Alright Bill, you win again. You want us to play your little games and we can’t help ourselves. And really, what are we supposed to do? Who isn’t at least a little curious as to why Tom Brady is missing? I’m sure the Giants coaches are out right now searching for the New England quarterback instead of looking at game tape and motivating their team with false hope for next Sunday.

Well that’s probably a bit optimistic. But to be honest, even as we play along with Belichick’s hide-and-seek shenanigans, we all know that our precious quarterback is fine. Have any doubts? Here’s what we know:

1. The injury isn’t serious. It was supposedly sustained during the Chargers game, yet it was minor enough that we didn’t even notice it at the time. Brady may be tough enough to make the likes of Philip Rivers envious, but I’m pretty sure you can’t cover up running around on a serious ankle sprain. Additionally, he was seen walking around again a few hours after he had the boot on, sans boot. God bless the paparazzi for keeping us all so up-to-date, I’m sure Tom doesn’t find it annoying at all.
2. There are only three possible reasons to hide Tom from the media. He either a) is completely fine, and Belichick simply wants to mess with the Giants’ heads, b) is trying to hide a serious injury so that the Giants don’t game plan for it, or c) has been kidnapped by the Dolphins because they’ve given up on Cleo Lemon. Since we have already established that ‘b’ is false, and ‘c’ is too low even for Bill Parcells, we are left with the psychological ploy theory.

So there’s nothing to be worried about, you can take Brady’s picture off of that milk carton. I’m sure that while the media searches the locker room Tom is sitting in Coach Belichick’s office staring through the keyhole and giggling. My personal theory is that Belichick wants the Giants to blitz a lot, which they may be wont to do if they think Brady is playing on a bum ankle.

Hey, I guess it’s worth a shot, and at worst the coach has given everyone something to do while we wait for the game. I know I’ve had so much fun I’m off to peruse some children’s books for Waldo.

Another great weekend of playoff football is over, and now we must wait the tedious two weeks until the Super Bowl. I, for one, am not a fan of the two week break, but Tom Brady seemed pleased about it, so I won’t complain. There will be much to discuss in the next two weeks, but I am coming out now with my prediction for the big game: Patriots by 3. That’s how they’ve done it the last three times, so I’m sticking with it until they do otherwise. By the way, I really wish that I wasn’t a Pats fan so that I could bet on the Giants with their +14 spread. That spread is way too high and the Pats have not been doing very well at all against the bookmakers recently.

I am very confident that the Pats will win the game, however the one thing to be concerned about is the play of Mr. Eli Manning. He and the Giants are reminding me of the 2001 Pats, so much so that I found myself during the NFC title game rooting for a New York team for the first time in my life. The Giants don’t have the greatest players, but they’ve been playing hard, mistake-free football and it’s working. In the weeks since I trashed Eli Manning, he has been superb. While I am flattered that Eli was so offended as to elevate his game after reading my post, his performance needs to stop before he plays the Patriots. And so, to show my sincerity, I have composed this heartfelt apology to Eli, in the style of Akon’s hit, “Sorry, Blame it on me”:

• I’m sorry for the times I wrote about you
• In all those posts I didn’t have a clue
• I’m sorry that I wrote about how you sucked
• I’m sorry that I thought your team was f*cked

• I’m sorry that I said that you were lame
• That you wouldn’t make it to a Super Bowl game
• Now you’ve shown I should’ve held my tongue
• Peyton wishes he could’ve gone that young

• I’m sorry I thought you’d disappoint Dad
• For sixteen games Archie saw you look bad
• How was I to know you’d turn it around
• That in the post season you would rebound

• I thought your brother was better than you
• Peyton always had more commercials to do
• But while he was filming you were in the gym
• I guess it should be you giving pep talks to him

• Even though you’ve had your problems
• In the playoffs we now know
• All the talent’s been inside you
• At long last you’ve let it show

• If I can’t apologize for being wrong
• Then it’s just a shame on me
• I didn’t think that you had game
• And you can put that blame on me

There. You can take my other comments off your bulletin board. And please don’t ruin the perfect season, the last thing we need is for a New York team to end the streak.

