Peter King Continues To Talk Directly From His Rectum

I know we should change the name of the blog by now, seeing as how I've been focusing pretty much exclusively on Peter King, but we're in the heart of football season, and somebody has to put a stop to King's douchebaggery. I made up that word and I love it. Anyway, if I go through a whole King MMQB column again, my eyes will start bleeding, as will yours, the reader. So I'll just pick a couple of choice comments.

In re: Belichick's and Coughlin's decisions to play their starters for Saturday's game that meant nothing to their playoff standings:

I loved the call. Loved it. Football players should play football, particularly with so much on the line, and coaches should read their players, which Coughlin did so well.

1) I hated that sentence. Hated it.
2) "Football players should play football..." I'll let that one speak for itself.
3) "Coaches should read their players" Gee, Coughlin managed to figure out that his players would maybe enjoy potentially knocking off the heretofore undefeated Patriots? What a genius! What a mind-reader!

Giants punt. Patriots punt. Giants punt. Then the silliest drive of the season happened. Pats' ball at their 35, and after a first-down incompletion, Randy Moss sprinted up the right sideline and beat coverage, but Brady, under pressure, underthrew him and the ball slipped off his fingertips. Third down. Surely Brady would do something to move the chains now, with 11 minutes to go, down 28-23. "The play was supposed to be a clear-out route for Wes [Welker], and it was supposed to go to him for a first down,'' said Moss. In other words, Moss takes two cover guys with him, streaking down the right side, and there's just single coverage on the elusive Welker. "But the Giants' corner and safety both trapped Wes and tried to trap Tommy into throwing it to him.'' At the same time, Giant corner Sam Madison pulled up lame, and safety James Butler was slow to respond. By the time Brady looked up, there was Moss running free up the right side. AGAIN. This time Brady had time, threw it deep and hit Moss right in stride.

I watched this drive, and then read this summary. There was absolutely nothing "silly" about the drive. Tom Brady threw deep twice to Randy Moss. The first time, Brady was pressured and underthrew Moss. The second time, he was not under pressure and he hit him. This drive is the opposite of silly. This drive is pretty much what has happened in Patriots games all year. Moss has 18 catches of more than 20 yards this season, and an NFL-record 23 receiving touchdowns, so the fact that he caught a long bomb for a TD was, in fact, very unsilly. I think Peter King went to one day of one English class, and on that day, the professor taught about the benefits of using hyperbole. King fell asleep for the second part of the lecture, in which the professor warned against the overuse of hyperbole and brought countless examples of writers who lose credibility in doing so.

Defensive Player of the Week

San Francisco DL Bryant Young. Just one tackle in the last game of his life, the 49ers' loss at Cleveland, but the game has lost an excellent player and an even better ambassador.

First of all, I had to read the rest of the paragraph before I realized that Young didn't actually die, he just retired. Second of all, I am fully aware of how meaningless King's "awards" are, but why put Young in here and then shamelessly admit that he didn't do shit this week? His column is already seven million words long; he couldn't have found another place to pay tribute to him? He's mocking his own meaningless awards! Third, I don't know what an ambassador for the league is, exactly. But I would imagine that he's better at playing than ambassading. One day when it's not New Years' Eve I will actually take the time to go through an entire MMQB column and count the instances in which King exaggerates, gushes over merely above-average players, or otherwise stretches the truth. Expect the number to contain three digits.

Special Teams Players of the Week

Cleveland KR/PR Josh Cribbs. Imagine having 129 punt-return yards at the end of the first quarter. His 74-yard touchdown on a punt return was the first punt return score of his career and cemented his status as the returner of the year in the NFL -- with all due respect given to Devin Hester. I'm not saying Cribbs is better than Hester, because he's not. But he had more opportunities, and he had 629 more return yards. And in this game, he had a 94-yard kickoff return for touchdown called back on a horrible holding call against wedge-man Lennie Friedman.

Where do I begin with this morass? Well, in the interest of full disclosure, I will admit to being a Bears fan, and am therefore somewhat biased in my opinion of Devin Hester. (Translation: I have a healthy heterosexual man-crush on Hester.) Now that we've got that out of the way, um, what? Let's see the ridiculous sentence again.

His 74-yard touchdown on a punt return was the first punt return score of his career and cemented his status as the returner of the year in the NFL -- with all due respect given to Devin Hester.

