Press Play

The mediots will keep saying this every year because it gets play and eventually they will be right. I can’t believe this is the only topic that they find news worthy for the Boys.

Washington Redskins director of sports medicine Bubba Tyer told Gibbs the knee had very little swelling. There was more good news Monday, when an MRI confirmed the original diagnosis: a mild sprain of the MCL in Brunell’s right knee, with no further damage.

A

Vitt names Martin starter for season finale

NFL.com wire reports

ST. LOUIS (Dec. 26, 2005) — Jamie Martin will start the Rams’ season finale at quarterback.

Last week, interim coach Joe Vitt delayed making his pick public until the day before the Rams’ 24-20 loss to the San Francisco 49ers, even though Martin practiced with the first unit all week.

Martin, ended up playing, throwing for a career-best 354 yards against the 49ers, although he had two fourth-quarter interceptions and the Rams squandered a 20-7 lead. Vitt said that he will start again.

“He had the two interceptions which we just can’t have, but Jamie all day long gave us a chance to win the game,” Vitt said. "At one point we’re up 20-7 and he’s rocking and rolling.

Martin is 105 for 145 on the season, completing 72.4 percent of his passes, with five touchdown passes and seven interceptions. Ryan Fitzpatrick, who did not throw a touchdown pass in any of his three starts, has completed 56.3 percent of his passes with four touchdowns and eight interceptions.

Entering the season, Martin had thrown 340 passes and made three starts in his entire 11-year career. This will be his fifth start this season.

Rams starter Marc Bulger, who is on injured reserve with a shoulder injury, started eight games.

Raf
Sorry I wasnt sure I had logged on right.
I read this sight almost daily since I saw it in the preseason. I have only commented a few times. One thing is for sure this blog is the best. Thankyou so very much for all your talent and hard work.
   I didnt like Bill at first I thought for sure it was a bad choice. Now I believe in him. I dont know and I’m not sure anyone knows for sure if he is retiring because I remember seeing Bill saying convincingly on tv before he took the cowboys team that he had met with Jerry but had no plans to coach the cowboys. Now he is the coach.
   I heard what Bill said today but assumming he did leave for whatever reason who are your choices for coach of the cowboys, I think mine might have been coaching the rams this sunday if he hadnt got sick.
GO FALCONS!!!
GO IGGLES ??? THAT KINDOF HURTS
GOOOOO COWBOYS

The retirement rumors are beyond absurd, and a close look at both the text of the original story, and Mortenson’s own defense of that piece on ESPN yesterday, reveals how odd it is.

First, the story cited sources who “talked to” Chris Mortenson. As a friend of mine pointed out, the news here is therefore that somebody passed a rumor along to Chris Mortenson. The story included a bizarre paragraph along the lines of “if Parcells decides to stay it will because he likes his young team and though they have improved, his work isn’t finished.” So we’re supposed to imagine that, in the midst of his retirement soliloquy to unnamed Bristol-connected sources, he also provided a full rationale for why he might stay after all? C’mon.

Then, on the air, Mortenson told a Sportscenter anchor that he “knows Parcells is contemplating retirement” and said that on a scale of one to ten, Parcells proclivity toward quitting was a “6.5.” Asked in the same interview for what chance Parcells would definitely step down, he said 40%. So which is it?

Parcells doesn’t strike me as the kind of man who shares his innermost ideas with people who might turn around and call ESPN. Are you joking? Mortenson wants to be the Peter Gammons of the NFL, citing deeply-buried moles inside each and every organization.

I think it’s fair to cast serious doubt on the integrity of this report. Frankly, I think it’s a total fabrication. Maybe Chris Mortenson imagines that Parcells is contemplating retirement. Well, hereâ€â"¢s some breaking news then: I, too, IMAGINE that he thinks about it all the time. Don’t we all dream of walking out of our jobs? Can you imagine how often a football coach wants to say ‘to hell with it’? That doesnâ€â"¢t mean heâ€â"¢s going to do it, and it isnâ€â"¢t news.

Parcells in the last six weeks has made repeated references to the future in a tone and manner that I haven’t heard in the past, and I’ve listened to every word of nearly every presser since he arrived. He mentions players in potential schemes “later” or “down the road.” He has developed an emotional attachment to this club and likes the idea of a young, strong, and physical defense. He’s a defensive coach and this is one of the most exciting young defenses in the league. On offense, he brought in some of his old hands with the idea of taking one last run at it all; I think they all would agree there’s another year or two left in that sprint. Leaving now would be abandoning them before the job is finished. I donâ€â"¢t think Keyshawn or Bledsoe intend to play for another coach in their careers. Parcells knows this. On top of everything, I think the idea that heâ€â"¢s a quitter is one that bothers him. It is a reputation heâ€â"¢s had a hand in making, but I donâ€â"¢t think he likes it. He isnâ€â"¢t likely to enhance it with another early exit.

