Maddux Sports Blog

The Jets are mortal after all – I’ve been feeling all along that it is important to look at the Jets with context. They have been impressive on both sides of the ball, but it wasn’t going to be sustainable through all 16 games. That just wasn’t possible given that they were working with a totally rebuilt defense and a rookie quarterback. I don’t want to suggest that things are bleak or hopeless for this team – far from it. I just think that the setback against the Saints should remind us that our expectations for teams need to be reasonable or they will be costly.

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1. I still have long term concerns about how good the Favre experiment will look in December, but one thing seems certain now – this team is only undefeated because they signed him. Or at least that seems reasonable. It’s hard to imagine that Rosenfels or Jackson would have been able to lead that comeback in the same way, or could have thrown that pass to win as time expired. I don’t see this team doing any real damage in the playoffs. I don’t even now for sure what the Vikings really have to offer, and likely won’t know until they play Baltimore in week six.

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1. Brett Favre has had a personality transplant. For the second straight game he played reasonably selfless team football, and it is working for him. He didn’t take any of the stupid risks that we have gotten used to, he settled for smaller plays that would have once driven him crazy, and he was stunningly efficient. If he can keep this up and not trip over his ego then he could really do something this year. I’m not betting on it, though – he can’t keep things under control for that long.

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That was a crazy game to end a crazy sporting Monday. There is, like the first game, a whole lot to digest in that one. Here are a few of those things:

1. Oakland played very straight forward defense, but it was shockingly effective for much of the game – The Chargers are supposed to be a world class offense, but Oakland thoroughly outplayed them, and they did it without doing anything fancy. The defensive scheme really just looked like a basic preseason package, but they played it with intensity and burning desire, and San Diego couldn’t manage to overcome it to nearly the extent that they should have. Part of what helped the Raiders was Richard Seymour. He might not be happy to be in Oakland, but you’d never guess it by the way he played. He was a beast. The exception to that defensive strength, of course, was on the last drive when the Raiders played a tentative, pathetic prevent package when they badly needed to hold the Chargers.

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1. JaMarcus Russell – The guy is a freaking first overall pick, but he has shown precious little that makes us think that he deserves it. Sure, there are excuses there – his team is run by morons and lacks talent, and so on. Even when you take that into consideration, though, you have real questions. He showed signs of a little bit of progress at the end of last year, but up to that point he was making the same boneheaded mistakes well into season two that he was making in season one. He’s freakishly athletic and he’s massive, but nothing about his game seems to be instinctive or natural, and it certainly isn’t pretty to watch. What is most lacking in watching him, though, is the killer instinct that makes the great quarterbacks great. You can overcome a huge deficiency in natural ability if you want it more than anyone else, and Russell has done nothing to convince me that he wants it at all.

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As we get down to the point where we can start counting down to the NFL season in hours or even minutes, I find myself constantly looking at the upcoming season from every different angle. It will be a very good thing when the season finally gets underway, because then I can’t start looking at what actually happens instead of driving myself crazy thinking about what might happen. Until then, though, all I can do is ask questions I can’t answer. Here are ten of those questions that keep coming back to the top of my mind:

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