First of all, to say that Cribbs's status was "cemented" as the returner of the year is ridiculous, because while King makes a case for Cribbs, it's a weak case, and at best it's debatable whose season was better. Second of all, regarding the actual argument, Cribbs' "cementing" was achieved via his first career punt return for a touchdown, occurring in the last game of the season. He had a total of three touchdowns this season, including kickoffs and punts. An excellent season. All Hester did was set a motherfucking record for most touchdown returns in a season, with six. For the second consecutive year. Sorry for the italics, but the point needs to be made.

King's arguments, such as they are, revolve around two points: a) Cribbs had more return yards, and b) Cribbs had a touchdown return nullified by a questionable holding call. Well, in the words of Jules Winnfield, allow me to retort. In response to a), I would point out that King himself admits that Cribbs had more opportunities, resulting in the extra 629 return yards. What he fails to mention, because it significantly weakens his argument, is that the reason Cribbs got all these extra opportunities is because teams aren't scared shitless to kick to him. I saw a graphic during the Packers-Bears game that said that the Bears had set an NFL record for most opposing kicks (kickoffs + punts) out of bounds. Although this record is, technically speaking, a team record, it is due to one man, and one man only: Josh Cribbs. Just kidding! It is Devin Hester.

b) is hardly an argument, since holding calls are basically by definition questionable, and Hester has been similarly victimized.

Quote of the Week IV

"He has good aura with the football team. The team believes in the guy.''

-- Kansas City coach Herman Edwards, on quarterback Brodie Croyle, named the Chiefs' starter for 2008.

I read this quote and thought to myself, Edwards is begging to get fired. Why else would he spout nonsensical statements like this one? Let's see what Peter King thinks:

Good aura. Hmmmm. Herman Edwards could sell grain alcohol at a temperance convention.

Okay, putting aside the lame joke, is anybody besides King "sold" on Brodie Croyle now that we're aware that he has a "good aura"? My lord.

The next section is way too long to cite here, but King makes an impassioned yet pointless argument extolling the virtues of one Vincent Testaverde.

Check out where he ranks in NFL history against some of the greatest quarterbacks of all time in the key passing categories before you dismiss him as just some loser who lasted a long time.

But he is a loser who lasted a long time! All of the "key passing categories" King mentions are cumulative numbers - attempts, pass yards, TD passes, etc. - that one will accrue if one lasts as long as Testaverde did. Obviously he must have been decent enough to hang around for that long, but that's the only argument one can make.

Enjoyable/Aggravating Travel Note of the Week

This happened the week before last, and I'm sorry to say I simply forgot to use it. But on the New Jersey Transit train from suburban New Jersey into Manhattan 12 mornings ago for the Inside the NFL show at HBO, the Bill Parcells/Atlanta story was roiling, and I spent the first 35 minutes of a 42-minute commute on the phone with various club and league officials about it. The train is packed as a rule, and I always try to speak in a near-whisper on the phone because I hate listening to the phone calls of others. After the fourth and final phone call, I sat up from my bent-over position, trying to keep things quiet, and a 60ish woman in front of me, with fire in her eyes, hissed: "Can you please not make another phone call!''

"OK,'' I said.

When we exited the train, she stared at me for a full five seconds, tsk-tsked me, and harrumphed her way up the stairs to the street. Just another pleasant Wednesday in Commuterville.

This woman is my hero.

Joist's Pick: A Generally Well-Respected Columnist Named "Peter" Will Write Something That Will Piss Him Off

Football prognosticating is, generally speaking, a pretty foolish endeavor. TMQ, over on ESPN, has run all kinds of data showing that the most accurate football game forecasts involve generic predictions, such as Better Team Wins or Home Team Wins, which obviously don't even require one to know what teams are playing. And even these systems will only produce a winner around 60% of the time or so.

Peter King, however, ignores the innate futility of accurate football prognosticating. Not only does he pick games, he picks exact final scores of games, and he'll even occasionally predict something dopey and specific to happen in the game, like, "Willie Parker rushes for 124 yards and 2 TDs as the Steelers run all over the Bengals." (By the way, apropos exact final scores of games, TMQ used to have a hilarious running item about "the august New York Times' quixotic attempt to pick an exact final score" - scroll down here almost to the end of the column for an example - and give a running tally of its successes.)

What's also especially amusing about King's picks is that Sports Illustrated decided to run some sort of contest pitting readers against King's weekly picks, and if you beat him in a given week you get entered in a drawing to win a truck or something. At that point, why not just have a "taking candy from a baby" contest?

