record as the 5th seed Ravens and 6th seed Jets, but lost in tiebreakers.

So let's talk about the Ravens.  I totally had both them and the Bengals in postseason, but I flip-flopped the division winner and wildcard team.  Being only a game off, I feel pretty justified here.

Lastly, I had the Chargers and Patriots winning their divisions.  Like everyone else.

I did nearly as well in the NFC playoff predictions.  The Vikings unsurprisingly cruised to a second straight division title.  I expected the Bears to best the Packers for a wildcard spot, but I failed to realize how poor Chicago's coaches were.  And now they're mostly fired.

I picked the Eagles for a much better season than they had, but the did make the playoffs.  I'm still not sure how the Cowboys managed to be a playoff team and beat Philadelphia three times in one season.

Elsewhere I picked the 49ers and Panthers for big seasons.  Although neither did horrendously, they did miss the playoffs.  At least San Francisco kept the NFC-West interesting.

Most happily of all though, I had the Saints making the playoffs and going on a long postseason run from the beginning.  Geaux Saints!

So take it from me gambling aficionados.  A guy who's right 58% of the time

Oh damn, there's some football games tomorrow

After about 10:00 pm tomorrow we'll know who's playing in the Superbowl!

In the first fight we've got Payton Manning & the 16-2 Colts hosting the surging 11-7 Jets. Now, the Jets have the league's best defense and some pretty damn good running backs. But the Colts have Manning at quarterback and the Jets have the mistake-prone rookie Mark Sanchez.

The Jets surprised many by beating the Chargers last round, but the Colts are just too good this year. For all the talk about the Jets' confidence after taking down the Chargers, the Colts are probably feeling pretty good after destroying the Ravens, who themselves took out Indy's arch-rival Patriots in the Wild-Card round. I think the Colts will be headed back to the Superbowl for the second time in 5 years with relative ease.

Now for the main event - the NFC Championship Game. For most of the season, the Vikings and Saints clearly stood out as this conference's best teams, and in their Divisional Round games they certainly looked the part - beating the Cowboys and Cardinals by 31 points each. I shudder to even predict the winner of this game, but with a gun to my head I suppose I would pick the Saints to advance to the franchise's first Superbowl.

Too bad the Bengals couldn't crash the party too.

AFC North Championship = respect

After a terrible first half offensively, the Bengals pulled together a respectable effort, beat a bad Chiefs team, and clinched their division.

As the snow began to fall, the Bengals began celebrating their second division crown of the Marvin Lewis era. Awful looking graphics filled the stadium, the Black Eyed Peas were played (I'll bet you can guess which song), and AFC-North 2009 Championship tee-shirts flooded the Pro Shop.

Chants of Who-Dey could be heard all around Cincinnati. So much so that people outside of Cincinnati finally heard the call.

It took literally the entire season, but the Bengals finally landed a prime-time game!

In the last week of the season there is no Monday Night Football game, and the Sunday Night game isn't announced until a week before the game. This is to ensure that the best possible matchup lands the spot, as many teams are eliminated from the playoffs by then. With the Jets facing a win-and-you're-in scenario, and the Bengals chasing a higher seed than the Patriots, the powers in New York decided to put Bengals-Jets in the final prime-time spot of the regular season.

I was ready to write a post about the Bengals getting overlooked by a national audience, possibly due to some sort of conspiracy theory. After all, the Browns - who finished a half game worse than the Bengals last season - had TWO primetime games, a Thursday nighter against the Steelers and a Monday Night Football showdown with the Ravens.

The Raiders got a Monday Night game against the Chargers, and the Thanksgiving game against the Cowboys despite being only a half game ahead of the Bengals last year.

A lot of mediocre teams from last year received multiple primetime games as well. The Redskins, Broncos, and Packers each got two or more despite finishing at or below .500. Was there really no room for the Bengals?

Well there is now. We'll see Sunday night if the Bengals can finish the season with a bang. If they do, it will be the final game ever played in Giants stadium, and the first time Cincinnati has ever won there.

This rant is over.

Week 3 NFL Observations

The 'stache is back to fill the void left by a lack of online writing about professional sports.

Week Three was pretty interesting in the NFL, as several of the undefeated and winless teams so far come as a complete surprise. None of these surprises me more than the Carolina Panthers. Losing big to the Cowboys last night, I am wondering where the Panthers that won 12 games last season went. The NFC-South once again has flipped its standings from top to bottom from one year to the next. Excepting the Saints, the whole division looks a little weak.

Speaking of New Orleans, I believe they are the best team in the NFC right now. Even without Drew Brees throwing a touchdown (which will be a very rare occurrence this year), the Saints still handily beat Buffalo. Next week they take on the 3-0 Jets, and this one should be a blockbuster.

That won't be the only great game next week either. As I already wrote extensively about the AFC-North yesterday, I'll just move on.

