Congradulations to Rodger Saffold, the number 4 pick overall in the Sports Illustrated Re-do draft

SI/CNN 2010 NFL Draft Re-Do

Don Banks, famed writer for CNN & Sports Illustrated just published his Draft Red-Do. It is interesting. The first three picks go in the same order, and then BANG! The first change is listed.

Banks would have the Redskins select Rodger Saffold (taken by the Rams at the #33 slot) as the #4 overall pick in the draft. Don Banks claims that Trent Williams was a good pick, but Rodger Saffold is better. According to Banks, Saffold is the consensus top tackle in the 2010 draft among NFL personnel men. Saffold has only allowed 2 sacks in 14 games.

How about dem apples? If the true, the Rams got pair of Top 4 talents in the draft. That’s quite a promotion from #33 to #4.

This barely-begun competition ain't going to make late August

Well... I am still a subscriber to Sports Illustrated. That's going to stop soon. I get a piece of bacon in my mailbox each morning which I usually flush right away. I took a look at it this morning due to the fact that we just had the hall of fame inductions this past Saturday.

What do I find? Don Banks has been in St. Louis recently. He doesn't want to go "I have seen the future of Rock N' Roll" on us now, but he does know what's going to happen in Ram camp. The quarterback dual between A.J. Feely and Sam Bradford, ain't going to make late August. By this, Banks obviously means that Sam Bradford will be declared the starting QB some time his week.

Folks, I have posted in highly-trafficked websites like BleacherReport.com many times regarding this subject. I warned everybody that the Rams were going to throw Sam Bradford head-first into the shark tank, naked as a Jay Bird. I declared that for the first time some 2 or 3 weeks immediately prior to the 2010 draft. I have continued to say the same thing since then.

Once again, I am correct. You won't get more accurate prognosticating anywhere. I am accuracy incarnated.

Whilst some conservative Ram fans have hoped that the establishment would have the good sense to keep him off the firing line for a few games--at least long enough to determine the offensive line can block Pop-Warner kids--I knew it would never happen. You don't take a kid #1, give him $50 million of guaranteed money to put him on the bench and get 0.000% impact out of him. The Rams are going to throw him in, even if it kills him.

Besides that, who else do they have? A.J. Feely? If this were a boxing match, we would call it a setup.

Don Banks makes it all sound so good. Everything is going great. Swimmingly, in fact. Very hopeful scenario. Bullets flying all over the place, dead in the hands, full stride, etc.

You just wait for that wet paper mache offensive line to give way and the injury to strike. Are you saying you don't trust the Rams offensive line, Dave? I don't trust them any further than I can throw them, and since they are all over 300 pounds, and there are 5 of them, I can't toss them very far at all.

Truth be told, you don't have the slightest reason to trust them either. When you say "the Rams line isn't all that bad", you are making a metaphysical declaration of faith. That statement is based on zero facts and fallacious reasoning.

1. The last three years, the Rams have a had a QB rotation by medical triage. The least wounded QB took the field. When he got more wounded, the next-least wounded guy went in to spell him.
2. All three Ram QBs finished 2009 beaten to a pulp. Bulger had a broken leg. Explain that one.
3. The Rams offensive line has given up more than 40 sacks per year each year and every year for 10 years straight. This is a passing league. Sam Bradford is a passer. This fact matters to Sam.
4. The Rams just flushed two starters from last season. Whilst they were bums and it was good to flush them, only one replacement was acquired: Rodger Safford, a guy with a back injury. It is lovely to shop at home for talent, but only if there is something in the refrigerator.
5. Given a rejiggered line, you have no idea whatsoever of what you have right now. You don't know if they are better or worse. You just hope they are better. Yet you have no logical or evidential reason to expect they will be better.
6. When challenged on this level, the minority of Ram fans who were desperate to draft Bradford, react very defensively. They site preposterous and arcane run-indexes that 'show' the Rams offensive line isn't that bad.
7. Their reasoning is absolutely fallacious. You cannot site run indexes to show that a line can pass protect. In the case of the Rams' line, you cannot site run indexes to prove anything at all. The Rams run because Steve Jackson is a powerful punisher who gets lots of yards all by himself, with little or no blocking
8. All apologies for the Rams offensive line must begin with the 40+ sacks every year for the past 10 years. They never do. Apologists for Devaney are forever avoiding this fact like the plague, understanding well that this is the absolute critical-flaw in the strategy.

Ergo sum, Sam Bradford is going to be thrown head-first into the Shark Tank, naked as a Jay Bird. Don't try to make it sound like it some kind of wonderful thing either. It is the immediate prelude to a season ending injury.

Before the draft was held, I pissed off Bradford-advocates by repeatedly posting fan-polls asking how many games Sam would start before suffering his season ending injury in 2010. The highest number you could select was 7. I stopped the count after 7. I set the over-under number at 3. I did all of this deliberately, and for good reason.

