Dallas Cowboys

Happy Monday, friends, and welcome to The Mothership.  We've got a couple more teams going fishing, and we'll explore their situations.  We'll also devote some early thought to the Super Bowl matchup.  Finally, since the Senior Bowl is this week, we'll get into that a little bit, and possibly also consider the less important Pro Bowl.  The NFC Championship game isn't over yet, as I start writing this, but I want to get a couple thousand words written before midnight.  Ready..... BEGIN!!!

1.  Both championship games were very interesting on Sunday, after the first two weekends had a lot of blowouts, and a few uninteresting close games.  I would venture to say that the only entertaining game in the first two weeks was Arizona vs. Green Bay.  It was a good Football Sunday, and we'll start by thinking about the losers.

a.  New York Jets - First of all, let me reiterate that anybody who made it to their conference championship game had a good season.  That said, this was not the year New York planned to be in Super Bowl contention, so I think they were already playing with house money on Sunday.  They wanted to win, and I know they believed that they could, but they're still developing into what they ultimately want to become.

First things first, since the MSM will always focus on the QB position first.  Mark Sanchez generally has a ways to go as a decision maker, but he showed a lot of poise during the recent run, and it has to make Jets fans very excited for the future.  He had a good day on Sunday, and the two TD passes he threw each showed a quality that the elite QBs possess.  He showed outstanding touch on the deep ball on the first, and impressive toughness and accuracy under pressure on the second.  My concerns about his ability to play in bad weather aside, it's pretty clear that the Jets have their guy of the future.

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Happy Monday, friends, and welcome to The Mothership. After a pretty uninspiring Divisional Playoff round, we can only hope for more interesting games next week. I am incidentally re-writing about the first 1000 words because I clicked wrong button, and lost my work. CKEditor needs a save feature.

Anyway, let’s get to getting this big red ship underway. Somebody give me a push away from the pier in the port of Echo Chamber. Ready…. BEGIN!!!!

Happy Tuesday, friends. We're getting down to having fewer games, obviously, so I am getting less "call it like I see it" opportunities. On top of that, I had to re-allocate some time to snow removal tonight. That was a hoot. We'll see where we come out against the backdrop of "Ted was 90 minutes late to work today, and is aiming to get enough sleep tonight to ensure a reasonable expectation of timeliness tomorrow."

Wild Card Weekend -

1. New York Jets at Cincinnati Bengals

a. First things first. Michael Lombardi evidently agrees with me, but I have been saying this in various forms for two years. Carson Palmer cannot be considered a franchise QB anymore. He was on his way to being one before the knee and elbow injuries, but he's never going to get there. The velocity on his throws outside the numbers is way, way down. He can still be a solid starter, but he isn't what he's made out to be. It's no accident that the Bengals finally started having success when they decided to rely heavily on the running game.

b. Cedric Benson is a great player, and he's just hitting the prime of his career. I've beaten on the Bengals for ignoring character red flags before, and for liking bargains, but they sure came up with gold in taking a chance on Benson. The Bengals ought to get a reliable #2 RB, split the carries 75-25, and run the hell out of the ball, from a variety of personnel groupings and formations. Benson is one of the few contemporary backs in the NFL whom I'd want to use like a true workhorse.

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Happy Monday, friends, and welcome the Mothership. We’re getting underway after an interesting week, and there’s lots to talk about. We’ll get into some coaching matters, and talk about the Wildcard weekend that was, and the Divisional weekend that will be.

I’m happy, because we’re done closing December at my day job, so I’ll have more time to devote to this site for the next few weeks. I’m working on some video stuff, as I’ve previously mentioned, and I want to write a couple more articles this week than I was able to last week.

No time to waste, so let’s not waste any time. The lines are cast off, we’re pulling away from the Echo Chamber pier, and heading for the open ocean. Ready….. BEGIN!!!!

1. Black Monday wasn’t so black this season, and I didn’t really expect it to be. With a better than (Bill Williamson Memorial) decent chance of a chance of a lockout in 2011, owners have to be planning for expense minimization, based on the risk of the major reduction to their revenue streams that would go with a lockout.

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Happy Tuesday, friends, and welcome to Information From My Eyes. MHR people will recognize that title as something I used for sections in my old Shallow Thoughts & Nearsighted Observations posts. The title refers to a phone survey about sports blogging I participated in with a Penn State journalism student last year. The guy asked me where I get my information, meaning what websites. I guess in his mind, bloggers find information from “professional” writers, and repost it. I got a little annoyed with the poor kid, and told him my information came from my eyes.

I think Information From My Eyes is apropos of my whole Tuesday article though, particularly in the regular season, because this is going to revolve around games I watch on Monday nights. Normally, I come home and watch 5-6 recorded Sunday afternoon games, and then the Monday night game live. That’s what I did tonight. Of course, as we get into the offseason, there will be less to watch, so I will probably go back to regular season game video for that analysis.

For now, I’m going to get moving with this. I’m downing a Five Hour Energy, which is the best friend of people who spend 35 hours working between Sunday and Monday, like I typically do during the regular season. I ought to see if I can sell them ad space, once I get going with this. Anyway, here goes.

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I'm back again with some more of the same, analyzing the NFC coaching trees.  Check out this piece from a couple days ago, if you're interested in the AFC trees.  Again, this primarily is filling a need I have to test some query programming on the team pages I'm creating, but I hope it's a value-adding read for you.

Dallas Cowboys -- Wade Phillips

Phillips is definitely descended from his father Bum.  Not so many Head Coaches come from Bum, but he is responsible for a distinct school of thought in the 3--4 defense, and that's very significant.  Wade's worked for Dan Reeves and Marty Schottenheimer, but it's fair to say that he was a practitioner for them, more than a learner in development.  We'll say Wade is part of the Bum Phillips Tree.

New York Giants -- Tom Coughlin

Coughlin goes way back to the Parcells Tree, having worked for him in New York during the late 80s and early 90s.  In terms of his approach to discipline and player procurement (size-speed), he's very similar to Parcells.

Philadelphia Eagles -- Andy Reid

Reid is definitely part of the Walsh Tree, having done all of his assistant work in the NFL under Mike Holmgren in Green Bay.  Reid played and briefly coached under LaVell Edwards at Brigham Young University, and there's more verticality to Reid's version of the West Coast offense than most others, which seems to probably be somewhat attributable to Edwards' influence.  Some of it is also undoubtedly attributable to the skill-set of Donovan McNabb, too, though.

Washington Redskins -- Jim Zorn

Zorn is part of the Walsh Tree, having come up under Mike Holmgren in Seattle.  His zealous adherence to the West Coast principles have been part of his problem, because Jason Campbell needs to be in a vertical offense where timing is less of an issue.  Zorn's about to be fired, and probably replaced by Mike Shanahan, who has his own tree. 

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