Just finished watching Roger Federer, one of my favorite athletes, in his grueling match against Janko Tipsarevic in the Australian Open.  For those of you who are not tennis fans, the dominate, #1 ranked Federer nearly lost to the little known, 49th ranked Tipsarevic.  This match was a striking reminder of how an underdog with a lot of heart who plays the game of their life can pressure a superior opponent.

Sound like there might be a similar situation with the Patriots this weekend?  I think not.   While it would be foolish to take the Chargers lightly, and as we all know the Patriots will not, they are in no shape to put up a strong fight.  Philip Rivers is listed as doubtful for the game, I’m sure he’s hoping he can stay on the sideline so he can talk trash to fans all game, and key players like Gates and LT are banged up.  The only consolation for Chargers fans is that Rivers isn’t really very good, so the drop off if Billy Volek plays won’t be too big.  There’s still a chance that Rivers could play, but does he scare you?  I’ve rarely seen a more gutless performance than last week as he ran back to the field after having his knee looked at in the locker room only to stay out of the game in a critical situation.  Gutless players don’t do well against the Pats; my pick for the game is the Patriots (-14).

I’m also going to take the Giants and their +7.5 spread.  While it is yet unknown whether the Manning theory still applies with Peyton done for the year, the Giants (in an un-Rivers-like fashion) are playing with a lot of heart.  If the Manning theory does apply Eli will have a great game again.  Just as Eli’s performances are the opposite of his brother’s during the year, perhaps his playoff success will be just as different (mediocre in the regular season, great in the playoffs).  Green Bay does have a really good chance to win this game, but it should at least be close.  By the way, has anyone seen the forecast for the game tomorrow?  I’ve seen sources range from +5 to -5; either way, that’s f*cking cold!  It must be miserable for the players while they’re on the sideline, and cheese hats off to the Packers fans for sitting through it.

It’s been a pretty slow news week in New England up to this point, I thought it time to make a quick post about the Celtics and Randy Moss.

Let’s start with the better of the two stories, the Celtics. I’ll admit that I was pretty down on them after their two recent losses. Ray Allen had been awful, and Rondo’s injury was clearly hurting the team. As they proved against the Blazers, however, the Celts will step it up for big games, and when Allen is on they can overcome other setbacks. Had Rajon played last night, the point difference would’ve been even greater.

This game also highlighted one of the main differences between Ray Allen and Paul Pierce. Paul had an off night in the scoring department, but was still able to make a huge contribution with 8 rebounds, and the team won the game. Ray on the other hand doesn’t do much when he isn’t scoring, so let’s hope he’s put his shooting troubles behind him.

Now on to the Randy Moss situation. Already he has shown that he is much more adept at defending himself than Roger Clemens. Hopefully this is because he actually isn’t guilty. In Roger’s case, no one is benefiting from the accusations, whereas Randy’s accuser clearly has a lot to gain at his expense. We should find out more details soon; in the meantime is anyone concerned that the Patriots will be distracted by this? Didn’t think so.

That’s it for now, be sure to check back Saturday for my next round of playoff predictions. (By the way, the Manning theory is in tact, let’s see if it applies after Peyton’s season is over. If it does, watch out Packers!)

I will reveal the my revolutionary Big Brother theory later in this post, for now it’s time to put my reputation on the line and make some playoff picks. Let’s start out with the one right here in New England, obviously I think the Patriots will probably win the game, so we’ll give the Jags a chance and go with the spread on this one.

Currently the gambling gurus have it at Pats -13.5, I think the Patriots will beat this, and I’ll tell you why (its not just because I’m a homer, I am but this one I can justify). I don’t think anyone is too concerned about the Patriots offense, so the question is whether the Jaguars can put up points. Quarterback Garrard’s claim to fame is throwing few interceptions, but he’s still a inexperienced quarterback. If his team gets down he’ll have to go away from the safe passes he usually completes. I also expect him to have problems with the Patriots confusing package of rushes, he hasn’t faced a defense that operates quite like the Pats’.

