Listen All Y’all; It’s Sabotage?

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Are the good ole’ Oakland Raiders doing their best New York Jets impression? As if the esteemed ghost of Al Davis, cragged nicotine stained teeth and gold chains were to walk in like Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol it seems that the ghosts of Raiders past are beginning to rear their ugly head. A number of Raider-centric stories have cropped up in the media this week, an increasingly more ludicrous one broke today. The heavy hitter in terms of Raiders media is the alleged throwing of the Super Bowl by then head coach Bill Callahan. Former wide receiver Tim Brown and other members of that 2003 Super Bowl Team, most notably Hall-of-Famer Jerry Rice have said that they have felt the same way in the decade that followed but have not been as vocal as Brown seems to be currently and probably will continue to be.

There seem to be a number of issues with this story. Yes I’ve heard about the game plan change the week of the Super Bowl and the All-Pro Center literally fleeing the night before but there seems to be a wrinkle that no one outside of that locker room knows. I don’t think that Callahan threw the game or did anything untoward his role as coach and position with the Raiders not because it doesn’t make sense to me to throw the biggest game of your professional career but I don’t think there’s a body of evidence to make a decision one way or another. I don’t think that we, the average viewer, will know exactly what people until this enters into the courts and I hope it does. If Tim Brown is throwing around accusations that could possibly hurt Callahan’s job prospects in the future then absolutely, that is defamation as I understand it and there should be repercussions. If Tim Brown is telling the truth I want that proven without a shadow of a doubt and I want it decided on by a jury of Callahan’s peers not the slack-jawed goons on ESPN First Take.

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On a snap judgment, Tim Brown is eating crazy pills by the fistful every day of the year, three times a day. I don’t think that any coach works that hard to get to the NFL and get to the head spot and works to get to the Super Bowl just to allegedly spite Al Davis for firing Jon Gruden. That seems so far out of bounds that perhaps a movie with a similar storyline is debuting this spring. I just can’t fathom a coach that would harpoon his own career for the sake of another and the spite of an owner that could have drawn comparisons to Fidel Castro for his dictatorship in Oakland.

The more I run the allegation through in my head the more I think that it’s absurd but I think that what’s getting in the way is not the existence of the allegation but what it means overall. I would like to think that all coaches at this point never cheat for the disadvantage of their teams. I would hope, as jaded as this is, that they cheat to make their team win. Though cheating in a way such as this is seldom understandable, in my head, throwing a game or a series or any sort of competition is more reprehensible because it shows the depths your willing to defame yourself and your organization for one form of perceived gain or another. In the end, I hope that some sort of truth comes out of this, I hope that either side is vindicated because I think that this there was wrongdoing that there should be some action taken. If Callahan did throw the Super Bowl, there needs to be a reaction. 

David Stern: The Caligula Commissioner

You can almost hear the sound of the violin playing right? David Stern has been the commissioner of the NBA for coming on two decades and we have seen some major changes to the NBA under his guidance. The shot clock has changed, the 3-point line has been pushed back, 6 different teams relocated and what I think is most notable: four different lockouts. That’s in an almost 30 year career. In the past 40 years, according to this Bleacher Report article there have been 16 lockouts with Stern accounting for a quarter of those. Stern has been embattled in some dangerous controversies for a man who has lasted almost 30 years dealing with some of the biggest egos, both in players and in owners (sup Mark Cuban) of any professional sport league on the planet. But it seems that recently David Stern has flown off the handle. Stern up to and including the lockout has done and said some pretty interesting things that seem hard to ignore.

It would seem, in typical megalomaniac fashion, that David Stern couldn’t let himself go when coming to how he interacts with players and coaches. Example, the incident with the Spurs this past November where coach Gregg Popovich didn’t bring some of his biggest stars to a game against the Heat. Stern assessed a $250,000 penalty to the Spurs for “a disservice to the league and the fans.” It seems just a touch unquantifiable but it also seems like Stern is more looking for the biggest story lines than for anything else in the long term. Which is a better story David? Tim Duncan getting blown out against Le-Bron-Bron in an overall meaningless regular season game or Timmy putting up his millionth double-double in game 1 of the semis? It’s that kind of short-sightedness that has begun to plague the end of Sterns tenure as commissioner, he’s looking at the TV ratings for last weeks games ignoring that the ratings in San Antonio are going to be massive whenever Duncan, Parker and Genobili make their final playoff run before either retiring or being broken up so the Spurs can get younger.