As for why he won’t come right out and say he’s returning, well, he’s about to enter negotiations with Jerry freaking Jones. You want to hand a Razorback cardshark like Jerry that much leverage in a bargaining session? Hell no. You don’t tell anybody you’re coming back until Jerry has dollars on the table, and the mere notion of Parcells leaving does nothing but motivate the Cowboys to sweeten the pot. Parcells isn’t going to leave money on the table and admit his return just to ruin Dale Hansen’s 3-Monster-Bacon-Cheeseburger dinner.

MEDIOTS, I love it. I don’t watch or listen to pre or post game shows at all. I only watch Inside the NFL if the Cowboys win. I tune in at game time and stop the Tivo when the game ends. If the Cowboys win I’ll replay the game several times during the week. If they lose I delete the game and wait for the next game. I just don’t have time, or the interest, for junk BS reporting like what goes on now days. For the past few games I’ve been posting my thoughts to this blog. My take on the Parcells ‘may retire’ story is simply, I don’t give a damn. I don’t have any control over his decision and, being a Cowboys fan, I will support him or anyone else Mr. Jones names as head coach. Happy New Year to all you bloggers. mlf

Q for Rafael, is there a fantasy football league(s) associated with your blog?

Board,

in terms of voting for this blog….
I have a rotating ISP# and I am using Firefox.
Hmmmmmm….

Vote like you are voting for Daley in Chicago.

Rotating IP number I mean.

alanTdot:
I’m browsing in Windows XP with Mozilla Firefox 0.9+, and the blog voting page hasn’t displayed the voting form(radio buttons and the submit button) since I voted 2 or 3 times last week.
I can reboot this machine into Linux RedHat 9.0 or into FreeBSD 5.0, with other browsers, and I get the same result. The Linux and FreeBSD partitions are file systems immune to anything Windows would try to do to them.
I know I also have a rotating IP number, because I just checked and found 203.100.213.19, and my IP number in a non-votable session last week was
203.100.213.230.

Lee, that’s weird!

I am using XP and Firefox 1.5. With my rotating IP I can disconnect and reconnect and ‘could’ vote as many times as I want.

Firefox 1.5.

mlf,

No fantasy league. It was considered and put to poll and the community voted it down, by a pretty large margin, IIRC.

Rafael, Thanks for the info.

Ware didn’t get any love in the highlights, last week it was all about Merriman. I still think Ware can do more if they would move him around like SD does with Merriman. I see they moved Bledsoe around a little to help. JJ finally had a good game and its because he is fully healthy now please. What was the excuse before he got hurt. In two years he has had four good games, that’s not good enough until he does it week in week out. Its funny because when JJ has bad games not one bad game but bad games its all kind of reasons why but not his fault but when he had a good game not games but one game its he is back. What is that about. But anyway good game hope JJ can do it again this week. How about T-New that boy is bad. It seem like for the first time the plan was for T-New to cover the best for the whole game they didn’t do that with Moss( don’t know why) And the one catch Smith had was when T-New hand him over to the safety.

I don’t think BP is going anywhere. I think he wants to try for one more title, and see if he can get this team to do it before he steps aside.

Cundiff just got cut, and Suisham has been re-signed, along with Tony Dixon.

I hope Suisham can do a better job than Cundiff. I would say it can’t get any worse, but I know better.

AW:
Merriman can be moved because SD has Steve Foley, Ben Leber and Shaun Phillips. While Dallas has Fujita and Burnett… I donâ€â"¢t need to elaborate anymore on that…

And you talked some days ago about good play by our Offense against a good Defense, had you seen a good performance by any of the Dallas RBâ€â"¢s against a good Defense? The holes that the OLine opens might have something to do with that (at least on that 43 yard TD run)… Extra emphasis on â€Å"MIGHT”.

wow, how many times do people repost info on here, we just talked about cundiff and suisham for about 15 posts last entry/blog/whatever

read before you type

AW,

I think Ware has been “struggling” (not really for a rookie) because of the change of position. Remember Merriman played both OLB and DE in college, so he has a bit of an edge on Ware. Demarcus is very fluid rushing the passer, and when Zimmer and Parcells has let him loose he has been extremely effective getting to the QB. .. I think we all have to remember that the entire team is learning a new system. As time goes by these players will not even think about where to be or what their assignments are, and will make plays routinely. When I look at this defense, I have seen too many players thinking and not reacting, but that comes with the territory of learning a new scheme. .. I’d say by mid-season of next year, more and more players will just start making plays without much thought. But to be fair to Demarcus Ware, I think he is one of the players who has struggled a bit learning the 3-4 defense. With that said, he has 7 sacks and a bunch of forced fumbles … so can you imagine what kind of numbers he is capable of putting up as he starts to play the OLB position naturally!!

I know Merriman was ready to play now and Ware needed some time. I look at it like the NBA does it they draft a player on that they think he can become and the NFL doesn’t draft like that they draft on production. What I was saying is Ware didn’t get the highlights like Merriman got last week Ware had just as a big game as Merriman did last week. I think Ware is going to get better and could push for 10 plus sacks next year. This finally game will be good to see if Ware can follow it up with a decent game.

Sorry mwrnt10,

Been out of town for about a week. I’ll make sure to read everything before I post.