Tuesday, August 06, 2013

The wait is over

I don't usually watch pre-season in any sports, but it's always a happy day when the NFL pre-season games start. Football is back and not a day too soon. After spending an inordinate amount of time since the Super Bowl in jails across the country, footballers are back to doing what they do best - entertain America on the field. The hall-of-fame game was nothing special, but the hall-of-fame class this year was. Bill Parcells, Chris Carter, and Warren Sapp were worthy inductees this year. Now we are ready to start thinking fantasy and football. The only downside with the training camp and pre-season is, we have already started losing stars to injuries. Jeremy Maclin, Percy Harvin, and Dennis Pitta are some of the high-impact offensive players who are injured causing a minor consternation to their actual teams and major disturbance to fantasy rankings.

Maclin's injury gave an opening to Eagles wide receiver Riley Cooper, but then he opened his mouth and ruined his career. He hurled a racial epithet at a black security guard at a concert and like everything else these days, this video ended up on youtube. This is a very  delicate situation for the Eagles as some of Riley's black teammates are still understandably upset. Vick sounded forgiving, but not all of his teammates share Vick's opinion. The Eagles have to play this just right given this is a new coach's  first year. It would be sad if Coach Kelly lost the locker room even before he coaches his first game. Cooper is probably a certifiable racist to have said what he did and his career is in jeopardy. He is now in "counseling", which seems to be a fashionable thing to do these days for any celebrity in any kind of trouble. This is not the most auspicious start for coach Kelly, but he will try and make the best out of this.

Of course the Patriots are probably laughing at the Eagles for making a mountain out of a molehill because the Pats were dealing with a real mountain of a problem for a while. Aaron Hernandez is accused of murder and the Pats have cut him. He makes Gronk look like a choir boy. What a tight-end combo for hoody both on and off the field. Brady has lost quite a bit of his offensive weapons to surgery, free agency, and murders. But he is still Tom Brady and a deep playoff run is very much on the cards for the Pats. As for Hernandez, the crimes he is accused of are mind boggling and unfathomable. He might have thrown his entire life away, and for what, nobody knows. It's good to get the games going so we can start taking about the action on the field instead of all this nonsense off of it. We have all taken the first step starting last weekend. Football is back on TV again and everybody is thinking and talking about it.

2 comments:

Magesh said...

New England has the luxury of playing in an easy division -- Bills, Jets and Dolphins haven't been playoff-caliber in quite a while and likely won't be this year.

Philadelphia, not so much -- Washington, New York and Dallas are very good teams and should make things very difficult for Chip Kelly & co. regardless of who's on the Eagles' roster this upcoming season.

Good_Cynic said...

You are right about NFC East. It only looks tougher after week 1.