That said, the similarities definitely go beyond their first names. They have both spent years cultivating unparalleled connections within their respective sports (although King doesn't quite have the ubiquitous power that Gammons holds). They both use particularly tired cliches, and spend a lot of time fawning over players and passing off the fawning as analysis. Finally, the most aggravating thing to me is the constant name-dropping. In this respect King may be an even worse offender than Gammons. Anyway, enough with the preamble. Let's dig in!
"And the legend grows,'' Eddie George said just after 4 p.m. Sunday afternoon at the NBC studios, staring up at the nine-television wall the crew members of NBC's Football Night in America fixate on every Sunday during the NFL season.
This is how he opens his column. Why is he telling us this? Is he trying to make us jealous of NBC's crew, that they get to "fixate" on a nine-television wall? Also, this quote from George is neither insightful nor accurate; even Tony Romo is not a "legend" after one and a half good seasons. By the way, in case you were wondering whether Eddie George is cool enough to hang out with Peter King...
George, a former Heisman Trophy winner...
Oh, ok, whew.
...stayed over to visit with his good buddy Jerome Bettis...
Gratuitous name drop number 2.
...and to see how our show is put together.
I guarantee you Eddie George doesn't give two shits about how the show is put together. What, he can't think for the life of him how an NFL studio show is put together? He's never seen one before? He can't figure it out? Or is it just the awesome Peter King's show that he's curious about? This bullshit is something King pulls incessantly; he makes shit up, for the sole purpose of making himself seem more important. Then he goes off on a boring speech directed at team owners about not spending a lot of money on coaches, and about how quarterbacks are more important. I won't cut-and-paste the entire thing, because this post is already going to be super long. Here's a nice piece of advice:
There's something more important than a $4 million coach -- a quarterback.
Call me crazy, but isn't King supposing here that these owners who hire expensive coaches don't care about having a good QB, only the expensive coach? The very nature of the quarterback position is such that it's impossible to tell which QBs will succeed in the NFL. Every single owner tries his hardest, I'm guessing, to land the best possible QB in the eyes of his front office personnel. To grab one of his examples, I don't think Wayne Huizenga, the owner of the Dolphins, thought to himself, "I'll just get Nick Saban and not bother trying to get a good quarterback. Even though Saban has never coached in the NFL before, he can succeed with any kind of QB!" As it turned out, Huizenga made a mistake in acquiring Daunte Culpepper, but the amount of money his coach makes did not, I'm guessing, play any kind of role in the decision to get Culpepper.
Coaches can't do it without quarterbacks.
We get the point. A good coach needs a good quarterback. Shut up already. This sentence appears in paragraph 8 of his argument. How dense does he think his readers are?
The moral of the story? Patience, a good personnel staff and a quarterback.
Couldn't the coach be considered a member of the "personnel staff"? And what does patience have to do with anything? Yes, some QBs struggle early on, but that has nothing to do with expensive coaches. Not only that, King stated earlier that Gibbs "waited too long to play Jason Campbell." "Waited too long" sounds an awful lot like patience to me, doesn't it? Or were they too patient?
What caught my eye Sunday:
The faith Tony Romo showed in Jason Witten and the tight end's historic day. "I should have been the goat today,'' Witten said over the phone from Detroit. "But Tony didn't give up on me.'' With six minutes left, Romo hit Witten with a pass, and Witten bulled for what should have been the winning 10-yard touchdown ... except he fumbled at the Lions 1, giving the ball back to Detroit.
First of all, you had to tell us that you spoke with him over the phone? Who cares? And how else would you speak to him? Second of all, look at that first sentence again. Let's review the following salient points, which were all true right before the game-winning play:
1. Jason Witten was having a ridiculous day. In fact, as King later points out in his awards section, Witten set an NFL record for most catches in a game by a tight end.
2. Jason Witten is in fact one of the best tight ends in the NFL.
3. Jason Witten had one crucial, but aberrant, fumble, earlier in the fourth quarter.
Given this information, what would you expect Romo to say? "Well, Witten is awesome, but he fumbled earlier, so I just have no faith left in him, despite the fact that he caught the ball thirteen other times in this game and didn't fumble." So many insane, unpredictable things happen in the NFL every week, and King chose, as the first item that "caught his eye" on Sunday, Tony Romo "showing faith" in one of the best tight ends in the NFL, who happened to be enjoying a record-setting game. Excellent.
