A Couple Predictions for Week 11

Today I'm going to go with a few of these:

I'm going to pick Buffalo over Cincinnati by a field goal. Ryan Fitzpatrick (aka Harvard Boy) has impressed me and given the Bills something to build off of almost every week since being named the starter, while Carson Palmer might find himself in the rare position of envying Matt Leinart.

And, while I was surprised to see the Cowboys win over the Giants, I don't think they'll duplicate that feat against the Lions, who may be better than most people think they are. Dallas' locker room is rife with a lack of discipline and even new Head Coach Jason Garrett will need some time to really get things right. A desperate win like last week is still a win, yes, but it's also still desperate. I think the Lions will beat their former QB Jon Kitna by nine.

I'm also going to pick Green Bay over Minnesota, for obvious reasons. Brett Favre's play has been as unimpressive as his alleged penis, and he'll need some time to get back in sync with Sidney Rice, who was just removed from the PUP list. Green Bay, on the other hand, is chock full of weapons at Aaron Rodgers' disposal, and when they're on their game they can light up scoreboards. GB by 12.

Oakland and Pittsburgh. Two teams that this writer literally cannot stand, but the media's on the bullhorn and discussing how it's the first time in a while these two have played a meaningful game, and I agree. It's meaningful because everyone's going to realize that the Raiders are too young, inexperienced, and unprepared to hang with the big boys, and that the 2010 AFC West is just a basement dweller division that allows the Chargers to squeak into the playoffs every year. Steelers by fourteen if things go well for the Raiders.

Indianapolis and New England. I am going to watch this game because it's what makes sports, no, competition so much fun to watch. The two best quarterbacks of their generation, perhaps of all time, going head to head to prove to themselves that the winner has a leg up in the argument seventy-three percent of the people watching this game are going to be having. Watch the games these teams have played against one another in the past ten years- Brady and Manning are never on the field together and you can still feel the way they feed off of one another's energy. It's riveting, it's classy, it's classic. This is football. If Indy had all of their starters I'd push it their way, but they're missing some key players. That being said, they should give the Brady Bunch a fight. This one's coming down to the wire: Patriots score a field goal for the win in closing moments.

Eagles and Giants. NFC East battles are tough, especially for first-place outright. Michael Vick is making a strong case for MVP this year, and Eli Manning, who leads the league in turnovers, duels against Asante Samuel, who has five picks. My guess is that Philly is tops in the NFC, perhaps the NFL, and could give anybody they play right now some terrible headaches. Philly by ten.

And for Monday Night, Broncos and Chargers. Not quite so interesting a rivalry as Colts-Patriots, but one near and dear to this writer's heart, being a Colorado Alum and owning a Kyle Orton jersey and having lived in San Diego and all. The Chargers defense is very good, and Denver's passing game is second to, well, San Diego. The way these affairs seem to go of late is the Broncos win in a nail-biter or the Chargers win by six touchdowns. That being said, I liked what I saw last week against the Chiefs with the offensive line coming together and helping with the run. I'm going to go out on a limb and say the Broncos are due for a win by six. There, I said it.

Good luck to everyone else's team this week. I hope it's a gratifying experience.

What Does Michael Vick Mean to the NFL?

It began as all things begin: with doubt. When the Falcons selected Virginia Tech's Michael Vick with the first overall pick of the 2001 NFL Draft they were adding a slight question-mark to their roster; a baller with freakish speed and the ability to break open games with his intangibles. His passing, however, left one wanting: In his short tenure at Virginia Tech he just barely accumulated more passing touchdowns than rushing (21 to 17, respectively) a stat perhaps hidden by the unique brand of football they play down in Blacksburg. Indeed, his style of play seemed a match for the philosophy employed by his alma mater's head coach Frank Beamer, him of Beamer-ball notoriety. The uncertainty lay in his ability to morph from an electrifying college athlete into a proficient professional passer.

It's well-known that the defensive backs in the NFL are a different kind of football player than those stared down by NCAA quarterbacks playing in pro-systems. They possess another level of speed, not to mention a kind of savvy, a saltiness not quite yet obtained by their on-campus counterparts. The same goes for pro linebackers, whose intelligence, size, and quickness can make a young passer's transition difficult.

Perhaps, during his first stint in the NFL, Vick was able to prove doubters right. While his agility and elusiveness proved helpful when dealing with an oncoming rush, he seemed gun shy dropping back in the pocket or too trigger happy to tuck the ball under his arm and run. Who would have known that Roddy White, then a recipient of passes from Michael Vick, was the Pro-Bowl caliber receiver he is today while running routes for Matt Ryan?