Ravens at Patriots - This game will go a long way in determining who dominates the AFC this year. The Colts are easily tied as contenders, and it looks as though the Jets are somehow in the conversation.

Cowboys at Broncos - If the Broncos go 4-0, I will be shocked. The Cowboys need this game to keep pace with division rivals Philadelphia and New York.

San Diego at Pittsburgh - The Chargers need to catch up to the Broncos, and the Steelers are already two games out of contention in the AFC-North. These teams usually match up well, so this could be a very close one.

Green Bay at Minnesota - Ignore for a second the Brett-Favre-vs-his-old-team story line, and you'll realize that would have been a great game anyway. A win would suddenly put Green Bay at the top of the division.

'Til next week, Mustache out

Week Two NFL Observations

Back again, Mustache is bringing you his thoughts following week 2 of the NFL season. (As a side note, I'd like you all to sing "Baba O'Reilly" by the Who in your heads when thinking of me, replacing the lyric "Teenage Wasteland" with "Teenage_Mustache")

What a great weekend of football it was. The Bengals won, the Bearcats won, and the three teams I hate the most all lost. If not for a close Baltimore win, it would have been a perfect week.

Let's start with the biggest story of the week, the Pats going down the lowly Jets. I thought the Patriots were a lock to win this division after winning 11 games without Tom Brady last season. I also thought that Eric Mangini had train-wrecked this team, dooming them to mediocrity for years. But apparently quarterback Mark Sanchez was worth his draft status, as the Jets are now 2-0. And the Patriots look like anything but their nearly unbeatable 2007 selves.

Looking at where Mangini landed after the train wreck, the Cleveland Browns look like a 53-car pile-up (that's the number of players on an NFL roster - I couldn't come up with anything more clever). They lost to a good Vikings team week one, but looked absolutely awful against a poor Denver team that is somehow 2-0. I said before that I thought Denver would be the worst team in the league this year. I now believe that team will be the Browns. Jacksonville, Kansas City, Detroit, St. Louis and Tampa Bay will also be pretty awful, but most of these should come as no surprise.

The Bengals bounced back to beat a team on the road they were supposed to lose to. They looked shaky, with tons of penalties and the offensive line is still struggling, but the defense held their own with tons of sacks (mostly from Antwan Odom) and generally good play against a powerful offense. If they can pull out the win against the Steelers next week, look for the national media to start talking about them as a playoff team (or talk about them at all at least)

Two teams that have really impressed me so far this year are the Saints and the Colts. I picked the Saints to win their division, and I'm quite thrilled with their performance through two games. Drew Brees is on pace to throw 72 TD passes (let me be the first to say there's no way this will happen - but he may very well beat the 50 TD record Brady set in 2007). Their defense looks improved enough to build on the highest octane offense from last season.

The Colts have surprised me, as I thought this could be a down year for them. Almost their entire coach staff turned over, and yet Peyton Manning continues to impress. The MVP race is looking like a showdown between Brees, Manning, Adrian Peterson and maybe Philip Rivers and it's only week two!

Then again, it's just week two.

NFL 2009 preview - AFC

Just what you need. Another season preview!

I have to post these now, a week before the regular season begins, so we can either look back at how much of a genius I was, or (more likely) make fun of me for wasting my time with a ridiculously incorrect outlook. To that end, I will predict the playoff teams, but not actual playoff results. I'll do that come January, so in February we can either praise me as a football-savant, or (more likely) make fun of me!

So let's begin:

West

This is as good a place to start as any. The Chargers have locked up this division for several straight years, and given how bad the Raiders and Chiefs have been for a while, the Chargers are virtual locks to repeat. Denver was within one game of winning the division last year, but a late season meltdown (and that's being kind) and a rookie head coach have led to a disastrous offseason. They lost their Pro Bowl quarterback and will probably lose their leading receiver. I wouldn't be surprised if the Broncos were the worst team in football this year. Yes, worse than the Lions.

I have the Raiders in second, largely because they will win games in a weak division and have the talent to take a few surprise games here and there. The new regime in Kansas City is more promising than in Denver, but the turnaround is very unlikely to happen quickly.

South

This is a tough division to predict. For years it has been dominated by the Colts until the Titans burst through with the best record in football. The Jaguars were pegged as the hot team last season, but collapsed almost immediately after a solid postseason to tend their 2007 campaign. The Texans keep going 8-8.

While I don't think the Titans will have the best record in football again, and although they lost star defensive lineman Albert Haynesworth, I think they still have the pieces in place to repeat a division crown. I think Houston is poised for a decent year, and are possible rising stars. A wild card berth seems possible. I'm sure I'll regret this prediction, but this will be the first year the Colts don't go to the playoffs in a long time, although they may still post a 9-7 record. I find it unlikely that Jacksonville can find their stride in such a tough division.

