The New Dead Ball Era

The end of the franchise quarterback era? Maybe

We should probably just go ahead and agree that it's not working. Or, more to the point, not working for everyone.

Remember the Year of the Quarterback? That's what 2011 was supposed to be, the consummation of an entire decade where big-as-trees QBs with Superman-quality vision, teen idol good looks, and arms as precise and accurate as predator drones led their teams down the field and into Super Bowl glory. Defense? Ground game? Yeah, I guess if you like that sort of thing. But! But! Come on! Quarterbacks!

It's not as if the NFL was hurting for fans around the time 9/11 changed the world. However, the powers that be took their cues from the insanely popular dream teams of '90s basketball -- you remember, when everybody wanted to Be Like Mike? When sports stars tried to rap? When Looney Tunes did cross-branding? -- and injected some marquee glory into what had been a team game. Of course, not everyone gets to score in football, but hey, centers don't move custom jerseys. To take it to the next level, the league made a conscious decision to glorify the gunslinger.

They helped out by tightening the rules on what could be done to a QB, tossing around fun stats like the Quarterback rating, and hyping fantasy football as a jock wannabe's nerdcore fantasy. Suddenly, the field generals were blowing up the record books, and football easily became America's #1 pastime. Or obsession. These days, whenever a team that isn't "ours" takes the field, we say things like this: "Eli is going up against Vick." Or "Romo's taking on Brady." The quarterback became what the heavyweight champ was to the 70s, except his jab was the tight end and his uppercut the wide receiver.

Like boxers, however, QBs are proving to be mortal after all, even when handled with kid gloves. Worse, it turns out the position has so much weight on it these days, has come to depend so much on ridiculous, superhuman accuracy, that you don't have to smash your helmet into their jaw to make them ineffective. The Steelers and Bears' supposedly unstoppable express ride back to the playoffs has been derailed by broken thumbs. Peyton Manning's bid to beat Joe Montana's legend into submission failed because of neck surgery. Even Aaron Rodgers' record-shattering 2011 could have easily never happened, had last year's concussions ganged up on him.


It wouldn't be so damaging if owners hadn't put all their eggs in one franchise basket, depending on (and paying) these guys to be the weakest link. Peyton, who re-signed for 90 million even though he was 36 and undergoing his third surgery, now looks like he was running everything in Indianapolis but the ticket sales; what was a Superbowl powerhouse 21 months ago is now 0-10 and getting, somehow, worse. The Texans have gambled their first ever playoff hopes on Matt Schaub and lost, thanks to a foot injury so seemingly inconsequential he played on it for a whole half in order to beat a team that was 4-4 and in another division. The Eagles have spent one tenth of one billion dollars on a man who likes to run in traffic.

Yes, Tom Brady's wearing three rings. Big Ben's got two. Peyton and Eli probably sit around with Drew Brees, comparing their single rings when kicking around NOLA. That's just the point: those teams were all balanced, just as Green Bay is this year, not depending on passing alone to win the day. They had good-to-great run games and decent-to-good defenses, not to mention some genius, unorthodox play calling from the likes of Belichick, Cowher, and Payton. What might be called Quarterback Creep has infected the league over that time period, causing a lot of mediocre-to-bad teams to put their faith in a lot of inconsistent leaders. Joe Flacco. Philip Rivers. Donovan McNabb. Mark Sanchez. Tony Romo. All brushed up against greatness and had no idea what to do. Even newcomers like Josh Freeman and Matt Ryan look like the job is too big for them. Cam Newton and Colt McCoy are up to it, but can't make up for the dearth of talent around them.

Worse, when the starter goes down, the team seems utterly lost. What happened to rolling three deep at the position? How many fans can even name their second-string QB? When was the last time you saw an elite quarterback bow out when his team was up by, say, 28?

Then we have the case of Tim Tebow. Love him or hate him, he earned that Heisman. So what happens when he gets to the big time? The Broncos sit on him for two years while they try out another supposed elite, then when he finally gets his shot, he's so bad at the long pass that the offense totally redesigns itself around him. And you know what? It's been working. Not because of Tebow's line to God, or because Denver has so much talent, but because he's not passing. He runs half his plays and the defense picks up the rest of the slack, and it's so shocking that the rest of the league's forgotten how to deal with it.

Sounds like the Broncos know something the NFL's refused to acknowledge for the last decade: there's only so much talent to go around, and when you cut off the head of the beast, it dies. Stanford's Andrew Luck, this year's recipient of the Heisman hype, will probably live up to it better than Tim has, but for real job security, he should sign with a team that pays a little less and runs a lot more. These are the realities of the era we may very well be about to enter in football. Somewhere, Vince Lombardi is smiling.

The Headless Horsemen

An open letter to Colts fans, from a Saints fan

Things are made worse when panic looks friendly. @jimirsay

I saw it happen. You saw it happen. That happened.

The Indianapolis Colts' 62-7 loss to the New Orleans Saints on Sunday night was one of the most spectacular flameouts of the past two decades... though trainwrecks like that happened sporadically before the NFL instituted its current policy of parity, such a complete domination hasn't been seen since, oh, the Super Bowl Shuffle. 