This is not to deny the fact that he was a phenomenal talent and a hell of a lot of fun to watch. He did lead his former team to the NFC Championship. He does hold several single-game and -season records, including most rushing yards by a quarterback in a game (173) and in a season (1, 039.) He was also, allegedly, the highest paid player in the NFL with a reported one-time annual salary (including endorsements) of $25.4 million.

What happens next is well-documented in the annals of NFL history. The dogfighting charges in 2007 and the way Michael Vick was run out of the game, disgraced and, eventually, imprisoned; the face of a franchise relegated to a cautionary tale and jail cell. There were large amounts of doubt surrounding his return, and speculation regarding wether or not he would ever be able to dazzle crowds on the gridiron again.

Watching Vick on Monday Night, however, all doubt has been erased. He didn't only make plays with is feet, but stood tall in the pocket, poised as he went through his checkdowns. His arm - that arm!- looked strong and accurate, tossing an 88-yard touchdown with a flick of his wrist on the first play from scrimmage. When the pocket collapsed he would flush to one side or the other, eyes downfield and, taking what the defense was giving him, would allow a play to develop through his ability to extend. It is worth noting that during this performance he surpassed Steve Young for second all-time rushing yards by a quarterback, given that it seemed Young himself was playing in green and white. The former Forty-Niner and current Hall-of-Famer later admitted that he couldn't come up with any ideas on how to slow down Number 7 for Philadelphia.

Which leads us to this: Is it safe to say that Michael Vick is back?

No doubt a tricky question, one posed by a writer who previously lambasted Ben Roethlisberger and the Pittsburgh faithful for a standing ovation after a return from suspension for (alleged) sexual assault. Just how much of a connection is there between the mental maturation we've seen from Michael Vick on the field and the growth of the person off the field? A philandering golf legend demonstrated to the public that idyllic appearances can be just that, and speculation can prove dangerous. Not enough time has passed to absolve Vick of what he did just yet. The crimes were heinous and inhumane, and only history will really be able to tell us then what we want to know now, which is: Is Michael Vick really the Second Coming of Steve Young, clamoring with his teammates in a huddle, asking them to get this monkey off his back? Or is he held down by a more serious thing, one with claws and teeth that have sunk into his skin and caught hold of him? After watching his historic performance Monday Night one hopes it's the former, and that one day we can spell redemption V-I-C-K, standing in the bleachers and shouting it down to the field. Today, however, it's important to bite our tongues and wait until he proves us wrong, all the while enjoying the show he's putting on for us.

Yankees Lose ALCS to Rangers in Six

There have been one hundred and five World Series’ since 1903, when the Boston Americans defeated the Pittsburgh Pirates. Twenty years later the New York Yankees brought home their first MLB Championship, and out of this victory was borne a passionate zeal for the boys in pinstripes, or a fiery contempt for their tendency to win. Since their first in 1923, the Yankees have won twenty-six more World Series.

The Yankees are one of those entities that bring out the worst in my unbiased sporting self (See: Pittsburgh Steelers; Pittsburgh Penguins; Manu Ginobli.) As with the rest, my disdain comes from their ability to consistently perform at a high level and beat the teams I root for. Long reigns of success in baseball, however, are particularly maddening, as baseball lacks the salary cap installed in the other major professional leagues, seemingly to prevent, say, the Rooney or the Kraft families, from purchasing the best players and gutting every other team that storms the field. A team like the Yankees isn’t built as much as it’s assembled from the best pieces of the previous season.

The positive side of this argument is the satisfaction of watching a team reviled for buying championships like the GOP buys elections when they’re unseated by an organization whose pockets are significantly shallower. The Yankees payroll in 2008 was $209,081,579. Last night they were defeated in the American League Championship Series by the Texas Rangers, a franchise that’s never made it to the big dance until now. The Rangers’ 2008 payroll was $68,239,551: that’s just under a third of the New York bankroll.

The fact that the Rangers all but dominated the series is a testament to all that makes modern American sports exhilarating: emotion, chemistry, faith, and a bit of luck. And while it was disarming to watch to Texas’ Josh Hamilton, the ALCS MVP, point to the sky during his acceptance speech and explain that it was all due to God and our Lord, Jesus Christ, it was refreshing to think of the remainder of the postseason sans pinstripes.