"I'm coming back to you, so don't worry,'' Romo said to a downcast Witten, who thought he'd blown the game.
I guarantee you Peter King made up this quote. Also, at that point the Cowboys were down by one with 6 minutes left and the Lions pinned deep. Did he really think the game was totally over?
Wasn't this supposed to be New England's toughest game since Indy? It was, but Belichick let his tired team -- after three straight night games, culminating in the emotional Monday-nighter at Baltimore -- skip practice on Wednesday and go lighter than usual Thursday and Friday. That's not the sole reason the Patriots manhandled the Steelers, but it helped.
This statement is only funny because in King's "weekly pickoff", which I can't figure out how to link to because it only shows the current week's picks, he listed five reasons that the Steelers would beat the Patriots, and one of them was that Belichick didn't make his team practice on Wednesday before the game, thus indicating that his players were really tired. When I initially read that, I thought to myself, "Wouldn't giving his players a day off help them recuperate and shake off their fatigue? I would be more concerned if Belichick, knowing his team was tired, made them practice their asses off anyway." But what do I know? Peter King is the master prognosticator. Only he can use a fact as a predictor that the Steelers would beat the Patriots, and then use that same fact in hindsight to explain why the exact opposite happened.
The Fine Fifteen
Ah yes, often the most enjoyable part of the column. King lists the top 15 teams in the NFL, in order. I sense some fawning is in order. Take it away, PK!3. Dallas (12-1). Name the quarterbacks you'd take over Romo for the next few years. Brady and Manning. OK. Now who? Big Ben, Carson Palmer? Maybe. But it's a discussion.
Roethlisberger is a bad choice. He's had exactly one decent year ('05), when the Steelers' running game and defense were so good that he basically didn't have to do anything; one bad year ('06), after his own motorcycle accident (which was a breach of his NFL contract, by the way); and one good year ('07). Romo is a far better choice than Roethlisberger, even if he's not yet a "legend".
11. Tampa Bay (8-5). Think the Bucs are flukish? A lie. Three different quarterbacks have engineered the team's last four games. Including the kicker and punter, 23 of their 24 starters are signed at least through the end of 2009. (Only center Jon Wade will be a free-agent next March.) Good thing the Glazers hung onto Jon Gruden after last year's debacle.
Hey, Peter. On page 1 of this column, you argued that a good QB was really important, and a big-name, big-money coach is less so. Now you're saying that the Bucs are not fluky (sorry, "flukish") because they keep changing their QB and they held on to their big-name, big-money coach. Clearly, you have completely forgotten what you wrote three pages ago. Nicely done. Also, the fact that they have all of their starters signed through '09 does not serve as evidence that they are not "flukish"; it just means that if they are, in fact, not a fluke, they will continue to be good for the next couple of years. However, if they suck next year, then we'll pretty much know for a fact that they were a fluke, since they will have the same personnel as they do this year.
15. Washington (6-7). A reward for their perseverance -- and for the best game of Todd Collins' life.
Joe Gibbs brought his team together before the Thursday night game to give them a motivational speech: "Men, we need to win this game. Not because one of our best players was recently murdered and it would be a nice tribute to him to win a game. Not because if we win we're somehow still in the playoff race in our horrible conference. No, we have to win because if we do emerge victorious in this game, Peter King might, just might, give us the tremendous honor of being named the fifteenth best team, out of 30, in the NFL. I ask you, what further motivation could you possibly need?" And yea, verily it came to pass.
Then we come to the awards section, in which King arbitrarily names the top performers on offense, defense, special teams, as well as some other useless crap. In the middle of his gushing over Todd Collins, the Redskins backup QB whom the Artist Formerly Known As The Bears Defense allowed to complete wide-open passes all over the field, PK offers us this:
First snap: incompletion. Second snap: short completion. Third snap: sack, fumble, Chicago ball. Fourth snap: 21-yard perfect strike for a touchdown to tight end Todd Yoder.
Objection, your honor. Relevance?
Later, in the "Coach of the Week" category, we have Wade Phillips!
