The 2008 NFL Season: Let's Get Ready to Rumble!

Why you should be excited about this year's NFL extravaganza? Plenty of reasons. While some of them revolve plot-lines relating to last year's post-season, others have to do with teams rebuilding themselves and establishing their names as contenders. Oftentimes your proclivity towards a team will influence your interest in the league, but this year I urge you to take a step back, and consider the following issues:

1. How will Peyton’s knee and injured center affect him and the Colts offense? From my experience on the 0-line, center to QB exchanges are very important to the extent that they either help or destroy rhythm for the offense. Manning and Saturday have been together for more than five years and obviously they’ve established a fair amount of rhythm and trust between each other. How well will Manning take to a new center? And will it disrupt the juggernaut Colts offense? Imagine the pained look on Manning’s face when he keeps fumbling snaps? Priceless. Also consider Manning’s knee which is a lot worse than everyone thinks it is. Let’s say a blind-side sack aggravates Peyton’s knee and takes him out of the game. What will the Colts do then? I can promise you every d-linemen in the league is going to be aiming for Peyton’s knee this year, by the way. One slip-up by an offensive tackle and Peyton’s knee will end him.

2. Now that Mr. Umenyiora is out for the season, how will the Giants’ defense compensate and rebound? Correct me if I’m wrong, but the Giants’ pass-rush was a huge reason why they won the Super Bowl last year. Strahan and Umenyiora were the pillars of the Giants’ pass-rush and now they’re gone (on second thought, the Redskins taking Jason Taylor now looks brilliant with these two guys gone for the Giants). My sense is that the Giants will suffer because of this loss…and probably finish dead last!

3. Favre and the Packers. Simply put, if Favre does well and Rodgers sucks, then GB will get a lot of heat while the Jets will look like geniuses. Separating the ill-will Favre engendered from me during the off-season, he was actually pretty good last year. Favre’s play and an inspirational run by the Packers youth movement propelled them to the NFC Championship game. But then again the NFC sucked, with the exception of the Cowboys and Giants, so that’s not saying much. So if Favre plays well in the AFC, which is a lot better than the NFC, then the Packers will look like idiots for giving up a competitive player in th. But if Rodgers even posts even a decent season and Favre struggles, then the Packers will come out ahead (at least in the eyes of most fans).

4. The Titans intrigue me this year. Their defense is really good and Vince Young is always exciting to watch. But with a terrible and unproven wide-receiver set, how is Young supposed to be any good? The play of Vince Young this year will determine how good of a quarterback he really is in my mind. Yes the guy can run. Yes the guy can throw short passes. But can he lead the team to victory with sub-par and young receivers and actually throw the ball more than ten yards? This will make Young either a budding McNabb or a wilting Michael Vick who can’t run as fast.

5. The Vikings also intrigue me. We know Adrian Peterson is a nasty back, but do we know how much of a liability Tavaris Jackson will be? And will the Vikings repeat their performance with AP at the helm or have Tavaris completely screw it up? Brad Childress seems to think Tavaris is up to the task, but I have my doubts. Jackson is also injured, or was injured this summer, and that makes me nervous.

In summary, there are more than a few reasons to watch the NFL aside from your team. I only went into five reasons to watch the league this year, but there are about 100 more.

- Which rookie will explode this year and become a perennial starter or All-Star?
- Who is this year’s Earnest Graham, or player that comes out of nowhere to be nasty?
- Which team will pull a 2007 Packers and unexpectedly win 10+ games this year?

I think you get the point: the NFL will be awesome this year.

Suns-Spurs

For those of you who stayed up last night to watch the Suns-Spurs game, you'll probably agree with the following observations:

1. Amare Stoudemire crapped his pants last night. He scored 20 points in the first half and then virtually disappeared in the second, going completely ice cold from the field. In the first half he was making outside jumpers, fade-aways, and his patent slash and dunk plays to the rim. It was awesome to watch and I think he went 9/11. In the second half, however, he just kept throwing up bricks, going 0/6 in the third quarter and eventually scoring a few more points. What gives?

2. The Suns looked like Denver last night: A lot of scoring, a lot of pizazz, but virtually no defense. The result: Parker and Ginobili had clear paths to the rim the entire night, and made the Suns suffer. My sense is that the Suns coaching staff told their team to lay off the fouls last night. Shaq and Amare stayed out of foul trouble and the paint was virtually uncontested for the Spurs perimeter players. But this strategy backfired because the Spurs play good defense and completely shut down the Suns on offense. For this strategy to work, your team has to match the points you're giving up on defense.

3. Ginobili is a soulless robot. He actually looks like an alien, cold and emotionless, just sitting there on the bench doing math problems in his head. He rarely shows emotion, let alone a smile or even a scowl. His 6th Man of the Year award really drove this point home: he couldn't even smile or say thank you for the award when they handed it to him. At least look like you're happy, you damn fool!
4. Nash had a horrendous game and the Spurs completely shut him down. The best example of this was the way the Spurs shut down Nash's feeder passes from the top of the arc. Every time Nash brought the ball down court, Bowen and Parker smothered him and denied his initial passes or pick and roll opportunities. The result was Nash doing those stupid behind-the-back passes to Amare which he couldn't handle.

5. Shaq is still out of shape and after 22 minutes, he looked gassed and lethargic. The Suns need to do a better job managing his minutes so he doesn't flame out in the 3rd quarter like he did last night.

6. Down 17 with 4 minutes left to play, I still thought the Suns could make it a game...and they did, but ended up losing anyway. Very frustrating to watch.

7. Diaw and Barbossa had terrible games, and for the Suns to get back into this series, they'll need help from these players.