Now that there are serious, out in the open talks about the lowly Sacramento Kings being relocated to Seattle, Stern seems to have been oscillating on how he feels. As a general fan of one of the greatest franchise names and brands in NBA history, I really want to see the old green and gold of the Supersonics back in the NBA’s life but I think this is going to pose an interesting quandary for Stern. Stern was very public and very supportive of Clayton Bennett to move the Sonics from Seattle to Oklahoma City and seemed to do a lot to make it hard for anyone in Seattle to keep the Sonics where they were. Now there’s a move to resurrect the Sonics in the twilight of Stern’s career, it will be interesting to see how he does with this prospect. Does he let due-process take its course and see if the Seattle ownership group puts up a fair deal for a miserable franchise and see if they can’t turn it into a similar contender like OKC has become since making the move eastward? It seems to remain to be seen. I think that Stern, if things get chippy, in that if things start to move at a pace that Stern isn’t comfortable with I think there is going to be some famous Stern-isms that will either drive this deal into the ground or make it almost impossible for Seattle to achieve the level of success in the amount of time that the Thunder were able to achieve. Though it appears that Stern is giving Sacramento a fighting chance.

Speaking of relocation/expansion, did you know that Stern believes that there will be teams in Europe under the NBA banner? This is starting to sound like Newt Gingrich famously promising to put an American colony on the moon by the end of his SECOND term as president. Stern believes that the NBA could conquer Europe with his legionnaires of power forwards and marketable shoe deals. Yes, he does believe that this is two decades down the road but at the same time this sounds simply nuts. When you have players LeBron James campaigning for league CONTRACTION saying that there are too many teams as it is and Stern wants to put teams across the pond? Though the London Kings might make for some good comedy.

Lucy Nicholson/REUTERS/File

I think that we started to see the destruction of Stern’s sanity with the debacle involving Chris Paul and a potential move to the Lakers. Stern, who was technically the owner of the struggling New Orleans Hornets refused to let Chris Paul move from NOLA to the Lakers in a three-team trade that most analysts believed was a mutually beneficial trade for all teams involved. Leaving the whole concept of the commissioner as the technical owner of a franchise aside, this really showed what Stern is interested in. He was right, he wanted to make another team in the city of Los Angles into a good team and it worked to perfection when both the Clippers and the Lakers were in the playoffs keeping the Staples Center booked while the LA Kings (who did pretty well) scrambling for ice time. Though in the long retrospective, the move worked, it shows a serious flaw in Stern’s career, his inability to not meddle in the moves of the league. I get that he was looking out for the Hornets but the deal that was supposed to improve every team that Stern finally approved seemed to only benefit the Clippers. Who knows how the league would be if Chris Paul were in Lakers purple but I think that there is something to be said about the commissioner needs to let the league play itself out and not look at how he will benefit.

AP Photos/Kathy Williams

The league will be Stern-less for the first time since the 1960’s starting February 1^st, 2014 but won’t be without his mark. Stern has named his successor to be his Deputy Adam Silver and it remains to be seen if this is going to be a new direction for the league or if this is going to be a shadow government where Stern is telling Silver what to do from his home in New York. Stern has done some great things for the NBA, has seen revenue go through the roof and in turn seen players salaries go through the roof but in the past 5 years or so we have only seen what seems to be the beginning of stern setting fire to the streets of Rome. Hopefully Stern putting Silver in charge will not yield the same punishing and horrid collapse that history saw when Emperor Caligula allegedly put his horse in charge as the protector of Rome as he watched the fire spread from rooftop to rooftop.

Defending The Defenseless

AP Photos/Miles Kennedy

It is a penalty that has now feels to be called almost as much as holding, “unnecessary roughness- hit on a defenseless player.” Allow me to get this caveat out of the way immediately, I do believe that the NFL is trying to do the right thing in regards to concussions and in regards of protecting their players but I have an issue with how this rule is broadly called. It seems to be that on a “bang-bang play” the defensive player is always at fault for helmet-to-helmet contact. I think that the NFL needs to get more realistic about what the expectations of an NFL defensive back are in order to make the game closer to fair for both sides of the ball.

I was never an offensive threat in any of the sports I played. I didn’t score a single goal in my high school soccer career and only hit one homer in my little league baseball career… during practice. The result of all these things lead me to be more of a defensive player and feels more for the defensive players than for the offensive guys. This may color my opinion of the calls that we see throughout the NFL today but I still think that there is something that the Commissioner’s office and the owners need to look at when they go through potential rule changes during this coming off-season.

Jared Wickerham/Getty Image

So what’s the problem you may ask? I have a problem with the way the rule is worded. The definition includes this line, “who has completed a catch and has not had time to protect himself or has not clearly become a runner,” and this may seem all fine and good but it isn’t. I think that referees in this league has too broad of a window for “has not had time to protect himself,” and also that whole concept is a problem. You often see receivers getting hit in the head while taking the effort to protect themselves against the hit. The natural reaction to someone like Ed Reed coming directly at you is to make yourself as small as possible, to brace for impact and a lot of that is also to bring your head into your body which causes your head to be where your body used to be as Ed Reed hits you. Yes, it is bad for Ed Reed to also hit you in the head with his own head but there is a serious problem with the fact that the natural reactions of both players results in a 15-yard penalty against the defense.

