TK Strikes Again

Whatever takes the attention off of what you say Tony, I guess

So, here I was, on a Monday night, settled on my couch, 4 pack of Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA, ready to watch my fantasy team take 5th place in ouR league (I know, I know, my mother could not be prouder) and of course, a little Monday Night Football. I had hoped that since this was the last Monday night game of the year TK would be on his A game, that he would have burn the candle at both ends researching for this game instead of polishing his Aaron Rodgers/Brett Favre comparisons. I should have wished my car had crapped out on me on my way home.

So here’s the setting, 4th quarter, the Packers and Bears are tied at 17 with Green Bay driving deep into Chicago territory. The Pack get the ball down to the 20 yard line of Chicago and trot out Crosby to try a 38 yard field goal. Crosby lines up, ball’s snapped, hold is down, kick is up……AND IT’S BLOCKED (amazingly not Favre’s fault). Immediately there is jubilation amongst the Chicago crowd while Tirico and Jaws utter a couple wows in stunned amazement. So what does our boy TK say? “This is what they do, this is how they score, their defense does everything for them for years and years.”

Now, I do not pretend that I am perfect, nor am I a paid football analyst for ESPN. I understand that TK probably does not have access to ESPN.com like I do, but I would expect a man who gets paid close to $2 million to do MNF to do a little bleeping research. TK believes that the Bears defense carries that team (or does everything for it), and while compared to the offense (which has finished higher than 26th once since 2002) they are the 2000 Ravens, it is far from the truth. Here are the rankings by yardage of the Bears’ defenses since 2002 through this season prior to tonight’s game; 25th, 14th, 21st, 2nd, 5th, 28th, 14th. Wow, two top 10 defenses and three defenses that ranked in the 20s? That’s elite, that’s what has allowed the Bears to reach the playoffs twice in that same time period.

For some reason–I don’t know if it’s because of what they did in 2006, the 1985 season, or lack of oxygen–media types such as TK have spoken about the Bears’ defense as though it has had this run of greatness this decade–well, at least for years and years. It’s been okay, respectable, top 5 twice, two other times in the top 15, but it has hardly performed at a level that would validate such high praise. I mean, should we laud the Ravens’ QB play prior to this season while we are at it? I know, let’s talk about how awesome the Bucs’ unis were before the change in the middle of last decade. For Christmas TK, I hope you get access to that ESPN.com.

How to make Tony Kornheiser sound intelligent

The current state of Monday Night Football

Normally I find Tony Kornheiser to be a nuisance on Monday Night Football, where he constantly comes off as the chess geek trying to fit in with the high school jock, with his timid statements about football that require Ron Jaworski’s validation. Usually the points are at best bad and at worst ridiculous. But this past Monday was quite different. Ron Jaworski, known as a great X’s and O’s guy, made Kornheiser sound as though he knows what he is talking about.

During the 2nd quarter of the Eagles/Browns game, the Eagles drove inside the Cleveland 10 yard line to the 8. After a 1 yard run on first down and an incomplete pass on second, the Eagles went to their bag of tricks and put WR Desean Jackson under center. He promptly threw an interception in the end zone. Following the turnover, Kornheiser asked Jaworski a question that probably most people watching the game were wondering, why resort to a trick play when you had racked up 192 yards of offense up to that point through the first 23 minutes of the game? Jaws responded, “because they thought it would work”.

Wow. So according to a man who was a quarterback in the NFL for 17 seasons, who is a paid football analyst, a team calls a play with the expectation it will work? Huh, never thought of it that way, what great insight. I always thought that every once in awhile there would be this exchange between a team’s head coach and its offensive coordinator:

HC: “Okay, what are we going with?”

OC: “Running Willie off the tackle.”

HC: “Think it will work?”

OC: “No.”

HC: “Alright let’s do it.”

Glad to have that resolved, though I was really hoping that Kornheiser would follow with “do quarterbacks throw passes with the hopes that it will be a completion?”.

Along with his in-depth analysis, Jaws also gave us his take on the media and its tendency to speculate too much. This happened when Kornheiser went on one of his usual endless discussions (a discussion that usually involves Kornheiser thinking out loud and Mike Tirico attempting to keep the focus on the game), this one about the known fact that Romeo Crennel is hot the seat in Cleveland and that “they” say that Marty Schottenheimer may be on Cleveland’s radar to become the next head coach. This started to tick Jaws off and he confronted Kornheiser about “who they are”, followed by a rant about how the media speculates too much and has a tendency to create stories.

I have to say that fully agree with Jaws on this one, the media does speculate too much. I mean, look at the clown who got on ESPN 950 earlier this year in March and made the proclamation that the Randy Moss deal with the Patriots was “falling apart”, and this was according to “the rumor mill” and “people he spoke with”. Pot meet kettle.