North

Yeah that's right. I put the defending Superbowl champs at third in their own division. Ben Roethlisberger was sacked a ton last year, and their relatively poor offensive line wasn't fortified with any notable free agents or draft picks. It seems likely he could go down this season. The Ravens will meanwhile continue to have a serviceable offense while maintaining a top notch defense, despite losing Terrel Suggs.

Cincinnati appears on the rise after a solid offseason. If Carson Palmer stays healthy a wild card berth seems within reach so long as they can win divisional games. The Browns will be one of the bottom three teams in football. Not only is their new coach, Eric Mangini, not a very good coach, but he is stepping into one of the worst rosters in football. Ten days out from the start of his season and he hasn't named a starting quarterback!

East

It's almost impossible to imagine the Patriots not winning this division. Without Tom Brady last season they still hit 11-5, and if it weren't for a tie-breaker with the even-record Dolphins they would have won the division. It is doubtful that they'll have another perfect regular season, but on paper this team is just as good. Meanwhile, Miami will take a step backward, probably ending the season around .500.

Elsewhere, the Jets are in rebuilding mode, and will probably have a long season ahead of them. Buffalo I think could be an exciting team, and while I don't neccesarily think that they'll be playoff contenders, I do think end the season with a winning record.

Playoff Picture

So Farve From Over

Alternative headline:

"So Favre away / Doesn't anybody stay in one place anymore"




Alright, well I think I have to mention the Brett Favre un-retirement at least once on this blog. After all, for the second straight year, Favre's will-he-or-won't-he play-this-season antics have dominated the offseason.

And for good reason. In football nothing happens for like 6 months, aside from the draft. And for all the hoopla that goes into mock drafts and rookie workouts, it's really pretty insanely boring.

So while some desperately bored football junkies try to get their fix from the draft, Canadian football, and sometimes even baseball, let's be glad their is a man who can entertain for months at a time just by avoiding answering a yes or no question.

I'd argue that Brett Favre is not the good-natured southern-boy, tractor-drivin, Wrangler-wearing, indecisive honky that we're led to believe. In actuality, Brett Favre is the greatest showman in professional sports (sorry Ochocinco). Why? Because he has been able to lead Michael-Jordan-level unretirement excitement twice now (which realistically is more than Jordan, as his second comeback lacked the fanfare of the first). And I'll bet he's got another one in him.

Go ahead, roll your eyes. Comment (politely) that you're actually really sick of hearing about Favre and that you wish he'd just go away. I think you're either a liar or Packers fan, and I'll address each of you separately.

Those of you that are sick of him probably don't think he's all that good anymore. And compared to his MVP heyday, you're probably right. But he's still solid enough that more than one team would like to have him, and he's only a year and a half removed from the NFC championship game. Obviously he didn't repeat this success with the Jets, but there was more than Brett Favre wrong with that team.

And anyway, even if he does stink this year, won't it be fascinating to watch the meltdown (unless you're a Vikings fan)? I mean, what's coach Brad Childress going to do? Bench the most noteworthy player of the last 20 years? Good luck "Chilly" (as Brett's already calling him).

Regardless of his potential play, what's not to love about his offseason retirement musings? It's like a Hitchcock plot: full of unexpected twists and perfect timing (from an entertainment standpoint). Last year he picked the most boring moment in the entire NFL calendar to announce his desire to return to the Packers, and when they said they didn't want him, his pre-training camp showdown was legendary. He threatened to show up to training camp and "compete" for a starting spot, he contemplated accepting a two-year $20 million dollar package to NOT play football, and he ended up in New York where his new coach (actually younger than him!) made his newborn son's middle name Brett.

He upped the anty this year though. The Jets called his retirement bluff and just cut him. Brett was now free and could play for whomever would have him. This gave him tremendous negotiating power. After months of speculation, much of it driven by the Favre camp, and once all signs pointed toward Minneapolis (again during the most boring part of the offseason), he suddenly said he couldn't do it. Training camp was now underway, and it certainly looked like he wouldn't play this year, even after subtly hinting that he still possibly could.

Aha! Training camps winds down, and Brett Favre finally becomes a Viking after at least six months of speculation. Honestly, I'm pretty sure he just didn't want to practice. I won't fault him for this too much. After all, who reading this entry hasn't slacked off at work when possible before? And if you're reading this at work, I double my point.

So now we just have to wait and see if the grey-bearded Favre can do some serious damage with a pretty good Vikings team.




Now, Packer fans: I can understand why you'd be upset that your most beloved star is now playing for a division rival. But I'd like to point out that he wanted to come back to you and your coach and G.M. said no and traded him away. I think if you really appreciate the years of service and Superbowl victory he gave you, you should respect his desire to keep playing. But you can still root for the Vikings to lose!


///


Seriously, are you not entertained!




As a side note, Vinny Testaverde played until he was 44. Brett turns 40 this season. Don't be surprised if he retires/untires a couple more times. I know I'll be hanging on every word. So long as they're during the offseason.