The analysts love to talk about the Jags’ potent running game, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard this past week that they will keep the Patriots offense off the field; “Brady and Moss can’t score if they’re on the sideline”. When you think about it, this is one of the stupider theories out there. Sure, if the clock is running the Pats will have fewer drives, but so will the Jaguars. Common wisdom is that time of possession means you’ll win the game, but such wisdom is based in fallacy. Teams with longer drives score more, and by longer I mean by yardage. Obviously these tend to take up more time than a drive where you get a couple first downs and punt or turn it over.

So in the end I don’t buy the running game making the difference, you need to do more than run the ball. It would be difficult for the Jags to score the 25.7 points per game they averaged this season, and even that would not be close to enough to beat the Pats. If they try to slow down the game to lower New England’s score they do the same to themselves.

On to the rest of the games, beginning with Indy and San Diego to round out the AFC. Indy is favored by 9, and I’ll take them over the Chargers. San Diego looked pretty mediocre against a weak Titans team last week, and Indy has all of their weapons back; they’ll be looking to use them and put up some points. And if the game is close they’d better hope Adam Vinatieri returns to his Patriot form.

I’m picking the Packers (-7.5) over Seattle simply because the Seahawks don’t play well on the road, and Lambeau is a tough place to play, especially with freezing temperatures forecast for tomorrow’s game. I do think Seattle has a chance to pull off the upset if they can utilize their experience on offense and Favre makes some mistakes with the football, as he is sometimes wont to do.

The trendy upset pick this week is NY over Dallas. I’ll take the Giants getting 7.5 with the spread, but Dallas will win the game. Romo has something to prove after all the talk of him being distracted, and after his playoff debacle of last year. The Giants have played well these past two weeks, but as I’ve said before I have no faith in Eli Manning, and I don’t think he’ll keep up the strong performance for a third week in a row. Which brings me to the much anticipated…

Big Brother Syndrome Theory! The performances of Eli and Peyton are inversely proportional. Whether he can’t handle the pressure of living up to his brother, or there is some cosmic force limiting the combined success of the Mannings, Eli plays his worst when Peyton has a strong game. He does well in weeks where Peyton struggles or doesn’t play at all. Don’t believe me? Let’s look at some numbers. Peyton’s 2007 season QB rating was 98.0, Eli’s was 76.0 (including his playoff game). In weeks where Peyton had a better QB rating than his average, Eli was held to an average rating of 65.6. During weeks where Peyton did worse than his average, or didn’t play at all, Eli had an average QB rating of 87.7. That’s a whopping 22.1 point difference in rating, and since Peyton will probably have a huge game this week, the Giants are in huge trouble. Remember, you heard it here first.

The Hall of Fame voting was released today, and Jim Rice fell just short of making it in (congratulations to Goose Gossage on his election). Rice received 72.2% of the vote, just 16 votes short of the necessary 75%. Rice, who has been on the ballot since 1995, has one last chance to be elected by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.

As I’ve said before I believe Rice should be in the Hall of Fame, and think he will get enough votes next year to make it. The number of votes Rice receives has steadily increased since 2003, after hovering in the mid 50%’s since 2000. In 2003, Rice received 52.2% of the vote, 20% less than this year. 2007 was the only deviation from this trend (1.3% less than 2006), but was caused in large part by the eligibility of Cal Ripken Jr. and Tony Gwynn that year. The most distinguished newcomer next year is Rickey Henderson, who should make it easily, but I don’t feel his presence will be enough to derail Rice’s attempt, given that some voters should be swung by the fact that it will be his last chance on the ballot.

I have been unable to find a complete video of Roger Clemens’ press conference today, in which he played an excerpt of a taped conversation with McNamee, but here is a portion of it. As has been the case with every development so far, this conversation sheds little light on who is telling the truth. McNamee acts as one would expect a man who told the truth and feels bad about it would, but at the same time does not refute Clemens when he says “I’m telling the truth”. Regardless of the content, it is pretty low of Clemens to secretly record and release a conversation, especially one involving McNamee’s sick child.

Update: Here, from ESPN.com, is the full portion of the call played at the press conference.

