The Fighting Elvii are 0-5. Gregg Easterbrook is still writing his TMQ column. Was too busy to watch much football this weekend, but that Dallas-Buffalo game was one for the ages. Great leadership example set by Tony Romo? He was asked, after the game, how he continued to keep his head up and the team together after sinking them with five interceptions and a fumble, then answered, "Either you want the ball at the end of the game or you don't." Perfect answer.
Is it Time to Shoot the TV?
The Fighting Elvii are evidently in their barbituates and booze season, having thus far failed even to fight to an 0-4 record. With LaDanian Tomlinson traded and Marvin Harrison and Calvin Johnson out for next week, it looks like their only hope will be... that there is no hope. The only team more pathetic in the GCFFFL is Grendel's Mother: the mitochondrial monster's team has thus far only scored one touchdown the entire season.
But really, what a strange season it's been: Who would have guessed that Ronnie Brown would outscore LaDanian Tomlinson by six points a game? Or that Tony Romo would be the best player in the NFL this year? Guess his psyche has recovered from that fumbled snap against Seattle last winter.
Continue reading "Tuesday Afternoon Cornerback, Wednesday Edition" »
Well, this is sure a weird year in football... and the lowly Fighting Elvii are taking the brunt of the downs and being flayed by the freaky ups. Now 0-2, the Elvii have dropped consecutive games to Larry Craig's Wide Stance and the Dark Side by a combined 31 points. Worse yet, after executing a blockbuster trade with LCWS before Week 2, sending LaDanian Tomlinson to the Men's Room Prowler's for Willie Parker, Laveranues Coles, Calvin Johnson and an anonymous encounter to be named later, the Elvii couldn't even avail themselves of the sweet schadenfreude entailed by Tomlinson's sorry Week 2 performance at NWE: yeoman, but unspectacular performances, by Roethlisberger, McGahee, Driver, and Akers combined to give the MSP Toe-Tappers a 12-point win over Grendel's Mother for the Evil Division's sole 2-0 record.
As an indication of just how whacked the first two weeks of the NFL season have been for the FFO of the GCFFFL, a chart of FER (Fantasy Efficiency Rating) of the top twenty backs in the GCFFL:
| RNK | RB | $V | CP | FER |
| 1 | James, Edgerrin | 9 | 37 | 4.11 |
| 2 | Jordan, LaMont | 1 | 36 | 36.00 |
| 3 | Barber III, Marion | 8 | 34 | 4.25 |
| 4 | Gore, Frank | 31 | 33 | 1.06 |
| 5 | Addai, Joseph | 34 | 33 | 0.97 |
| 6 | Peterson, Adrian | 6 | 33 | 5.50 |
| 7 | Lewis, Jamal | 4 | 30 | 7.50 |
| 8 | Alexander, Shaun | 31 | 30 | 0.97 |
| 9 | Henry, Travis | 17 | 29 | 1.71 |
| 10 | Ward, Derrick | 3 | 28 | 9.33 |
| 11 | Johnson, Rudi | 28 | 27 | 0.96 |
| 12 | Westbrook, Brian | 19 | 27 | 1.42 |
| 13 | Portis, Clinton | 10 | 27 | 2.70 |
| 14 | Parker, Willie | 26 | 27 | 1.04 |
| 15 | McGahee, Willis | 8 | 25 | 3.13 |
| 16 | Williams, Carnell | 10 | 24 | 2.40 |
| 17 | Lynch, Marshawn | 4 | 23 | 5.75 |
| 18 | Green, Ahman | 2 | 22 | 11.00 |
| 19 | Tomlinson, LaDainian | 49 | 22 | 0.45 |
| 20 | Brown, Chris | 11 | 20 | 1.82 |
Lo that I didn't play James in Week 2, but who knew the Arizona Cardinals would play so tough against Seattle? Or that Chris Brown would tank in Week 2 (well... that I should have known).
In other news, Jon Kitna claims that ∃!x[All-Powerful(x) & Eternal(x) & Partisan w/r/t Sports(x)], AKA "God", helped him get back into the game against Minnesota. It looked to me like it was a combined 10 turnovers (including a stat-line for MN QB Tarvaris Jackson that included 0 passing TDs and 4 INTs) and the complete inability to make a field goal that made that game suck so badly. Turns out ∃!x was against me and my team. I hate it when that happens.
Reader Animadversion (Warning May Contain Wonk-like Substance) Alert! In his TMQ column this week, Gregg Easterbrook runs a deeps rant against the Big Three automakers for their continued recalcitrance, vis. higher fuel efficiency standards. It's a deep play for a big gain--but it gets called back for Illegal Stat Downfield. In his piece, Easterbrook links to an IIHS study, and uses the data therein to make the following claim: "And although being in a heavy SUV might make the driver feel safer, the reality is the opposite." Uh, not according to this IIHS study, which has a better break-down of the numbers than the one linked to by Easterbrook. In fact, you are MUCH safer in an SUV than any other type of vehicle than a Lincoln Continental.
OTOH, as this chart from the Pew Center on Global Climate Change shows, the U.S. is embarrassingly far behind other industrialized nations in fuel efficiency. Far from needing some "cold fusion"-like breakthrough in technology to achieve respectable fuel efficiency, the rest of the world is already there.
Now, I've driven some of those tiny Euro-cars. If you're winding your way around a Greek island, they're fantastic: peppy, nice room in the hatchback, and can even seat four adults and a kid or two on a lap while climbing switchbacks coming back from the beach. But if a Lincoln Navigator blew by me in one of those things on I-94, it would probably throw me right into the ditch. Which is why, even though there's already a SmartCar dealership in the Twin Cities, I won't be rushing out to buy one.
So, OK, we're not going to get Euro mileage in the U.S.--but if Lexus sells hybrid sports cars and SUVs, the argument isn't about the kind of car we want (or need) to buy, but what kind of powertrains we're willing to put in them. In fact, I recently came across this fascinating story from the racing world, at the After Gutenberg blog:
A converted Toyota Supra GT won a 24-hour endurance race in Japan. Some automotive writers have gone so far as to state that a new era had dawned when the specially modified Toyota Supra HV-R hybrid race car won the Tokashi. The ultracapacitor-equipped Toyota Supra HV-R coupe became the first hybrid to win the 24-hour endurance car race held at Japan’s Tokachi International Speedway. The hybrid Supra finished 616 laps of the 5.1-kilometer (roughly three-mile) course—19 more laps than the second-place, non-hybrid, Nissan Fairlady Z.
That's a hell of a lot sexier than a Prius! So, I guess we'll leave it to the Big Three to bitch and whine, while the rest of the world kicks our ass.
Well, after a weekend of horseshit football like this past one, there can only be two good reasons for following the NFL again this year: The Fighting Elvii and Gregg Easterbrook's TMQ column on ESPN.
And even these disappointed. The Elvii, after an auction draft that landed Ladanian Tomlinson, Marvin Harrison and seven Cleveland Browns cheerleaders, started an injured Terry Glenn at WR and fell just four points sjort of a victory (no typo: that's Minnesotan for "lack or disappointment apropos of our half-heartedness and incompetence at anything like a national pastime"). Easterbrook, meanwhile, had a chance to give a statful analysis of the agreeable parity that seems to have overtaken Division I NCAA football--which has been a blast so far this year, and gave a mere shout on the matter to the AP pollsters for opening the gates and tossing a few mangy beaver pelts through them to the Appalachian State Mountaineers. Also: his warning that he may not write as much about the NFL this year in his column is a grave sign of a man getting tired of a writing task that's become a burden and not a joy--the writing gods, as he might say, do not smile kindly on those who insert excuses into their work.
