Thursday, April 21, 2011
Couple of quick thoughts on sports.
Last night's Sabres-Flyers game was great stuff, but I'm left wondering if Lindy Ruff's game plan is "You guys skate around and try to score. Ryan, you're going to have to be on fire and stop everything." It's worked for Lindy before-- it's gotten him to Game Six of the finals before, but it doesn't impress me as the surest strategy. (Also, I love that the Flyers are whining about rough play and penalties. Words fail me.)
It is probably moot, because we are probably not going to have an NFL season, but I'll be disappointed if the Bills take a quarterback in the draft. Jon Gruden seems to think there is a lot of talent available at the position, which probably means that there are a lot of people in the league that think that too. The NFL is a very "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" sort of place, and taking a QB often looks like a good move. Typically a rookie QB isn't going to start for a while, so you have time to see if the pick works out, and if it doesn't you'll be out the door and off down the road anyway. It seems to me that the Bills would be better off trying to fill a few other holes, and I'd like to see them draft for defense. Ryan Fitzpatrick is an NFL quarterback, and if it isn't called upon to score 36 points in a game this is an offense that can win. Would Cam Newton make a difference? I'm inclined to think that any NFL team would spend a season or two changing the way he plays to fit the more conservative NFL style, and that then he'd spend two or three seasons being the player that masks the things that are actually his team's weaknesses.
The Mets. The Mets. This is going to be a comically bad-- maybe cosmically bad-- Mets season. A bad divorce has lead to the league taking over the Dodgers-- being tied to the biggest financial fraud in history can't be making Mets' ownership feel too good about their prospects. That said, as a life-long Mets fan, if they can't be great the next most entertaining thing is for them to be spectacularly awful. It takes the anxiety out of it, and makes watching them the opposite of watching the Sabres.
Last night's Sabres-Flyers game was great stuff, but I'm left wondering if Lindy Ruff's game plan is "You guys skate around and try to score. Ryan, you're going to have to be on fire and stop everything." It's worked for Lindy before-- it's gotten him to Game Six of the finals before, but it doesn't impress me as the surest strategy. (Also, I love that the Flyers are whining about rough play and penalties. Words fail me.)
It is probably moot, because we are probably not going to have an NFL season, but I'll be disappointed if the Bills take a quarterback in the draft. Jon Gruden seems to think there is a lot of talent available at the position, which probably means that there are a lot of people in the league that think that too. The NFL is a very "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" sort of place, and taking a QB often looks like a good move. Typically a rookie QB isn't going to start for a while, so you have time to see if the pick works out, and if it doesn't you'll be out the door and off down the road anyway. It seems to me that the Bills would be better off trying to fill a few other holes, and I'd like to see them draft for defense. Ryan Fitzpatrick is an NFL quarterback, and if it isn't called upon to score 36 points in a game this is an offense that can win. Would Cam Newton make a difference? I'm inclined to think that any NFL team would spend a season or two changing the way he plays to fit the more conservative NFL style, and that then he'd spend two or three seasons being the player that masks the things that are actually his team's weaknesses.
The Mets. The Mets. This is going to be a comically bad-- maybe cosmically bad-- Mets season. A bad divorce has lead to the league taking over the Dodgers-- being tied to the biggest financial fraud in history can't be making Mets' ownership feel too good about their prospects. That said, as a life-long Mets fan, if they can't be great the next most entertaining thing is for them to be spectacularly awful. It takes the anxiety out of it, and makes watching them the opposite of watching the Sabres.
// posted by Bill @ 9:33 AM 
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