There ain't no way he's making it past 7 starts without suffering a bad one. It is more likely that the number will be 2-4. If you think I am wrong, you just make your case. I have made mine. We shall see who is right.

This is the reason I am dropping the NFL Super-Fan this year. I don't want to watch the travesty unfold.

Right now, I feel just a little bit like Winston Churchill during the time Neville Chamberlain was running the show. Whilst Devaney is announcing he has achieved peace in our time, I know it just 'taint so. Ad-meanwhile, little old lady Ram fans are approaching me on the street telling me they would put poison in my coffee.

It is so good to not to be a member of the Sports media

A friend just asked me if I wanted to change careers and become a sports writer/radio/tv personality. I can't say with a straight face that I haven't fantasized about being the play-by-play man for Football games. That would be insainly great. I can't say I haven't fantasized about being the color man for Football games. That would be fantastic.

How about a radio talk show guy? Nope. I can't go there and I can't do that. Why? Because you have to talk about sex scandals instead of the BCS bowl picture, the Super Bowl playoffs, and the draft. You have to talk about golfers at time when we should be talking matchups in bowl games. You have to talk about whether assholes have broken the Man-Code rather than discus the fact that we are coming down to the last 3-4 games of the NFL regular season. Further, you have to take phone calls from buffoons who cannot formulate a 3 word grammatical sentence.

I am happy I am not in that industry. I can gladly ignore TMZ.com. Troy Aikman has a hell of a good job. Nobody asks him anything about Tiger Woods, Charlie Weis, or Pete Carroll. I would love that job.

Sports Illustrated's Predictions for the coming 2009 NFL Season

So, I subscribed to Sports Illustrated for the first time in my life just recently. To be honest with you, the only reason I subscribed is because the offered me both the John Madden DVD (I would have much preferred a Blu-Ray) and they gave me Madden Football 10 for the PS3. I could not resist that temptation at $49. That is cheaper than you can buy the game on line. Forget about the SI issues and the John Madden video. WOW!

So here comes my first issue, and it is the NFL Preview! Perfect! That was very nice timing indeed. Of course, I found this in my mailbox as I arrived home from work. I needed to take a fat crap at the end of the day, and SI always used to make the very best toilet literature. What splendid timing! So I took my seat on the throne and enjoyed my first NFL Preview issue in probably 20 or 22 years.

I must admit that I was a bit contemptuous as I opened these pages. I was not expecting anything edifying. SI is notorious for big pictures and thin analysis. They go more for a human story than for anything approaching solid football analysis.

Surprise! What a rush of nostalgia! I felt it all coming back to me. I grew up with Sports Illustrated. I think we all did. I used to sit in the school library reading back issues and present issues of Sports Illustrated when I was supposed to be doing my reading assignments. I did this in Junior High and High School. They didn't give me much meat about the 3-4 defense vs. the 4-3 defense. They certainly never understood what Walsh was doing during the 1981 season. Still, I loved them passionately as a kid. It was a my one life-line to Football during the off season. We had no NFL Network. ESPN didn't come along until 1983 in my hood. We could not buy NFL films. I didn't have any VHS tapes with the sport I could enjoy.

Just as the romance was starting to flame up again, and I was about to experience the sweet surrender... BAMB! SLAM! DAMN! The divisional predictions went and fucked it all to hell. What a devastating collapse...

Folks I am not going to candy-coat this for you. What I found there were nothing short of the biggest crack-pot predictions of the season so far. We only saw eye-to-eye on one set of predictions: The NFC East. Everything else is fucked up.

Take the AFC South for instance: Texans #1, Colts #2, Titans #3. There are those who truly believe that the Titans experienced the ultimate fluke season last year. Without Haynesworth, many believe they will collapse. I am not exactly one of them. I think the Colts will regain their post atop the division. The Titans will be in the playoffs. I would not pick the Texans to surpass the Colts. You must not have seen any pre-season games. The Colts starters look yoked and ready for war. SI needs to work harder on drug testing and compliance within their walls. It takes about 10,000 pounds of collective brain damage to put this prediction in print.

Take the NFC West: Seahawks #1, Cardinals #2, 49ers #3, Rams #4. Oh bouy! Now I know you are smoking Sherms. Folks, I see absolutely no reason to believe the Seahawks are improving. I see almost every reason to believe they are on the decent phase of rebuilding. If you think they are going to defeat an improved Cardinal team, I think you are experiancing a prolonged phase of grossly disoriented schizophrenia, psychosis and death. This is what happens when you roll tobacco and weed in a fatty, then dip it in PCP and embalming fluid before smoking it down. This is how you reach your goal of 10,000 pounds of collective brain damage at SI.

There are other crass jokes besides these. Still, this is the SI I remember. Peter King is often wrong. He is better at coverage than prediction.