NFL QB Battle Run Down & Mario Balotelli is an Idiot

QB Competitions & Mario Balotelli Makes Moves

Happy Friday and welcome to the almost weekend!  A few housekeeping items to wade through before we get started, trust me…you'll be happy when it's done.  

1.  Simpsons marathon in full swing on FXX…all 522 episodes (or thereabouts) played in order…25 seasons.

2.  New York Giants versus New York Jets (game played in New Jersey) tonight…week 3 of pre-season is always the most interesting game.  Starters get some real burn.   VICK-GENO will be discussed later.  Thanks Avid Appetite for the pic shown below! The Avid Appetite! My wife likes the Giants, I am a Jets fan...my daughter is being groomed to be a Giants fan (I pushed for the Mets...inevitably 

3.  Nothing to report on the "football players getting pinched for weed" front.  The Pittsburgh RB duo of Blount and Bell are seemingly getting slaps on the wrist and will be ready for your fantasy draft.  Well, maybe there was an update…my bad.

4.  There is a dude in California growing crazy watermelons and pumpkins shaped like hearts and Frankenstein heads…it's pretty cool and thought it was worth mentioning - Nice Melons!!

Ok, time for NFL QB Battle talk!

New York Jets - Geno Smith v. Michael Vick - I really don't think there is much of a battle here but it would be nice if there were.  I am 100% not tied to Geno Smith being the #1 QB for the Jetties this year, but I feel like overall Mike Vick was brought in to back him up and just hang around in case Geno's start this year is a disaster (which it could be).  Newly acquired WR Eric Decker will help this struggling bunch…but is it enough?

Cleveland Browns - Brian Hoyer v Johnny Foosball - This one has already been decided.  Browns head coach Mike Pettine has come out with Hoyer as his week 1 starter.  I do think that this is only temporary, unless Foosball finds a way to screw it up.  The Browns stink and despite being a relatively decent QB Hoyer will take the blame when they are 2-4…Here's Johnny!!


Minnesota Vikings - Teddy Bridgewater, Christian Ponder & Matt Cassel - The Vikes are a mess.  Despite having the best running back in the game (Adrian Peterson) they seemingly can't get the other parts of their offense together…or at least together enough so that they can balance out their attack.  This one doesn't matter but I think Cassel wins out over Bridgewater.  Not really sure why Ponder has fallen out of the race but that seems to be the case.  Ponder has been pretty solid when healthy, while Cassel has been useless when a starter…go figure.  Bridgewater gets the bulk of the snaps by season's end if the Minnesota Petersons can't get a few Ws by November.


Jacksonville Jaguars - Blake Bortles v. Chad Henne - Bortles has been great so far this pre-season and is lady friend (Lindsey Duke) is very attractive, but I don't think that factors into play here.  Henne has been around the block once or thrice and I feel like the hapless Jags need/crave that stability that a Chad Henne led offensive brings (impossible not to laugh uncontrollably).  Either way, this team is not going to be good.  Zero fantasy value as well.

Oakland Raiders - Matt Schaub v. Derek Carr - no one cares.  The Raiders are miserable, key players are always injured (here's looking at you Mr. McFadden) and overall their division is a pretty darned tough one.  They could start either one of these guys and wind up with the same record, 5-11 and miss the playoffs.  Of course they will end up having a few big weeks when you pick them on your eliminator pool, thank Al Davis (shown below)…keepin' it real, real dumb.

Mario Balotelli Headed to Liverpool?

Balotelli is pretty much as crazy as Luis Suarez (the biter).  Both players are awesome forces up top but lack the mental capacity to not be annoying ungrateful bums.  Both guys make a ton of dough (technical term) to play soccer and seemingly are not able to grasp the fact that, that alone is awesome and is the goal of millions of kids around the world.  No, no…not enough for Super Mario though.  Born in Palermo, Italian national team stud…just hates playing by the rules of life.  He thinks everyone is out to get him…maybe in Italy (where he has long suffered racist attacks due to his family's African origins do they refer to him as African-Italian?, that would be funny) they are out to get him.  Otherwise, it's mostly in his head, which is why LFC is putting crazy clauses in his contract.  He goes crazy, he don't get paid...got it?  Good Luck Liverpool, I hope that this move goes tragically wrong for you.  Sorry, but I had to throw that one in there.

Then there's this to send you off to the weekend - 

Again, enjoy your weekend!!!

Happy Watching!!!

Weekend Wrap Up - Monday is Upon Us! (It'll Be Fine, Maybe)

And here we are!  Sunday afternoon, so let's dance!