What is the answer here? I don’t know. It’s unfair for the offensive player to not allow them to protect themselves but I think that referees need to look at how the play transpired. I think that the receiver ducking his head in order to prep for contact is enough to constitute, “time to protect himself,” which will greatly decrease the number calls on seemingly unavoidable hits where the defensive player is unable to avoid the contact for which he is called.

Quarterbacks On Their Way Out Of Dodge

Now that most of the teams in the NFL are out of the playoffs its time to start shopping for upgrades to your team on either side of the ball. Of course the biggest position on the football field is the Quarterback. It’s time to look at the Quarterbacks that I believe should be on the move to what they believe to be greener pastures. They are not all free agents, and some of them recently signed big deals but I think that this is a solid list of guys who want to try to move on to different teams and different opportunities. In no particular order:

·      Michael Vick, Philadelphia Eagles

o   Why is he gone: It seems pretty clear that the career of Mike Vick as the starting Quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles is over now that Andy Reid was fired a day after the Eagles Season ended. The career of Vick was indelibly linked the Reid’s success and now that safety blanket is up. Vick who threw 10 interceptions in as many games with the Eagles this year. Since Vick joined the Eagles in 2009 after serving his prison sentence, he has had more total turnovers (interceptions and fumbles) than touchdowns.

o   Where is he going: It doesn’t seem likely that he’s going to follow Reid to Kansas City but it would be an interesting prospect with speedster Dwayne Bowe (though Bowe IS a free agent) and RB Jamaal Charles there to spread around the ball. Kansas City has some big time players but desperately need a more dynamic QB than what Matt Cassel can provide. If Vick can stay healthy he could add the weapon that finally takes the pressure off of the truly good KC Skill players

o   See also: Jets, Jags, and Tampa Bay could also be spots for Vick in the right situation.

·      Alex Smith, San Francisco 49ers

o   Why is he gone: One name, Colin Kaepernick. Kaepernick has proven that he can win at the pro level and that he brings a different dynamic that Smith wasn’t able to bring. The read-option and the designed QB runs force the Safeties and the Linebackers to be more involved with the run game, freezing them out coverage. But Alex Smith is the right player for the right system. He has emerged as a smart, efficient QB under Harbaugh’s tutelage. A tall, strong, pocket-passer with the ability to drop bombs all over the field.

o   Where is he going: I think that a team like Oakland could take a run at him. Currently Terrell Pryor is listed as their starting QB and though he showed a lot of promise in his start I still think they want a blanket for him. Arizona also isn’t a bad option for Smith as Well.

o   See Also: another good reason for the Raiders to take a stab at trading for smith is that back-up Matt Leinart is a free agent this off season which could drop an opening and cap room for Smith’s contract.

·      Matt Flynn, Seattle Seahawks

o   Why is he gone: not unlike his colleague above, he’s living because a younger player had an incredible year. Beaten out during the preseason quarterback competition in Seattle by rookie Russell Wilson after signing a big contract to be the big guy in the Emerald City. Flynn signed a 3-year 19.5 million dollar contract and may never take a snap as the starter for the Seattle Seahawks.

o   Where could he go: My personal favorite is a team like Philadelphia. I think that Jeffery Laurie and GM Howie Roseman could possibly want a clean-cut pocket-passer to try and wash the taste of Mike Vick out of their mouths. Of course Philly is probably not going to make any personnel decisions until they find a Head Coach. Though he may not want to come into Nick Foles territory after his run in Seattle. So look for an organization that may be looking to take the keys from a young QB (hey Minnesota)

o   See also: Flynn may also be hard to move because of the weight of his 19.5 million dollars but it is possible to see him moved.

·      Tim Tebow, New York Jets

o   Why is he gone: I think it’s clear that Tim Tebow doesn’t want to be in New York anymore no matter how many times he used any and all forms of the word “excite.” He wants to be a starter, Denver and Josh McDaniels gave him a piece of the forbidden fruit and he won’t settle for less. Though I guess you could still call him “untested” I think that the NFL has mostly decided on Tebow as a starter.

o   Where could he go: The part of me that loves the story would love to see him back in the state of Florida but Jacksonville GM has already said that he’s not going to be a Jag and I don’t think the Tampa is willing to drop the money to get him. Its going to have to be a team that is genuinely going to use him as more than a glorified running back but he probably won’t be the starter anytime soon.

o   See also: I think Tim needs to be literally anywhere else other than with the Jets. It has been a truly hideous fit for both player and team.