Ok, enough chitchat. On to this week's Peter King Challenge! (Note: link will only be relevant to this post for the next few days, and I can't figure out how to access the archives. Basically, if you're reading this after Sunday, you'll just have to trust me that he actually said these things.)

I say Bill Belichick gets Tom Brady his two touchdown passes to set the NFL record and plays hard for 16-0. Remember the one thing I've been harping on all season when it comes to the Patriots and how they approach these games. It's something you heard the NFL Films mikes capture on HBO's Inside the NFL show in November, when Belichick, late in the Pats' win at Indianapolis, exhorted his defense by saying over and over, "Sixty minutes! Sixty minutes!" That's why I think Brady will be playing well into the second half.

Patriots 29, Giants 13

Peter King is some kind of savant. After fifteen weeks of watching the Patriots running up the score on everybody, he has determined that the Patriots play hard all 60 minutes. In case we have forgotten, though, he's "been harping on [it] all season." By the way, I inferred the thing that King has been harping on, because he doesn't actually explicitly mention it, just a bunch of vague pronouns and an NFL Films quote. Also, how cute is it that he predicted the Pats to score 29 points? How is that even possible? Does he think they'll go for 2 after a TD for no reason? Or will it be three TDs, three field goals, and a safety? Does he just pick a number from 10 to 40 out of his ass? I'm loaded with questions here.

Talk about a waste of of jet fuel, with an awful infusion of greenhouse gases in the environment. I mean, wouldn't the crowd at the Georgia Dome prefer to see a nice scrimmage between the Falcons and the Sugar Bowl-bound Georgia Bulldogs?

Seahawks 17, Falcons 13

Up until two years ago, when King started doing the NBC show that he yammers about incessantly, SI flew him out to a different game every week so that he could "cover" it for his MMQB column. Now he sits on his fat ass in New Jersey to write his column, and it's exactly the same. Conclusion? He is a giant waste of jet fuel. He is also an arrogant son of a bitch.

The Saints win a wintry game in Chicago 11 months too late, then get eliminated from the playoffs while their charter is somewhere over Missouri on the way home. Through no fault of Drew Brees, by the way.

Saints 33, Bears 16

This is what I mean by specific, dopey predictions. The charter will be "over Missouri"? Do people really like reading this arbitrary shit?

Let me go on record as saying the Bengals going 6-10 does not surprise me, and I never bought into the Bengals before the season. Cincinnati is paying for having a bottom-10 defense in four of Marvin Lewis' five seasons.

Dolphins 20, Bengals 17

What he means: "Ha ha! I got a prediction right! I predicted the Bengals' downfall, after they went 8-8 with more arrests than wins last year! I am a genius! Hahahaha!"

Did you know that any of eight teams could be tied for the 13th pick in the NFL draft by the end of play Sunday, and these are two of them?

Eagles 30, Bills 17

After poring this little tidbit over for entirely too long, I think what King means to say is that it's possible that as many as eight teams will finish 7-9 (or possibly 8-8), which would qualify them for the 13th pick in the draft. The reason this statement is particularly stupid, in addition to the incredibly vague wording, is that "two of them" (i.e. the Eagles and the Bills) will not finish with identical records, since they have the same record now and they're playing each other. They could tie, yes, but then they would each be 7-8-1, which would not tie them with six other teams. It's also stupid because, needless to say, you can't "tie" for a specific pick in the draft - the NFL uses tie-breaking formulas to determine which teams pick ahead of others with identical records. Basically, in trying to present a meaningless and uninteresting fact (is it even remotely surprising that a whole lot of mediocre teams in a mediocre league would finish with equally mediocre records?), King has managed to confused the hell out of his readers. Well played, sir.

In what is believed to be a sportsbook record, not a single wager is placed on this game by any man, woman or gecko in the state of Nevada.

Buccaneers 13, Panthers 12

This is funny not because of King's line about geckos not wagering on this game in Nevada, but because this is yet another retarded final score prediction. 13-12? How many 13-12 games have there been in NFL history? (Hint: not many.)

Finishing .500 is a lot more important to Houston than entering the playoffs with some phony momentum is for the Jags.