Not that sorta David Bowie "Let's Dance" type of thing...more of a let's recap the weekend, move in the general direction of Sunday night and make it a happy Monday morning (if there ever was one).  For those of you unaware of the image pasted above, that my friends is Heisenberg.  If you do not know who he is, you should...and if you do not care to know, you have been warned.  It's your call really, I don't care because I already know.  It's that simple.  My wife has been using this as her fantasy football team name for the past few seasons, and I must say it is well played.  The mild mannered Mr. Walter White becomes the take no prisoners, Heisenberg.  Embracing the IJDGAF (inquire within) attitude of Heisenberg with the mild mannered high school science teacher.  

I am still taking requests for fantasy baseball/football team names...don't be shy!

Anyway, let's dance!  Have you ever watched a professional baseball game where one pitcher hits a player on the other team with a pitch and then the next inning or the inning after that the opposing pitcher hits the best player on the other team with a slow curve ball in the back?  It's kind of one of those "unwritten" rules. It happens all of the time.  The umpire warns everyone, players get semi-testy and it kinda dies down after the second guy get hit with an errant pitch in the back.  Yes, it is 100% dumb...100% (I repeat) dumb! I get it if the first guy is trying to hurt the other team but generally an Arizona Diamondbacks-Pittsburgh Pirates game doesn't quite warrant that level of stupidity.  Which leads me to quote one of my favorite movies Snatch - "You should never underestimate the predictability of stupidity" - Bullet Tooth Tony.  Essentially what I am getting at is this - http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/11303611/paul-goldschmidt-arizona-diamondbacks-likely-rest-season

Paul Goldschmidt (All Star first baseman) gets hit in the hand with an errant pitch in Friday night's game against the Pirates (where the Bucs are leading 9-4) and his season is over...broken hand out around 8 weeks...that's October.  Sucky but it happens.  I really, really do not think that Ernesto Frieri meant to do it...at all.  It would make zero point zero sense for him to purposely hit him at all.  BUT Arizona pitcher Randall Delgado felt it was required of him to hit the other team's best player at some point...randomly in the next game...in the ninth inning...in the middle of the back with a 95 MPH heater...makes sense.  Randall Delgado, you are a certified jerk bag.  There it has been said.  This makes no sense, it's just stupid...but as Bullet Tooth Tony mentioned earlier, "You should never underestimate the predictability of stupidity" because this is what baseball is all about.  Pitcher A pitches inside, Pitcher B pitches inside, Pitcher A (or B) is the first one to hit someone, Pitcher (the other one) must drill a guy in the middle of the back where that whole spine/nerve center thing is or let down his team.  Dumb, very dumb.  Do pitchers initiate this action sometimes, of course...but when they don't I really think it's insane for it to fall to a guy playing CF when the whole thing went down.  Just my opinion.

And this guy wants to buy the Buffalo Bills - 

You are from New Jersey, you're wearing a Patriots hat and you want to buy the Bills....who are you?  Really, who are you?  

Enjoy the rest of your weekend or your Monday morning!!

Happy Watching!

It's Saturday!! Let's Slow Things Down A Bit (insert weekend here)

Today is Saturday, time to pump the brakes a bit

I feel like it is time that we all just take a step back and let the week's events wash over us like a warm, soft wave of crystal clear blue water...just take it all in.  The smelly lady on the train, plane, bus or carpool (did not know that it was a compound word) that you may be involved in is behind you.  That really and I mean really awful lunch that you had to settle for on Tuesday or maybe Wednesday because you were tied up with something (but really you were just being lazy, I mean really, really lazy) that gave you that pinching feeling in your lower intestines...it happened, no one wants to rehash it, we are moving on.

Enough about the week, for the weekend (as the girl's sock so tastefully stated) has arrived!!  Except for those who work on weekends, which I assume you probably have 1 day or hopefully 2 days off a week, so pretend that that day is today!  Let's dive into today's LET'S PUMP THE BRAKES part of the post!

LET'S PUMP THE BRAKES, just a bit

Have you ever seen the movie Devil's Advocate?  It's a story about a lawyer who rises up through the ranks, makes it big, moves to the big city and eventually finds out that he is kinda sorta the spawn of Satan (played by Al Pacino).  Sorry for the spoiler alert if you haven't seen it, but really...it's been out since 1997.  If you haven't seen it by now, you probably won't and that's on you, not me.  Anyway, not that point.  So in the movie basically this lawyer (played by Keanu Reeves) rises to the top thinking that he is an awesome Southern lawyer who has made it big and then gets tempted by the Devil.  It gets pretty ugly in the end and all the devil tells him is that he believes in free will, giving people options and lets them make the decision (as opposed to some sort of divine destiny set out by God where you have no choice (according to Al Pacino)). Well now you know what this one was more or less all about.  