As a lifelong NOLA fan, I should be thrilled. And some of us were. The reaction among most hardcore, lifelong Saints fans, however, was a sense of acute embarrassment. We know loss. We know sloppiness. We know about being dominated. Not that 41-10 drubbing you gave us in 2007, or that in the 55-21 pounding you gave us in 2003, though. Those were just bad losses. We don't know what that was Sunday night.

It was more or less a given, this weekend, that the Colts would be defeated by the black and gold. Their offense had been a total mess since the neck injury of QB Peyton Manning, who was signed to a five-year, $90 mil contract even though he was 35 and had already gone under the knife. That may be all over: to many football fans, it feels like he's at the Hall of Fame induction ceremonies now. So Stampede Blue pulled Kerry Collins -- who's three years older -- out of retirement, but he got a concussion in Week 3, forcing the team to go to third-stringer Curtis Painter. He's from Purdue, like Drew Brees. But the similarities grind to a halt there.

Still, that only explains the 7. How does any modern team give up a 55-point differential? The Colts were, according to the media line, only improving after six losses, shaving the point spread thinner and thinner ever week -- there'd be more losses, for sure, but they could mark out time (or, depending on who you talk to, rebuild) with dignity. Then this happened.

You all know the stats, which read like a Guinness Book of World Records all on their own. Forget Manning: the defense allowed the Saints to score on their first nine drives. Our boys didn't have to go to third down until they were up by 28. Drew is also a future Hall of Famer, but 35 of 39? Come on.

This is not to add insult to Joseph Addai injury; any fan who got on the black-and-gold bandwagon before Sean Payton showed up knows how you feel right now. Watching the home team collapse like Lindsay Lohan at a sentencing is never fun. But, man, only 20 months ago you were giving us all kinds of hell in the Super Bowl. Until 3:12 before the end, that was anyone's game.

No, what I want to know is, who's running the show over there?

Watching the sidelines that night, you would have thought Manning -- who we consider a hometown boy, btw -- was the intense, stern head coach, slowly boiling over from sheer frustration, while actual head coach Jim Caldwell was the stone-faced assistant. We all know that Caldwell's always been stone-faced. But he's also always been an assistant. I understand he was part of the Peyton Manning deal, as departing mastermind Tony Dungy lobbied for his former right-hand man to take over the top job. Thing is, he's only ever been on the big stage once, in college ball, and his record at Wake Forest is a nearly-as-ridiculous 26-63. He used to work with someone we couldn't get out of town fast enough, QB Jim "Chris" Everett. Also, as it turns out, not ready for prime time. 

NFL coaches are a notoriously weird and wobbly bunch, defined by their quirks, all over the map personality-wise. They're not paid to be friendly and they're only somewhat accessible. Even given that, Caldwell's almost never seen talking to anyone on the sidelines, for any reason. He just seems to stand there, like the Sphinx looking out over the French army. Except the Colts fall apart like the modern French army. What's he doing out there?

I wouldn't even be disrespectful enough to ask, except that Peyton is not just revealing himself to be the MVP of all time by not suiting up, he's also looking more and more like the team's entire motivation. The whole team. Manning can't rally a defense on the field, of course, but his long drives kept them off the field. Freeney, Johnson, Muir, Bethea, and Mathis are still there from the Super Bowl lineup, and they were practically getting out of the way of our guys. Defensive coordinator Larry Coyer is likely to be out on his ass soon for giving up that sixtyburger, and he's been sticking with a scheme that was figured out long ago, but before this massacre, he was only giving up an average of 10 points a game. The team is clearly dealing with something mental, something only a leader can fix. A shame spiral it badly needs to shake itself out of.

Is owner Jim Irsay, as some speculate, hands-on enough to provide it? VC Bill Polian? It doesn't seem likely. The suits are too high up. I submit that Peyton Manning, for all intents and purposes, the guy who calls his own plays on the field and keeps the defense off it, has been the defacto head coach since Dungy left. Sure, he was on the sidelines Sunday, but when the other team goes 28-0 in the first quarter, there's not much motivating you can do. Sunday night, the "coaching staff" decided that, in the loudest domed stadium in the world, that their new, third-string QB, who wasn't familiar with -- well, with anything, should go no-huddle. Something is profoundly wrong.

Does it seem likely that Peyton would have explained that epic collapse at hafltime, when the game was already over, as a matter of details, of fixing the "little things"? Does that sound like the words of a guy who knows what's gone wrong? Also, when DB Justin Tryon wanted to start this year, you may remember he got in a shitload of trouble for tweeting this.

Who's running things?

Mind you, I don't really think Peyton had his hands on every aspect of the team when he was healthy. Yet more and more, it seems like Archie instilled a sense of noblesse oblige in Peyton and Eli over the years: when things go wrong, they don't just look upset, they look puzzled -- and worse, furious, like a child who has to stop playing football and come in for dinner. Things are not supposed to go badly when they're in the pocket. The world is supposed to co-operate. They're Mannings. Born to lead. Born to make things happen.

