Saturday, January 21, 2006

Skip to My Loo

posted by BH

I'm sorry this is so long.


If nothing else, Skip Bayless is determined to sound as crazy as possible. He doesn't want the Seahawks to go to the Super Bowl, but he can't simply write that he doesn't like them. His main argument is that the Seahawks are not a Super Bowl caliber team because they haven't beaten anybody meaningful. When they did win games against good teams, the wins weren't convincing. I hate this line of reasoning. They beat most of the teams on the schedule. Bayless acts like watching Seattle in the Super Bowl would be like having to trade places with William Wallace at the end of Braveheart.

I love the city of Seattle, despite its seemingly daily drizzle. I love the Pike Place Market and the Seattle Aquarium and the postcard vistas that surround you from atop the Space Needle.

Not only does Seattle have the best seafood and coffee, but the best major-league baseball park (Safeco Field) and the best NFL stadium (Qwest Field). I wouldn't mind living in Seattle, which just might be an even better San Francisco. For me, Seattle is nirvana, and I don't mean the grunge rock band of the late, great Kurt Cobain.
Oh wow you suck. This is pretty formulaic. Skip doesn't know too much about Seattle, but he wants the fans there to know that if he could, he'd live there. "Look. I'm one of you. Really. See how I mentioned Kurt Cobain?" Soon to follow will be the stunning, "You never saw this coming" moment, in which Skip blows us all away by saying,

I would rather eat fish eyes than see Seattle's Seahawks in my beloved Super Bowl. The Sea-frauds have had the luckiest road to the Super Bowl this side of a fast food contest winner. I'm convinced they're the destiny-driven product of the NFL's easiest schedule and weakest division, the NFC West.
You'd rather eat fish eyes than watch an entertaining team based on some crazy, moronic, something-other-than-reality principle?

If this Seahawks team were still in the AFC West, it wouldn't have made the playoffs, let alone have won a bye week and home-field advantage all the way to the Super Bowl.
First of all, they aren't still in the AFC West. Secondly, how do you know what would have happened? Thirdly, basing an argument on speculation that we have no way of finding out is rerally, really stupid.

I'm sorry, but the Emerald City has a cubic zirconia football team.
This joke would work if Seattle had ever been referred to as the "Diamond City." Also, the Seahawks are a real football team. Players went to real colleges, they put on real pads, Shaun Alexander has won a real MVP award, Mike Holmgren has won a real Super Bowl.

I keep trying to delude myself into believing I'll be OK with my third-string back. Sure, when the going gets tough, the tough get Goings. Give me my tough, smart little overachiever, Nick Goings. Little? Heck, he weighs 225 pounds. Last season he had five 100-plus-yard games -- three of them on 30-plus carries.

But who am I kidding? He doesn't have DeShaun's slash and dash. He can't make the Seahawks pay with 40-yard touchdown runs the way DeShaun could. That means the Seahawks will get away with triple-teaming the baddest little man on the NFL planet, Steve Smith.
The first paragraph is about Nick Goings being a capable NFL back. The second is about how that doesn't matter. These two paragraphs and the three or so before it (I didn't copy them because he laments the loss of Julius Peppers and DeShaun Foster) are simply designed to diminish anything the Seahawks might do this weekend. Goings is good, but he's no Foster. That means if the Seahawks win, they did what they were supposed to do against a second rate back and a diminished d-line. If Carolina wins, they did it with a second rate back and in spite of a diminished d-line, which is proof that Seattle didn't belong.

And that means my quarterback, Jake Delhomme, who's 5-1 in postseason games with a 108.5 rating (10 TD passes vs. just two interceptions), will let his hyper energy turn into frantic frustration and force up a couple of killer picks. That means my team's resolve will finally crack during their third straight playoff road trip -- this one a six-hour flight. That means …

… the Seattle Seahawks ARE GOING TO PLAY IN THE SUPER BOWL.

What's next, Milli Vanilli as the halftime entertainment?
Because the Seahawks faked their way through an entire NFL season and two playoff games? You're faking your way through this whole column. YOU'VE FAKED YOUR WAY THROUGH A WHOLE CAREER!!