SO, I am in no way about to call the good ol' folks at Nike the devil by any means but I felt like the reference to Devil Advocate was worth it when you read this article about how they kinda sorta got testy when a 9 year-old boy wore an Under Armour hoodie instead of one of their swoosh hoodies - http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/11296754/nike-official-emails-florida-state-seminoles-armour-sweatshirt-worn-jimbo-fisher-son  Basically the summary goes like this - Florida State University's (FSU) football team is sponsored by Nike.  The goes for basically anyone on the sideline, coaches, players, water boys, those grad students they have on the side making sure that the TV wires are perfectly coiled so that no trips and falls over them...essentially everyone.  FSU wins a game and are walking off of the field where the coach is mobbed by on-field reporters...his son who is 9, presumably was around the sidelines and runs over to join him as they head for the locker room.  The TV cameras are following his every dirty, disgusting contract breaching move.  This kid thinks...oh, hey look at me I am only 9, I can wear whatever I want.  I'm in fourth grade and I'm THE BOSS!  Wrong!  Nike sent an email to Coach Jimbo Fisher asking/demanding that his son find something else to wear...something a little more Nike and less UA.  Then of course they did a sleazy little - "hey, it was just a joke, we were only kidding".  Were you Nike?  Were you?  I rest my case! (See how I did that there, tied it back into the Devil's Advocate?  The movie I just mentioned before...yes, I just told you about it)  Anyway, Nike - pump your brakes a bit and let the kid wear some Under Armour, their stuff is pretty sweet.  Editor's note: This event occurred during the 2013 season but is just making headlines now due to whatever reason, making more scandalous. And a big thanks to the people at themetapicture.com for that cool Nike logo you see above.

Moving right along to the Pump Your Brakes piece, we have Jerry Jones and his Dallas Cowboys "America's Team".  Are they trying to imply that if you hate the Cowboys, that you hate America?  'Cause if they are...they better watch their big, ugly mouths.  So it seems like ol' Jer' is up to something on the PR front this pre-season.  He so annoyingly sent his season ticket holders their tickets for the season recently and in that envelope there was also a ticket sheet with tickets for playoffs games including the NFC Championship game.  Oh Jerry, why did you do this?  Cool souvenir for the season ticket holders (not a terrible one right now, but in January when they finished 8-8 and missed the playoffs, will it be cool?) or maybe it was your way of "motivating" your star QB and WR Tony Romo and Dez Bryant respectively?  I honestly do not know, nor will most of us every really know what's going on in the cabeza of yours.  I will give him credit for sticking with Romo through these years, but at the same time...at the key moments he is always the goat...and not like the acronym Greatest Of All Time.  But Jerry at least you have that, I don't know why you have that since you have run through head coaches like you're getting paid by the hire (you are not a placement firm, that's not how it works).  Hey at least you passed on Sean Payton saving him the trouble of having to stick around through mediocre seasons with a mediocre (by comparison) quaterback.  Nah, he went to New Orleans, get set up with Drew "Easy Breezy" Brees and the rest is history - Super Bowl wins, making the playoffs like every year, passing records...blah blah blah.  But as they say in Mets Land Jerry, there is always next year.  I could be completely wrong in my assessment of this one, but if history has taught us anything...it tends to repeat itself.

Oh and the story - http://espn.go.com/dallas/nfl/story/_/id/11295007/dallas-cowboys-include-playoff-tickets-package-season-ticket-holders

So there you have it folks! (Haven't typed out folks in a long time)  Those are the stories in sports that have people talking.  All of this writing about football has left me amped up for September!  For the record, I am a Jets fan so any of my opinions from this point forward must be reviewed from the standpoint that rationality is not my strong suit. 

Enjoy your Saturday and as always...

Happy Watching!!

Late Friday Update, Baseball's Back and It's Better Than Ever!!

Officially - Happy Friday!

My boyfriend's back and you're gonna be in trouble

(Hey-la-day-la my boyfriend's back)

You see him comin' better cut out on the double

(Hey-la-day-la my boyfriend's back)

You been spreading lies that I was untrue

(Hey-la-day-la my boyfriend's back)

So look out now cause he's comin' after you

Deal with it! - Baseball is back, after much delay!

Side note - Saturday 7PM in glorious Harrison - NY Red Bulls are taking on the San Jose Redux (Earthquakes), who names their team after a natural disaster that destroys buildings, lives and livelihoods? It just seems wildly inappropriate.  Am I wrong?

Short post just wanted to welcome "er'body in the club, back to baseball"  Ladies you may or may not see your man friends this weekend, it's been a tough stretch.  

Happy watching,

-Shaun

http://grilledcheesesports.blogspot.com/