Perhaps for that reason, I've seen some of Colts Nation arguing that Peyton should just go ahead and replace Caldwell as coach for the rest of the season. Why not? He can't play anyway. The essence of leadership seems to have entirely disappeared from your beloved Colts, and the live shot of their coach walking away, all by himself, once again not speaking to anyone, without even an entourage -- that spoke volumes. It's not that the team's abandoned him, either. Quite the opposite.

“Honestly, I don’t think we showed up to play,’’ receiver Austin Collie said. “Our mindset could have been a whole lot better.’’

By contrast, our injured Payton, spelled with an a and sitting in the press box, didn't call any plays at all that fateful night. He had a hot dog. He hung out with Kenny Chesney. But his field general was on the field. And you can bet he pushed those guys all week.

Mike Ditka's American Idol

"Iron" Mike Ditka's accomplishments as a NFL coach are without question. Well, with the Bears, anyway.* The 1985 Chicago Bears routinely make the Top 10 lists of the greatest pro football teams of all time. And with good reason. They lost exactly one game in their season that year, defeated their opponents by an average of 18 points per game, steamrolled their three postseason opponents for a combined score of 91-10, then went on to eviscerate the hapless New England Patriots, 46-10, in Super Bowl XX.

Let's dwell on that for a moment. The Bears stomping the shit out of the Patriots. It was a different time.

Clearly, this was Ditka's moment in the sun. But as with so many heroes, the seeds of Mike's greatest tragedy were planted during his greatest victory. During the season, former Jovan executive and major Bears fan Richard "Dick" Meyer decided to increase the already-potent momentum of his team by writing and filming a theme song for the '85 Bears: it being the mid-Eighties, absolutely everything of note (and quite a few things not of note) just had to come with a video, or no one was interested.

The result was, as you probably know, the famous Super Bowl Shuffle. It was a huge hit, for a novelty video about an NFL team, meaning it almost cracked the Top 40. It sold a cool half million copies. It was nominated for a Grammy. That's right, people listened to this on the radio at work and play. Check it.




Naturally, a host of imitators were spawned, including an answer song from the Patriots that must have enraged bookies across this fine nation. Who was gonna bet on a team that had this for a calling card?

But Ditka, not willing to be out-cheesed, decided he was a kingmaker, and furthermore, that he could take any group of Chicago fans off the street and do the same thing for them he'd done for da Bears.

The result is The Grabowski Shuffle. ("Grabowski" is apparently a Chicago term for an ordinary urban lunchpail type, like "Yat" is in New Orleans and "Good Ol' Boy" is in the rest of the South.) I first came across this phenomecrap as an actual video for rent way back in my retail days, and since it was gathering dust, I took it under my wing and gave it a home.

The idea behind it went something like this:

1. Assemble a team of hardworking blue-collar joes from Chicago.
2. Teach them to sing, rap, and dance. 
3. ?????
4. PROFIT!!!!

It sounds like a recipe for disaster, and it does not disappoint. The extended half-hour video functions as a "making-of" documentary, and it's beyond sad: these five schmucks -- more like a straight Village People without talent than the all-singing, all-dancing Joe The Plumber revue it was meant as -- are all practically crying tears of gratitude at the fact that God has clearly seen fit to bestow this, Their Big Break, upon them. Seriously. They seem convinced they're about to be on MTV in heavy rotation. You can practically hear the empty lottery dreams rattling around in their heads... funny how only a real working-class joe can be so desperate to get the fuck out of his job, which he loves, don't get him wrong, because he's the backbone of the country, blah blah blah.

Here's a short clip of the "making of," in which Ditka or whoever decides to parody the audition scenes from A Chorus Line. Because if there's one thing Chicago football fans love, it's musical theatre.

The result of all this hard work can be seen below, shorn of its documentary surroundings. The five people produced by the casting call -- yes, there was a casting call -- are likable enough: waitress, bodybuilder, construction worker, cop, and mover. (Guess which one is the black guy.) But they can't sing, rap, or dance, and Ditka himself is no better, even though the cover of the video's box promises, in garbled
Grabowskish, that he "raps and zaps, has smokin' feet and fun." (For those of you not in the know, "zapping" is part of that great Chicago youth culture movement known as "zip-zop," which involves eating brats, cutting beer farts, and asserting one's heterosexuality at all costs.)

For those unable to sit through this entire travesty, I direct your attention straight to 3:06, where "the Grabowski gal," Valerie, is forced to do a verse -- written or otherwise orchestrated by Ditka -- about how much she wants to fuck him.

No, really. Again, it was a different time.

Curtain!

(Singing this all day tomorrow in your head at work? Oh, no need to thank me.)

(*As a lifelong Saints fan, I feel I have every right to disparage Ditka. Two words: Ricky Fucking Williams. I'd like to rip off Iron Mike's little Ned Flanders mustache and use it to plug up his steak-bloated colon.)