Texans 20, Jaguars 9

This sentence is an absolute contradiction. The only way finishing .500 would help the Texans is if it gave them some sort of psychological lift for next year. (I refuse to use the word "momentum".) If you really buy into this whole psychological edge thing, which team is more likely to benefit from a win in this game: a team playing its next game in seven days, or a team playing its next game in seven months?

If I'm a Broncos fan, I like the fact that Jay Cutler's jawing with Philip Rivers. Shows me the guy's got a little chippiness to him. Reminds me of the time Phil Simms and former teammate Jim Burt jawed at each other when Burt defected to the Niners in the late 1980s. I want that feistiness and fervor in my quarterback. Oh, the game? The Vikes' balloon got deflated for me when they looked the Toledo Mud Hens last Sunday

Broncos 27, Vikings 24

If you've read this blog before, you know why the last sentence in this paragraph is a classic example of how fickle football commentators. In my previous Peter King post, I quoted King thusly:

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.

k. Why do I think the Vikings might have something to say about that?

On which I commented that King's an idiot (actually, I used the word "fool") for thinking that the Vikings are suddenly amazing just because they beat a few bad teams in a row. Now, less than three weeks later, King jumps off the bandwagon even more quickly than he got on. By the way, he gets paid an exorbitant sum of money to "analyze" football, while I've yet to receive a dime for my football analysis.

I say Rams coach Scott Linehan stays, in part because the ailing owner who hired him, Georgia Frontiere still loves him, and in part because team president John Shaw can't find anyone he likes more. It's a decision I support. Simple reason: The more you change coaches without a better alternative in mind, the more your team stays in turmoil.

Cardinals 33, Rams 27

More King arrogance. He supports their decision not to fire a coach who's been there one year. People in the Rams' front office just breathed a sigh of relief. Thank God we have Peter King's support!

The Steelers still have a prayer to win the third seed, so they've got to play this game hard. Re: Baltimore: If you could have predicted a nine-win decline in 2007, you're a better prognosticator than I. (I'm sure you are anyway.) By the way, a big Ravens fan friend of mine asked the other day, "Sometimes, when Brian Billick has that quizzical look of his on the sidelines, doesn't he remind you of Dwight Schrute?''

Steelers 23, Ravens 10

Don't let his sudden self-deprecating statement fool you. He's still arrogant; he's just reeling you in. In fact, I'll just take what he says at face value: Yes, I am a better prognosticator than he is.

So Tony Dungy figures he owes the Browns nothing, which is his right -- a right I support wholeheartedly. But he thinks: two years ago, we sat Peyton Manning all but one quarter in Game 15 against Seattle, and for all but one series in Game 16 against Arizona, and the Colts went out in their first playoff game and stunk it up against the Steelers at home and lost.

Colts 23, Titans 20

It took two paragraphs for the arrogance to come shooting back. Peter King "wholeheartedly" supports Tony Dungy's right to owe the Browns nothing. This statement is nonsense, Peter. Also, nobody cares what you think. They just want to outpick you and win the truck.

I should point out, in all fairness, that I actually agree with him. People have bitched that the Colts owe it to the integrity of the game to play their hardest to beat Tennessee, since the game has a direct effect on whether the Titans or Browns end up as the number 6 seed in the AFC. It's an indefensible position, but it's been claimed before. I remember two years ago, the White Sox had wrapped up their division heading into the final weekend, and the Yankees, Red Sox, and Indians were all fighting for two playoff spots. Ozzie Guillen announced he'd be resting a slew of starters for Chicago's weekend series against the Indians, and Yankees and Red Sox fans alike were skewering Guillen and the Sox for ruining the integrity of baseball by not playing their hardest. Guillen, of course, shot back with a response like, "If your team had just played better you wouldn't need our help," or some such thing. Of course, it ended up being very much irrelevant, as the White Sox's scrubs swept the Indians out of the playoff hunt. Sorry, Foist.

What was I talking about again? Oh, yeah. Peter King is retarded and annoying, and he started that last paragraph with the word "so". What a douche. The end.

Gammons' Writing Leaves Confused Feeling

After a long weekend, I'm back at work. I'm sick, I'm jetlagged, and I gotta take it out on someone. Then I remembered seeing, a couple weeks ago, Gammons' particularly muddled contribution to the pile of sanctimonious nonsense written after the Mitchell Report came out.

It begins thusly:

When I awoke this morning, I felt as if I had spent a fortnight sleeping underneath the Gandy Bridge.

I take it the Gandy Bridge is in Boston. I refuse to actually look this up, because I am that confident that Gammons would not reference a place outside of Boston, and also because I do not care.

