Maddux Sports Blog

Well, I hadn’t been too excited about baseball for a while now, but that all changed yesterday afternoon. What a freaking ball game that was! It was like watching a boxing match – punch and counter-punch all night long. It’s been a long while since I have enjoyed a game so much. Now it will be interesting to see what happens tonight in New York. The Yankees have been handed tonight’s game on a silver platter – an emotionally and likely physically exhausted team with nasty travel and a depleted bullpen. They will be humiliated if they can’t take advantage of it.

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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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There are 32 teams in the NFL and about 33% have new coaches! Head coaches tend to be tough guys to figure out—part disciplinarian, part guru, part psychologist and part military general—successful coaches can be contradictory enigmas. Although last season was all about the quarterback shift as rookie and vet signal callers changed the fates of various teams, this season is about massive shake ups is in the coaching ranks. Of course, it’s almost a cliché to say that an owner can’t fire an entire team so they simply fire the coach, creating a scapegoat. That being said, in this two-part blog I’ll take a look at each of the new coaches. First, I’ll start with the five who have the best shot at getting their team into the playoffs in their first at the helm season.

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I obviously won’t believe it until the season starts next year, but the news of Brett Favre’s retirement has me positively giddy today. I’m excited for several reasons:

1. I don’t need to see a guy erode his legacy in front of our eyes when it is in his control to not do so. There is enough legacy-eroding going on in baseball these days that Favre doesn’t need to do his part any more.

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Okay, 2009 is feeling kind of strange and I’ve got some questions about what’s going on.  There have been some weird deals, odd decisions and bizarre behavior.

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I’m not going to offer a pick or any specific analysis about tonight’s huge NFL game – that’s not what I do here. This is a very interesting game, though, so I do want to take a closer look at it. Here are five different elements to this game that I will be watching closely, and which have factored significantly into my handicapping of the game:

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I actually don’t believe that headline, but at least we have taken a giant step forward. In the last few minutes the news has broken that Brett Favre has been traded to the Jets. We will have to endure a few more days of drama as we hear how he feels about the move, as he flies to New York, as he puts on a new uniform for the first time since his days in Atlanta, as he throws his first pass as a Jet, as he throws his first incompletion, as he… well, you get the point. Still, we are a lot closer to being able to talk about something other than this mess than we were a day or two ago. Before we move on entirely, though, let’s take a quick look at some of the interesting aspects of this move.

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