But Phillips has done some really smart things this year, not the least of which is making Terrell Owens a team leader by having him stand in front of the team -- often -- and talking like a leader. Maybe T.O. isn't the perfect guy to do that, but it makes Owens feel like a king and makes him toe the line as a team player. The Cowboys are 12-1 because they don't wilt when the pressure's on. Phillips was the right hire at the right time.
This entire paragraph is nothing but a collaboration of sanctimonious bullshit and outright falsehoods. "Talking like a leader...makes Owens feel like a king...makes him toe the line...they don't wilt when the pressure's on..." Who the hell enjoys reading this crap? And they're 12-1 because they don't wilt when the pressure's on? What? Maybe they're 12-1 because they're a fucking good team and the Lions linebacker decided to try to scoop up a fumble that the Cowboys then recovered rather than just falling on it and icing the game. And wouldn't Witten's fumble, the one King specifically mentioned earlier, qualify as "wilting when the pressure's on", if there really is such a thing? Does the fact that he later scored the game-winning touchdown exempt him from any previous displays of wilting? Did he successfully unwilt? One more thing. What does any of this have to do with Phillips being coach of the week? You're telling me Witten wouldn't have caught the game-winning pass with, say, Lovie Smith or Mike McCarthy or Cam Cameron on the sideline? Peter King, I hate you.
Next, we get to the quotes of the week section:
"Well done is always better than well said. That's been the motto of this team.''
-- New England quarterback Tom Brady, three days before the Patriots beat Pittsburgh. He was responding to reports of Steelers safety Anthony Smith guaranteeing a Pittsburgh victory in the days before the game.
Am I alone in thinking that Brady always says the right thing? I mean, always? So I asked him: Where'd you learn the "well done'' line, and who taught you to always say things the way your coaches and parents and fandom would want you to say them?
Which leads me to my ...I really think King is just trying to make us jealous that he has Tom Brady's cell phone number and can text him. Attention, Mr. King: We don't care. Thank you.Text Message of the Week
"Ben Franklin said that. I learn from where we all have, my dad!''
--Tom Brady.
Enjoyable/Aggravating Travel Note of the Week
This is traditionally one of the most annoying parts of his column. He'll often complain about people yammering on a cell phone while he's enjoying his first-class compartment on the Amtrak Acela Express, which (by the way) he gets to write off as a business expense. This week, he has no travel story of his own, and he hasn't managed to suck Brett Favre's dick yet in this particular column. So he mentions this story. Of course, this story is boring, not enjoyable or aggravating. Wait, there's traffic in New York City? It took him a long time to drive through it? Can't he just skip a weekly item if he has nothing interesting to write about? On second thought, that wouldn't leave him much of a column. Never mind.Brett Favre flew from Green Bay to the Teterboro Airport in suburban New Jersey late last Tuesday afternoon, then was driven into New York to accept the Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year award that night.
The first 756 miles of the trip, in the air, took 105 minutes.
The last eight miles of the trip, on the ground during rush hour, took 65 minutes.
That's 432 mph on phase one of the trip, 7 mph on the second leg.
Ten Things I Think I Think
This title, the core of MMQB, has already been made fun of incessantly. Suffice it to say that this is King's attempt at humor. The issue I haven't seen tackled is the fact that this part of the column is in outline form. Within any 1 (out of the 10 things he thinks he thinks), there might be an a point, a b, etc., sometimes as many as 10 or 12 divisions. It ends up being a lot more than 10 things. For example, this week, number 1 is:
1. I think these are my quick-hit thoughts of Week 14:
He then lists off eleven quick-hit thoughts. So just after number 1, we've already exceeded ten things. You've exceeded the quota, Mr. King. Stop your column. Included in these quick-hit thoughts:
c. Whatever happened to Matt Leinart? Has he been kidnapped?
No. He's on injured reserve. He went down for the year in Week 5. There's nothing interesting to say about him. Way to joke about a felony though. Good stuff.
j. I'm no ratings maven, but I'll bet a dime that a Dallas-New England or Green Bay-New England Super Bowl would draw the biggest audience in American television history.Because you're a fool. According to every commentator and columnist, every NFL team is only as good as its previous few games. Four weeks ago, the Vikings were in last place, at 3-6, and Tarvaris Jackson looked like me at QB, and Peterson was hurt. They play a couple of patsies, and suddenly they're going to beat the Cowboys? I think this is hyperbole even for you, Mr. King.k. Why do I think the Vikings might have something to say about that?
g. I know the Steelers lost, but Ben Roethlisberger's touchdown throw to Najeh Davenport was a thing of beauty. Big Ben stepped out of trouble in the pocket, waited for just the right moment for Davenport to shake his coverage, and put a perfect rainbow into his arms in the end zone. A couple of years ago, I don't think Roethlisberger would have had the pocket presence to sidestep the pressure on the play, and I don't think he'd have thrown the ball with such beautiful touch.
