Football

I used to play. While softball is the game of choice for me these last ten years (and I've played a lot longer), I used to play football (touch) and basketball and several other sports. I loved tennis and racquetball when was younger. Jackson and I played basketball and tennis up until a few years ago. I almost forgot about those days. I played other sports as well when I was younger. I also ran and running was my primary most frequent sport. I ran daily for many years, up to fifteen miles a day at my peak.

Now I watch football. I played touch football. Tackle football attracts too many crazy macho idiots who want to hurt people. It is a sadistic game for some who play it. Adrenaline and mental instability combine to create a loss of emotional control for some players and headhunting and over-aggressive hits and tackling are the result. Tackle football is s stupid game for humans, really, because it, like boxing, involves a lot of hard impacts to the skull and the human body is not designed to live with hard impacts to the skull. The knees are not made for the kind of moves and hits football provides to the knees. I think they should make helmets that give the player wearing the helmet an electric shock when the helmet comes in contact with another helmet and after that shock the player has to sit out one play. That would change the game and eventually players would learn hot to hit and tackle without helmet contact. Could even work for helmet to knee pads. Ultimately, hitting with helmets anywhere should be stopped. Helmets were designed to protect the skull, not as equipment with which to hit other players.

Athletes who like betting hit in the head can go into boxing. Athletes who like getting hit in the head can go into soccer. Football would become the game I enjoy, finesse, athletic ability, and strategy instead of primarily brute force and headhunting.

Meanwhile, I am watching my favorite quarterback and coach, New England's Brady and Belichick... and Gronk is fun too. They've got to work on Cook who seems to suffer from a malady a lot of speedy receivers have had, the lazy gene. He blew an easy touchdown already by slowing down on a fly to the end zone. It changed the game big time as he dropped an east screen pass on the next play and then Brady was sacked on the next play, which was third down. The next series the Patriots offense was out of synch and you could tell Brady was not happy with his receivers. He'll have to go to Gronk, which is probably something they didn't want to do much today for a few reasons - risk of injury, giving scouts more views of Gronk, and the cold. One lazy player can throw an offense out of whack and change what started out being a route into a tough game, even a loss. I doubt the Jets have enough to win in spite of a very weak New England pass defense and very weak Jets QB and passing game, but still, unnecessary laziness ruins a team. They need to find a smarter star speedy receiver next year who doesn't have the lazy gene.

Cooks is the by far luckiest receiver in football. While the Patriots have never shown much in the way of receiver coaching or development, they do have the best coach and quarterback in the game, maybe ever, and Cooks will have much better stats with Brady throwing to him than he deserves based on the talent and brain hes shown (or not shown, to be more accurate) so far.

The announcers are crediting the Jets defense to keep the Jets fans involved, but it just shows me that the announcer is ignorant and just talks to keep talking, which is necessary to be an announcer but that is why there are so few good announcers. It is not easy to continuously find intelligent things to talk about. Two wrongs don't make a right, but three rights make a left." Maybe a clever phrase, but meaningless and it had nothing to do with the play he was supposedly talking about. Football is not a game for intellectuals, even though it is the intellectuals who win most. The brains of coaches and players is the most important aspect of winning - which is just another reason to protect heads.

They definitely do not select announcers based on any sort of intelligence. Twelfth time in fifteen games the patriots score in the last two minutes of the first half. A 75% success rate Great for the Patriots, another fail for the CBS announcers. That's an 80% success rate. Duh.

The announcers continue the talk for the sake of talking at halftime as their discussion focused on questioning Brady's performance, blaming aging and not practicing enough, for what is obviously receiver mistakes. Nobody even suggests the receiver mistakes had anything to do with it. Brady only threw for two touchdowns and set up a third rushing touchdown and should have had another easy long ball touchdown in spite of many obvious receiver mistakes and an offensive line that is letting Bray get hit a lot, but he's old and being faulted. Announcers are generally idiots following a script and not really thinking.

Brady is not perfect, but the halftime discussion was just stupid. 21-3 mostly about Brady faltering and his aging arm with no mention of weak pass blocking and mistakes receivers made.

No wonder - Tony Romo is the color commentator. He never knew how to win or play Quarterback at a high level and he's criticizing the est in the business. I fault CBS Sports for the stupid script and even more stupid casting. No wonder intelligent football players no longer want to be sports commentators.

Halftime's over. I'm going back to enjoying the game now. With the sound off.

Hope you are enjoying your last day of 2017 too. :)

Narf :)