Let’s talk for a minute about the one asshole that voted for Brett Favre for this years AP NFL MVP award. I understand that by all accounts Brett Favre is a great guy - a man of great character. He’s led his team through many victorious seasons, he’s won a Superbowl, and he’s won the MVP before as well. I can’t take anything away from the man. This year, he took a very young and inexperienced team to a 13-3 record, and he put up great numbers. He was Sport’s Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year. And we maybe have been talking about the Packer’s 16-0 record this time of year if they had been able to acquire Randy Moss instead of the Patriots.

But Brett Favre’s name has no business coming up in the MVP discussion this year. It’s not even close, and I’m actually angry, home team aside, that someone felt they had to vote for him. If ANYONE in the league, ANYONE, should have received a vote for MVP aside from Tom Brady, it should have been Randy Moss. So once you decide you’re going to vote for a Quarterback, how in your right mind could you vote for someone other than Tom Brady? Let’s look at some numbers…

You read it right folks - Tom Brady leads in every major passing statistic category. A lot of those aren’t even close, and he actually has better rushing numbers too. And lets not forget the most important numbers: 16 and 0. Don’t get me wrong, 13-3 is a great season, the Packers surprised everyone. Brett Favre put up numbers late in his career that would have won the MVP 8 times out of 10 seasons, but not this season. How can Tom Brady have the best season that a quarterback has EVER HAD, and someone decide to vote for a DIFFERENT QUARTERBACK for MVP. It’s ridiculous!

If anyone out there knows what the justification for the Favre vote was, please let me know, because I really am curious.

Update from Kurti: Per my comment, here is audio of an interview on WEEI this morning with Frank Cooney (the lone vote for Favre).

WEEI - Dennis and Callahan - Frank Cooney and Mitt Romney

60 Minutes

Who else just watched 60 Minutes and found the gangster story much more interesting than the Clemens interview? Had the John Martorano story run a few months earlier Clemens could’ve hired him to take out McNamee. Oh well.

I can’t say I’m surprised but the Clemens interview didn’t sway me in one direction or the other. What Clemens needed to do to help his case was give a satisfactory answer as to why his friend McNamee would lie, yet when asked that question his response was along the lines of “I don’t know”. Given that this was the most important part of the interview I wish that Mike Wallace (like Theo Epstein, Bob Kraft, and myself, a distinguished graduate of Brookline High School, by the way) had spent more time on it. As it is, I am still not 100% convinced that Clemens is guilty, but if I had to bet on it I’d say he was.

tick…tick…tick…tick…

Celtics better than the West?

After the Celtics finished off the Pistons yesterday I pointed out to my friend Colin, a Chicago Bulls fan (he grew up in 90’s and likes the Bulls, Cowboys, and Yankees; needless to say he is not at all “beyond the bandwagon”), that the Celtics could very well break the Bulls’ single season win record. At this point my other friend John suggested that they would have an easy time since the Eastern Conference is weak. While the East may be weaker than the West I disagreed with this notion, since the East has several good, and two very good teams. John countered that Dallas, the Suns, and the Spurs were better than any team in the East, including the Celtics. Given that much is made about whether the Celts are as good as teams in the West I have decided to take this notion on.

First and foremost, the Celtics are 10-0 against Western teams. What’s that you say? They haven’t yet played any of the elite west teams? Fair enough, but lets see what those “elite” teams have done against the same Western competition. The Celtics have played Denver, Golden State, Houston, LA Lakers, Memphis, Sacramento, Seattle, and Utah (the Lakers and Kings twice). The Spurs are a pedestrian 9-5 against those teams, Dallas (who amazingly have played those conference foes only the same number of times as the Celtics) are 8-2, and the Suns are only 7-4. A combined 24-11 is not a bad record, to be sure, but its certainly not 10-0, and shows that the teams the Celtics have beat can win against tough competition. The Celts don’t play any of those teams until Dallas comes to town on January 31, but until then they’ve proven to be as good, if not better, than the good Western conference teams.

Jim Rice to the Hall?

There is a lot of talk swirling that this may be the year Jim Rice finally makes it into the Hall of Fame, given the weak competition for votes. I can’t say I had ever done do much analysis on this, and having been too young to see Rice’s career I had no first hand experience, but I was always skeptical just looking at his career numbers that he belonged in the Hall of Fame. After reading this column on ESPN, however, I am convinced that he does; it is a good read for those of you that have not seen it.