George Mitchell did what he was paid to do, and because baseball's rampant drug culture is as well-sealed as underground weapon silos and stealth bombers at Davis-Monthan AFB, we were left to a sordid tale of associations, hearsay and the witness cooperation of sewer rats.

What a mess. Can a culture be sealed? Why not just stick with the weapons silos -- are the stealth bombers also "well-sealed"? I suppose it would be difficult to steal them, but "sealed" doesn't seem the right adjective. Again, I don't care what or where Davis-Monthan AFB is. Finally, sewer rats? Isn't that a little harsh? These are the people that cooperated. Are you a mob hit man or something?

Also, I didn't read the entire Mitchell Report, because I have better things to do, but it sounded like most of the evidence consisted of "testimony" by a couple of former clubhouse attendants who claim to have actually supplied drugs to some players. This is not "hearsay." The definition of hearsay is easy, because it's implied in the word -- "I heard so-and-so say." If the clubhouse attendant says "I gave Clemens 'roids," this is not "hearsay," because he was there and actually gave Clemens the 'roids. This information might be unreliable for other reasons, but I hate it when people call anything they consider unreliable "hearsay" without paying attention to what the word means.

Not that most owners had enough time to really understand this, which is why it's fortunate that Mitchell did not go back to the period when George W. Bush owned the Texas Rangers -- which Jose Canseco and others have fingered as a performance-enhancing Wal-Mart -- because there is no way Bush had any idea what was alleged in Canseco's book.

I've read this sentence repeatedly, and I do not understand what Gammons is trying to say with this George Bush thing. How is the likely fact that Bush had "no idea" about the steroids a reason why it is "fortunate" that the Report did not "go back" to the period when he owned the Rangers? At most, this fact is a reason why it doesn't matter whether the report discussed that period. Is Gammons concerned about the good name of the sitting president? I doubt it, but even if he is, the fact that Bush didn't know that steroids were used by members of his team isn't particularly damning. It's not good, either. It is just kind of irrelevant. As Gammons himself says, most of the owners probably didn't know what was going on. So what is the point here? Who knows.

Baseball wanted him to look at the period. He did, as best he could, and emptied it like a box of trash, with little differentiation between Roger Clemens and Brian Roberts, whose name was revealed without evidence of any wrongdoing whatsoever.

Brian Roberts confessed.

In this era of vigilante journalism, if it's a name, it's got guilt, and the fact that some "news" services ran with a phony report with 76 names Thursday morning puts "news" right there in the culture of the sewer rats.

"If it's a name, it's got guilt." This sentence is, of course, nonsensical. I guess he means, "if a name appears in a document, it means the person named is guilty of the crime discussed in that document." Implied in this (guessed) meaning is, "if a newspaper lists names that are listed in a document, the newspaper must be saying that the people named are guilty of the crime discussed in the document." There, we sure cleared that up!

(By the way, for a great example of "vigilante journalism," Gammons could have linked to his own nasty and completely unjustified undressing of A-Rod.)

Next, take a look at Gammons' own first recommendation to the owners:

1. Demand that every team carefully monitor all employees, including clubhouse kids, grounds crew members, etc. It doesn't matter if the average player makes $3 million a year, there is always an attraction to hangers-on, enablers and gophers. There's always a need for a guy who can get the satellite or stereo system at street prices, someone to pick up a girlfriend at the airport or drive a car north from spring training. The laundry list of problems stemming from guys is virtually endless; the Red Sox once had a spring training clubbie who turned out to be a drug dealer.
[and, redundantly:]
3. Make sure that each team spends the money to oversee each player's offseason conditioning program. Private strength and conditioning trainers and coaches lead to all kinds of issues; just go check out the 3:30 p.m. grunters at most commercial gyms.

As evidenced by this and the numerous "sewer rat" references, the overall theme of this piece is that Gammons actually blames the clubhouse attendants for baseball's drug problem. This is ridiculous and indefensible. These menial (as Gammons would have it) workers are not preying on helpless, desperate souls, but on multi-millionaires looking for an edge. I have never seen it alleged that HGH or steroids are addictive; physically damaging, sure, but not in any way depriving of the user's self-control. The players knew what they were doing, were in control the entire time, and could have easily gotten the drugs no matter whom the teams employed. Gammons seems to be advocating an elitist witch-hunt against everyone at the bottom of the MLB totem pole. He seems to think players are babies who won't get anything not brought to them in their clubhouses and that every "grunter" paid to do menial jobs for them is a scumbag. Lovely. And this is the opinion of a righteous, kind-hearted soul who wants to clean up the "vigilante" media.