This thought actually occurs under number 8, titled "I think this is what I liked about Week 14". My thought is that while the sidestep of the pressure was nice, the throw was a wobbly duck, the guy was wide open when he threw it, and he almost threw it too softly, since the Pats defender, completely out of position when the ball was thrown, was almost able to get back into position to make a play on the ball. The throw was certainly not "a perfect rainbow", nor did it have "such beautiful touch". One doesn't need to express man-crushes on players to analyze them accurately, or to be entertaining.
i. Not to compare the two, but Eli Manning played his second straight clutch fourth quarter Sunday, this time in Philly.
Given the lack of comparative language or anything else suggesting a comparison, nobody would have suspected this. Now that you said, "not to compare the two", I think it is a comparison. If this blog post weren't so insanely long already, I would write my own column: "Ten things I think I think about the things Peter King thinks he thinks, which I think is actually far more than ten things."
g. I wish PR people would edit post-game quote sheets. When a writer has 16 sheets and has to wade through 15.8 pages of total bullcrap, it tends to aggravate him at 3:23 a.m.
Wow. Just...wow. Somebody hands you a sheet with all of the post-game quotes, because you're too high up the Sports Illustrated ladder to go get the quotes yourself, and you complain about it? And you want us to feel sorry for you? Look, either have us be jealous of you because you have Tom Brady's cell phone number and you get to watch nine football games at once with a bunch of famous ex-football stars, or try to get our sympathy by complaining about post-game quote sheets and NYC rush-hour traffic. I don't think either venture will work, but both definitely will not. And how old are you that you're bragging about staying up until 3:23 a.m.? 3:23! We're impressed! You're a tool. Go to sleep.
10. I think these are my non-NFL thoughts of the week:a. The Heisman voters got it right. What quarterback, in any league, has ever thrown more than 20 touchdown passes and rushed for more than 20 touchdowns in a year? Tim Tebow had 51 combined. And, apparently, Tebow is a heck of a kid.
You're a journalist. Figure out if a quarterback has ever done that. Do some goddamn research. Or did the stat sheet that those despicable "PR people" you complained about earlier brought you not mention it? "And apparently, Tebow is a heck of a kid." Well, he's never met Tebow, doesn't know shit about him, doesn't cover college football, but Peter King will be damned if that's going to stop him from gushing over him. Wait! It gets better.
Hard to imagine a kid who was raised better, and is more mature as a college sophomore, than Tebow.
By using the word "apparently", King indicated that he didn't personally know much about Tebow, just what he'd heard. Now, based purely on hearsay, King is willing to posit that it's hard to imagine a kid who was raised better? Who is more mature as a college sophomore? Where are the editors on this one? If King doesn't know Tebow, how does he know how he was raised? How does he know how mature he is? This whole Tebow item reeks of a lack of journalistic integrity. I would maybe accept these statements from Tebow's father, or his coach. From a national writer who doesn't cover college football and doesn't know Tebow to unabashedly fawn over him? Ludicrous.
Finally, here's a nice summation of the entire column.
Peter King By the Numbers
3: Number of words King made up in the column ("flukish", "sackman", "fandom")
43: Number of things King actually thinks he thinks (not, as you might guess, 10)
14: Number of times while reading MMQB that I wished Peter King was right in front of me so I could punch him in the mouth.
4: Number of names King drops gratuitously, in a transparent attempt to make us jealous of him for personally knowing these people (Eddie George, Jason Witten, Jerome Bettis, Tom Brady)
I've talked to many people who have used the word "tool" as an insulting term for people. Nobody knows exactly what it means, but for some reason it describes certain people perfectly: Carson Daly, Dane Cook, etc. Peter King? Perfect example of a tool. I look forward to continuing to bash his column in the weeks to come.
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