Welcome to this week's edition of Five Cents, where if you don't like what I'm saying, you can always just stick a knife through my door.
1. Redskins fans should calm down; it was only the Texans.
Washington rejoice! The Redskins offense finally got on track, scoring 31 points and amassing almost 500 yards of total offense in a victory over Houston. Therein lies the problem: the victory was over the Texans, the league's new doormat. Despite the victory, there isn't much to get excited about; the Redskins are still a team with many flaws, including the health of Clinton Portis.
However, the Redskins biggest problem lies at the quarterback position. While Mark Brunell may have set an NFL record with 22 consecutive completions to start the game, he is still Mark Brunell. Not only is he the Redskins' version of Julio Franco, he has had trouble adjusting to Coach Al Saunders' new playbook (the problem may be that he hasn't actually read all of it). Oh well, it could be a lot worse. At least Brunell still has his spleen.
2. The Cincinnati Bengals will make it to the AFC Championship game, if they aren't all in jail by then.
Is there a more fun team in the NFL right now than the Bengals? They are like the Portland Jailblazers of the NFL, only with actual talent. I'm pretty sure wide receiver Chris Henry caught two touchdowns against the Steelers last week while still wearing the handcuffs from his latest arrest (his fourth since January). Linebacker Odell Thurman, last year's leading tackler, was arrested on Monday on a DUI charge. However, this won't affect the team since Thurman wasn't playing anyway due to a substance abuse violation.
Despite the discipline problems, the Bengals have risen from mediocrity to be one of the AFC's elite, and will challenge the Colts. They've already shown that they can beat the big bad Steelers, and their offense has more than enough
to defeat Baltimore. Now all they need is to sign Marcus Vick to backup Carson Palmer and they'll be set in the
character department.
3. Brady Quinn will be the next Jake Plummer.
Apparently Saturday night's wild comeback win over Michigan State has caused some people to jump back on the "Brady for Heisman" bandwagon (Charlie Weis still accounts for 40 percent of the total weight on the wagon). While his five touchdowns helped pad his stats, his great fourth quarter can't overshadow the previous seven.
The Michigan game casts doubts over whether or not Quinn has the makeup to be a good NFL quarterback. Against a top-tier college defense, Quinn was embarrassed, completing just 50 percent of his passes and turning the ball over four times.
Even in the victory over Michigan State, we were deprived of seeing Quinn lead a drive with the game on the line, as the margin of victory was an interception return for a TD.
Quinn's tendency to put up big numbers against inferior defenses (Penn State, I'm looking at you), yet turn the ball over in the big games, reminds me a lot of another highly touted college quarterback: Jake "The Snake" Plummer. While Plummer has played well in the regular season, his turnovers in the playoffs have left the Broncos looking for another solution.
4. A-Rod and Manny should not be traded this offseason.
The day after the World Series ends (hopefully with A-Rod grounding into a game-ending double play), we will be bombarded with news of possible trades involving either Alex Rodriguez or Manny Ramirez (and at some point, probably both in a massive five- team deal). This is a bad idea for both teams, as it will be impossible to get equal value in a trade for either player. In both cases, the teams will most likely have to agree to pay a portion of the player's salary in order to give them away.
Despite their obvious problems off the field, both Manny and A-Rod are important to their teams (you can't rely on anyone to hit a homerun in a 5-1 game more than A-Rod). A Red Sox team without Manny has David Ortiz getting pitched around because of a lack of protection in the lineup. More importantly, a Yankee team without A-Rod would deprive us all of the marriage of the most despised team and most despised player in the game. Focusing all of our hate in one place is really just more convenient.
5. The United States needs to make up some new sports, because we get schooled in the ones we already have.
Back in the day, any team that wore the letters "USA" on its uniform was expected to dominate (except for soccer, which doesn't count because the only people who care try way too hard to pretend that they are British). Our men's basketball team has been bad for a few years, and we've come to accept that the selfish star style of the NBA won't translate to the team-first international style. Last week's loss by the women's national team was shocking. The team's first loss in over a decade, combined with an embarrassing American showing at the Ryder Cup, made a dark week for American sports.
America needs to look at the Winter Olympics to see how we can still dominate. Skeleton and snowboarding were recently added, helping us pad our medal count. We need to keep making up sports (perhaps "Jackass 2" can give us some ideas) in order to stay ahead of the curve. Some people may call it cheating, I simply call it innovation.