2. Have MLB and the players association work out a strict set of guidelines for all player agencies. Mitchell did not mention the role of agents and agencies in the report, but it has long been suspected that there are a few agencies who have helped out their clients. One player told me, off the record, that one agency he interviewed offered limo and escort service in each road city, as well as separate bank accounts to hide money from spouses. The players association has been reluctant to monitor and discipline agents because they need agents to hold the players in line during strikes, but it isn't worth the side affects.

Hey, remember what Gammons said about "vigalante journalism"? Here he relies on what "one" player "told" him, "off the record" (so much for that!), about an agency offering perfectly legal services that have absolutely nothing to do with steroids for an assertion that sports agencies are assisting players in obtaining drugs. Unbelievable. And, by the way, this IS hearsay!

4. Beg the media to re-examine its vigilante world, where names and public figures have no rights. Look, there has been extraordinary journalistic work in this drug culture world done by the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Daily News and, now, with Mark Fainaru-Wada and T.J. Quinn, ESPN.com. But we're not the National Star. Roger Clemens and Miguel Tejada are not Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.

More of Gammons preaching to, I guess, himself. Gammons fails to explain why it is okay to smear Spears and Hilton, but not Clemens or Tejada. Also, the National Star is not an actual thing that exists. I guess he means Star Magazine?

Finally, has there really been "extraordinary journalistic word done with Mark Fainaru-Wada and T.J. Quinn"? Has there also been negligent editing work done "with" ESPN.com's editors on this article? I'll let you answer the second question.

Monday Morning Quarterback? More Like Monday Morning Punter

Peter King, who writes the weekly Monday Morning Quarterback for si.com, has writing issues different from those of Gammons. His grammar is generally passable, and one can usually comprehend what he means. However, while Gammons tries almost too hard to be "poetic" and comes off sounding "retarded", King makes absolutely no effort whatsoever to sound interesting. He is in fact an exceptionally boring writer. Also unlike Gammons, King is not free from detractors - there are other people on the web who express their distaste for his work.

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?

• 
  

Peter King, you should be fired. What the fuck is this? Yes, you are alone in thinking that Brady always says the right thing. As my friend Josh has pointed out, Peter King's idea of heaven is a threesome with Tom Brady and Brett Favre being filmed by Hines Ward. Stop drooling, you look like a tool. Also, stop making up words to sound smart. "Fandom" is not a word. Just say fans. Your writing is boring anyway; it can't possible sound worse. Wait, it can? Let me see!

Which leads me to my ...

Text Message of the Week

"Ben Franklin said that. I learn from where we all have, my dad!''

--Tom Brady.

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.

Enjoyable/Aggravating Travel Note of the Week

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.

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.

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.

k. Why do I think the Vikings might have something to say about that?

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.

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.

At Least He Doesn't Take Any Cheap Shots At A-Rod

Here's some breaking news, courtesy of Herr Gammons:

Twins taking it slow with Santana

You mean...they haven't traded him yet? What a story!

So, how can anyone criticize Twins general manager Bill Smith for taking his time to make sure he gets the best deal he can for Johan Santana?

This reminds me of research papers I wrote in school. I would write a sentence like the one above, and my teacher would say something like, "If you just make a vague assertion that some people have expressed a certain opinion, without any definite citation, that doesn't really qualify as 'research'." My question is, how can the mighty Gammons not spend just a tiny bit of time finding somebody who offers said criticism? Frankly, I'm not even sure it exists. Who the hell would criticize Smith for not rushing into a deal for, as Gammons pointlessly and laboriously goes on to argue, one of the best pitchers in the game?

When Red Sox GM Theo Epstein said, "I don't put deadlines on other teams trading their own players," he spoke for the majority of general managers who respect everything Smith and his former boss Terry Ryan have stood for over the last 15 years.

I love that, in a story about the Twins' GM, he manages to sneak in a backhanded compliment about the Red Sox GM. What a righteous man, that Theo Epstein! Always respecting the game, always speaking for the majority of general managers! Gammons's bio should simply say, "Gammons covers the Red Sox for ESPN.com, and occasionally compares them to other MLB teams as well."