It was also interesting to think about a loss like this, in six games, the significance of a failure to live up to expectations. The Yankees bats didn’t crack the way they’ve seemed to in recent playoffs, and the Rangers put themselves in a position where all they had to do to win was to rally around good pitching and play mistake-free baseball. One has to wonder what they took away from this elimination, and what kind of effect it will have on the organization. The honest answer: probably not a whole lot, as next year they’ll probably have signed, for a hefty sum, Cliff Lee, his generations greatest clutch pitcher, who beat them in Game 3, as well as several other studs who made a name for themselves in 2010 and are looking for a slightly larger check after every game. Because the Yankees dynasty is just that, a rule of such a sequence, one of big baseball money.

Questions Abound in Roethlisberger's Return, Including the Real McCoy

Full disclosure: While I would like to project the idea that I am a somewhat objective sports fan and can chronicle my experiences with ego and human frailty as such, there are certain cases where I may not be able to restrain myself from allowing subjectivity to invade my writing. The Pittsburgh Steelers can bring this out in me. Now, I understand that success begets more success, and the kind of sustained dominance the Steel Curtain have displayed in recent years breeds contempt in every fanbase outside of northern Pennsylvania. So I can hate the Steelers with the passion of a Denver Broncos fan who watched his team lose to them in the 2006 AFC Championship, and I can respect Troy Polamolu on defense, Mike Wallace on offense. I have trouble, however, respecting Ben Roethlisberger.

While out with friends last Monday, watching the 49ers-Eagles game, I happened upon, as they seem to be everywhere, a Steelers fan. I expressed my sympathy, as I always do in these situations, regarding her allegiance, to which she responded by smiling and holding up six fingers. I laughed, and asked how she felt about having an alleged sexual predator as the face of her franchise. She said she was proud that that sexual predator had won her team two Superbowls.

Now, I don't necessarily believe that Big Ben is a sexual predator. As a fan in a bar confronted by a rival fan I exaggerated a well-known story that no one, outside of the parties involved, really knows anything about. What I do know is that two women in two years have brought charges against him, and I'm also aware of the nature of elite athletes, at every level, and their tendency to feel entitled to a great deal of things.

Say the allegations against him are true. What kind of message does it send when a two-time alleged sexual assailant receives a standing ovation after returning from a four-game suspension for off-field misconduct? When Michael Vick, clearly the former face of the Falcons franchise, was caught dog-fighting he was eviscerated in the court of public opinion, run out of Atlanta, the NFL, put into prison. PETA protested outside of Lincoln Financial Field upon his release and subsequent trade to Philadelphia. Every fan of sports, no matter how rabid and committed, should possess an understanding of circumstance and maintain a certain distance from a role model who's displayed a kind of reckless abandon and penchant for putting himself in bad situations.

But, onto actual sport. Ben Roethlisberger's return to play overshadowed an interesting aspect of his team's game against the Browns: Cleveland rookie quarterback Colt McCoy's impressive debut outing against a defense that, when all is said and done, may be one of the best in recent memory. While his numbers on their own, 23/33 for 281 yards with one touchdown and two interceptions, aren't exactly extraordinary, when compared to how other opposing QBs have fared against the Steelers D one begins to see his performance as notable. McCoy finished the day with an 80.5 passer rating. Josh Freeman of the Buccaneers managed a 67.1 rating in Week 3. Matt Ryan's rating was 67.3 in both teams' season opener. Fellow Texas Alum Vince Young could only muster 66 yards and a passer rating of 48.3 before giving way to Kerry Collins, who found a bit more success with an 80.3 rating in the second half of play. The only signal-caller to best McCoy's rate is Baltimore's Joe Flacco, who finished at 82.7 in a Week 4 victory over Pittsburgh.

No one has thrown for more yards against the Steelers this season than McCoy, but perhaps the most impressive stat that also ranks as the highest thus far is his 8.6 Yards Per Attempt. That's higher than Peyton Manning against the Washington Redskins D, who threw for 8.1 yards an attempt.

Could the Cleveland Browns have found a quarterback who is the real McCoy? Or will his performance slip by the wayside at a raucous Heinz Field, lost in the shuffle of a sell-out crowd rising to their feet to cheer for a man returning from a suspension for conduct that will be questioned for the remainder of his career?

And They're Off...

Is baseball still America's favorite sport, or is it NASCAR? Is Greg Oden just a draft bust, or the biggest draft bust of all time? Does rugby really have a place in American athletics, or just outside frat houses on the front lawn? Is Tom Brady actually Justin Beiber? Is Sidney Crosby actually Taylor Swift? All this and more following the break.

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