Maddux Sports Blog

So, when did the NFL become less competitive than non-conference college football? Six of the 12 games played yesterday were decided by at least four touchdowns. That’s preposterous. It makes for ridiculously uncompetitive action, and therefore mostly uninteresting football. The good news, I guess, is that at least we aren’t taking bets on the games – books are getting absolutely killed by favorites covering monster spreads like this. The favorites were 8-3-1 ATS this week, and the three biggest spreads, usually the public money magnets that the books feast on, all covered. Ouch. The disparity in the league this year is amazing. For the first time ever we have three undefeated teams through seven weeks of the season. On the flip side, we have three teams that could quite conceivably not win a game, and for a couple more it seems impossible to believe that they have already won one (or more). I thought salary caps were supposed to bring competitive balance?

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It’s early in the first set of Sunday games , and a lot of thoughts are running through my mind already:

1. What is the point of this farce in London? The field isn’t ideal, the crowd sounds like they are at a funeral, the broadcast doesn’t look or sound quite right, and the Bucs are pretty much the worst ambassadors for the league possible. Josh Johnson has thrown two interceptions already in the first quarter, and the game is already over. Of course, it was all but over before the kickoff. It can’t be long now until we see Josh Freeman start to play for the Bucs – it’s not like they have anything to play for, and Freeman can’t be much worse than the alternative.

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Potentially interesting story brewing in Gainesville. Florida is favored by 22.5 as they travel to Mississippi State this week. The problem, though, is that they are beat up on defense. Linebacker Brandon Spikes and defensive tackles Jaye Howard and Lawrence Marsh are three starters fighting injuries, and all are questionable for next week. Spikes is battling a groin injury that he suffered last week, and when he was out his absence was definitely noted. Florida also has some depth injuries on the d-line already, so that could make for an interesting situation – Mississippi State has the 11th ranked run offense in the country, so they could potentially be in position to exploit Florida’s issues. I’m not at all convinced that that is enough to put the Bulldogs over the top, but it at least makes the game more interesting than it would be if the Gators were operating at full intensity and effectiveness on both sides of the ball.

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It is not a good time to be a referee. Or at least a bad referee. We have seen bad calls happen at at least the same rate as usual, but league’s are doing something about it. First, the SEC announced this week that  they have suspended the crew that made the bone-headed mystery calls against Arkansas in the Florida game. Now, MLB has changed their policy for selecting the World Series umpire crew. Typically they include at least one ump making his World Series debut so that they can add to the total of experienced World Series umps in the league. The large number of very poor calls in the playoffs so far, though, has forced them to get nervous about the situation and attempt to ensure the best refereeing they can get. To do that they are reportedly going to establish a crew made up mostly of crew chiefs, and entirely of veteran, experienced umpires. That won’t mean that there won’t be problems, but it is nice to see the league take things seriously and try to do something about it – at least until they can get a workable instant replay system in place.

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It is not a good time to be a referee. Or at least a bad referee. We have seen bad calls happen at at least the same rate as usual, but league’s are doing something about it. First, the SEC announced this week that  they have suspended the crew that made the bone-headed mystery calls against Arkansas in the Florida game. Now, MLB has changed their policy for selecting the World Series umpire crew. Typically they include at least one ump making his World Series debut so that they can add to the total of experienced World Series umps in the league. The large number of very poor calls in the playoffs so far, though, has forced them to get nervous about the situation and attempt to ensure the best refereeing they can get. To do that they are reportedly going to establish a crew made up mostly of crew chiefs, and entirely of veteran, experienced umpires. That won’t mean that there won’t be problems, but it is nice to see the league take things seriously and try to do something about it – at least until they can get a workable instant replay system in place.

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Every week the Browns’ story just keeps getting crazier and crazier. This is better than fiction. Two more twists in this twisted tale. First, linebacker D’Qwell Jackson has been placed on the IR. He’s one of the few highlights on this team defensively. He leads the team in tacklesths year, and topped the whole league in that category last year. The Browns’ defense was already nothing to write home about, and this certainly won’t help. The other news is that Cleveland has been overrun with a flu bug, and it has affected six starters so far, including nose tackle Shaun Rogers, one of the other few defensive highlights. The players – 12 in total – missed practice on Wednesday, and could miss more – especially if it turns out to be H1N1. This puts a serious kink in the team’s preparations for Sunday’s game against the Giants. Given that they were already in deep in that game this is bad news for them – and entertaining for us.

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1. Norv Turner should be fired now. With cause – willful and incomprehensible waste of talent.

2. The first thing the new coach should do is work on covering kick returns. It’s not even like Eddie Royal was an elite kick returner before today.

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I talked about Joe Torre’s roster moves on Thursday, and by Sunday they had already come back to haunt him. As you may recall, Torre deactivated Jeff Weaver and Jon Garland, and activated Hiroki Kuroda in their place. Kuroda had been out for the first round with a back injury. I said then that  it seemed like a very odd decision – surely a healthy Garland or Weaver was better than a rusty and likely sore Kuroda. It turns out, for once, that I was right. Kuroda was terrible last night – allowing six runs while recording just four outs – and is the main reason why the Phillies are holding a 2-1 lead. Far be it from me to second guess Torre, but I really don’t get it.

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I’m going to do a much more comprehensive review of what we learned from the NFL today when I have more time tomorrow. For now, though, I just want to touch on five different stats. Each of them is almost impossible to believe, but they all happened. Not surprisingly, three of them came from the same game:

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It hasn’t been easy to watch the Steelers this year – they are just a shadow of their former selves this year, and are going to have to work hard to make the playoffs, never mind to defend their Super Bowl title. Things certainly didn’t get any better on that front today – the team has had to put DE Aaron Smith on the IR for the year because of a torn rotator cuff. Smith isn’t one of the bigger defensive names in the league, but he really should be – he’s a run blocking machine as good as almost anyone in the NFL. In Smith’s absence, the job is going to be filled by committee – by a bunch of guys who aren’t good enough or ready enough to be starters right now. That’s a significant downgrade for a team that was already struggling defensively compared to what we have become used to from the top defensive team in the league the last two years. The Steelers are all but assured to get seven wins – the three they already have, plus Kansas City, Oakland, and Cleveland twice. That means they need to win four of their remaining seven to comfortably assure themselves a playoff spot. That’s far from impossible, but three of the seven are leading their division, Baltimore falls twice, and there are no soft spots. This team needs to be sharp. Really sharp. Given their early play I think I’d actually bet against a playoff spot.

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