Now Seahawks owner Paul Allen has hit the lottery twice -- co-founding Microsoft and lucking into the easiest road to Super Bowl fame since Janet Jackson's. Think about it: Allen's Seahawks played only four teams in the tougher AFC. They opened in Jacksonville, where they were predictably thumped 26-14. Then, right on schedule, they got to play the Texans and Titans as they were crumbling. Finally, Indianapolis played its junior varsity when it visited Seattle in Week 16.
It's too bad Seattle put these opponents on their schedule so that they could beef up against weak...wait, the NFL makes the schedule you say? And teams have to play the opponents the NFL says they have to? And you have to try to beat them? Hmm. Seattle did what they needed to do? So the Seahawks don't really have to answer to Skip Bayless or anyone else who might say they played a weak schedule? No. It's not Seattle problem that some of the teams they played had poor records. Thankfully that's why there's a playoff system in which the best teams get to play at the end of the year so that the pretenders might be sorted out.

By the way, Skip's Panthers won nine games against teams that didn't go to the playoffs and lost three to teams that didn't go.

And in their NFC nondivision home games …

The Seahawks survived Atlanta 21-18 when Michael Vick was banged up in the fourth quarter; survived Dallas 13-10 when Drew Bledsoe threw an inconceivably stupid late interception -- to somebody named Jordan Babineaux -- that set up a 50-yard field goal as time expired; and survived the New York Giants 24-21 in overtime when Jay "I've Lost My" Feely missed three field goals that could have won it.

The Seahawks' most impressive performance came on a Monday night in Philadelphia, when they won 42-0 -- while the no-Donovan, no-T.O., no-heart Eagles of Mike McMahon turned the ball over six times. But that night, much of America woke up and realized the Seattle Seahawks had sneaked up and stolen the NFC after playing the easiest schedule since the strike year of 1987.
So you just brought up a win, a win, a win, and a win? Solid.

Don't let Shaun Alexander play in my Super Bowl. He won the NFL MVP mostly because of a Charmin schedule and because he ran behind the NFL's best left side of an offensive line. Tackle Walter Jones and guard Steve Hutchinson I do greatly respect.

But not Alexander.
Is there some part of the MVP requirement that says a guy has to do amazing things for shitty teams? It does require some skill to run behind a good offensive line. Do you think Kevan Barlow's running for 1,800 yards behind Seattle's o-line?

For years, his reputation around the league has been that he'll turn soft when called upon to get the hard yards. He did nothing Saturday to erase those doubts. Early on, he turned what looked like it might be a short touchdown run into an unforced fumble -- whoops, I dropped it.

Then, after a fairly routine collision, he appeared to be woozy. Soon, the team announced he had a concussion. Maybe he did. But it's unusual for a concussion victim to come out of it 20 minutes later and be cheering his team from the sideline while not offering to return and help win a playoff game.

It looked suspiciously like Alexander wanted no more part of a Redskins defense that will ring your bell. The following Monday, he told reporters that he had been ill the week before the game and had taken some medicine on game day that made him "loopy." Yes, very suspicious.

His teammates must have been thrilled with him. They appeared to play even harder without him -- or in spite of him.
This whole part is so disgusting that I want to give Alexander Bayless's address. This is insane. Does anyone really think Holmgren is going to have a guy play for him who abandons his team when they need him most? Does Skip really believe that NFL players are going to let it go unnoticed that a guy wimps out while other players are on the field? It's these little inflamatory things that Bayless says all the time that make me think that he's either, a)truly insane, b)got no conscience, or c) six monkeys typing at a computer.

He goes on to blame the Redskins loss on the game against Tampa Bay, so I'll just skip ahead.

I still say coach Mike Holmgren's Super Bowl legacy was mostly a product of Brett Favre's offense and Reggie White's defense.
Because Favre's been to a lot of Super Bowls since Holmgren left.

I still say the NFL's most overrated team belongs to the world's most underrated city. I'll miss it.
No one in Seattle really changes his or her life because of what some insane, conscienceless monkey has to write. This is the West Coast. I guarantee that if you show up in Seattle and tell people who you are, no one will care.

Once again, I'm sorry this is so long. I'm not going back to the top to correct it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I didn't read it but I thought I'd leave you a comment to make you feel better.