That’s it for now, I hope everyone has had a joyful beginning to 2008, its looking to be a great year for New England sports.

P.S. In case you’re scratching your head at the title of this post, read it to the tune of the Bernie and Phyls jingle. Fine…it still sucks. F*** you.

Due to the holiday season my sports watching was somewhat limited this weekend (not because I was spending time with family, I just left all my holiday shopping until the very end, but same result). I still managed to catch a couple of games however so here are some quick thoughts before I go to bed. Keep in mind I am not in a good mood as it is well past midnight on Christmas and Santa has yet to stop by with anything.

Pass Interference - At the end of every Sunday (and usually Monday too) I think to myself what an unusually bad week the refs had calling, and not calling, pass interference. The recurrence of which leads me to believe that it’s really not so unusual. This weekend alone, and I was only able to watch two games in their entirety, and I saw at least 2 obviously blown calls. Now I’m not hating on referees, they do a fine job, but these are two that would’ve been overturned were replay available. The first was in the Pats-Dolphins game, which fortunately did not affect the outcome. It was called with 5:40 left in the fourth on Asante Samuel, and I challenge any of you to say otherwise. It would be nice if coaches were able to challenge the same thing, only its a “judgement call”, so they can’t. Special message to the NFL…it doesn’t matter! On all reviews there must be conclusive, indisputable evidence for the call to be overturned, just implement the same policy here. There are some calls where everyone and their blind grandmother can see that the call should or should not have been made; those should be overturned. It says something about how spoiled we are in New England that I’m screaming at the TV because a penalty might slightly reduce one of the Pats scoring records; but not all fans are so lucky. As we see in the second, most notable, and most game changing, pass interference screw up, which occurred in the Giants - Bills game. Now the NFL.com doesn’t put blown calls on their play-by-play recap of the game (Conspiracy? I think so.) so I can’t tell you what time it was, and to be honest I don’t even remember which team was which, but in a close game a receiver got nearly TACKLED on a deep pass while the ball was in the air, and no flag was thrown. This is a clear example of when replay could have been utilized to make the correct call in a game changing situation. And lets face it, both the Buffalo and New York quarterbacks can use any help they can get. Which brings me too…

Eli Manning - New York fans, you need a new quarterback, and I’m sorry but you’re probably not gonna get one. One of the highlights of my job is that I frequently get to talk to people in NYC and hear them bitch about Eli. All indications are that I will have this to look forward to for years to come, as the Giants seem committed to making him their franchise quarterback. The most telling moment this weekend from the game was when I came to the realization that the younger Manning looks a lot like Cpl. Upham, the guy who screws everyone over in Saving Private Ryan. Having since looked at pictures in a side by side comparison, I have come the conclusion that they in fact do not look nothing alike, which to me means the association in my head was made purely on suckiness; not a good sign for Eli. The Giants should trade him while he still has some value, but they won’t, New Yorkers will probably be stuck with him for the next 10 years.

Pats-Giants 12/29 - A lot of people I’ve talked to have been concerned that they won’t get to see the game this Saturday as it is exclusively on the NFL Network. While this is technically true, the game will be broadcast in the Boston area on Ch. 5, in case you hadn’t heard already. Those who don’t live in the Boston area may still be out of luck. If only John Kerry had been elected President in 2004 we could have avoided all this. Why didn’t he tell everyone back then that this was part of his platform?

Roger Clemens - I will have much more on this in future posts, as I’m sure Patrick will as well, but I will say right off the bat that, although I want to give Clemens the benefit of the doubt, I am inclined to believe McNamee’s accusations simply because he has no motivation to lie. Why lie about a friend when you risk jail time only if you don’t tell the truth? If you haven’t already I urge you to read at least the Clemens section of the Mitchell Report which appears beginning on page 167 (page 215 of the pdf). This article, which is linked to on Curt Schilling’s blog, is also a valuable point of view on McNamee’s credibility. You can view Roger Clemens’ video, in which he vehemently denies the accusations, here.

Alright, that’s it for now, I hope that steroid talk has everyone in the Christmas spirit. Time to sneak a bite of Santa’s cookies and then it’s off to bed for me. Happy Holidays everybody!