TAMPA TOM BRADY'S SOUTHERN VACATION: MY AMERICAN COLUMN

For the Thanksgiving issue of The American magazine, I wrote about Tom Brady and his move from the New England Patriots, where for 20 seasons he and coach Bill Belichick have dominated the NFL, to Tampa Bay, which dominated for a year right about the time Brady joined the Bucs.

It was written before the Bucs' back to back 27-24 losses to the Rams and Chiefs, so I might want to update on the team's problems, but the piece mostly delves into the reasons for the football divorce, and the reasons for choosing the Buccaneers as his new place to extend his career into his forties. Now if he only learned to place kick! It worked for George Blanda. You can link to the story here.

THE WASHINGTON NAME GAME: My American Magazine Column

In case I haven't mentioned it, I do a monthly column for the American magazine here in the UK, which appears online and in the print edition. July's was an essay on the problem with the Redskins and other nicknames, including possible suggestions for new names (the Watergators, anyone?) and the problems some colleges have (the Idaho Vandals: if I were a Vandal I'd be scandalized!). If you're interested, you can link to it here.

JERRY SLOAN AND PROJECTING THE SIXTIES INTO THE MODERN NBA & NFL

I wrote another long essay, this one starting off as a sort of tribute to the late Jerry Sloan, one of my favourite basketball players when I was a kid. Thinking about Sloan's qualities led me to write another 1,000 words about how he and players from his era might project into the modern NBA, and THAT led to another 1,000 words about how NFL (and AFL) players from the Sixties might project into the modern NFL. It was an exercise that fascinated me...you can read it at my Patreon site, which is an extremely reasonable $3/month to subscribe to, and I was be starting my preseason looks at all the NFL teams soon...you can link to FMTE at Patreon here.

LIVES THAT MATTER: GEORGE FLOYD, COLIN KAEPERNICK, PROTEST & THE NFL

I've written a long essay 'Lives That Matter' for Arc Digital on the NFL and Black Lives Matter protest, from the point of view of someone who not only has broadcast and written about the league for 25 years, but also someone who first attended a civil rights rally 55 years ago, and really feels he shouldn't have to still be saying the same things now....you can use this link to access the story via Medium, without having to sign up (though that is not a bad thing to do).

PETE RETZLAFF, TIMMY BROWN & THE 1960 CHAMPIONSHIP EAGLES

I've written a double-tribute to two Philadelphia Eagle greats who died in April, along with a look back at the Eagles' 1960 NFL championship season. And Timothy Brown's post-football acting career (you have seen Black Gunn, haven't you?). It's over at my Patreon column: https://www.patreon.com/posts/37414714

DON SHULA: BEYOND THE LEGACY OF UNDEFEATED

I have done a long essay about Don Shula, the NFL coach with the most wins in history, and coach of the only undefeated Super Bowl champions, who has died at 90. It's at my football site, Friday Morning Tight End, to which you can link here. It's a subscription site, but the subs are damn cheap.

MITCHELL & MARSHALL: BOBBY MITCHELL, RACE & THE NFL

I've written another long essay on a recently-deceased NFL player. In this case it's Bobby Mitchell, Jim Brown's running mate in Cleveland and then the first player to break the NFL apartheid in Washington with the Redskins. You can read it at my patreon.com column, Friday Morning Tight End if you subscribe to it (£2/$3 a month) or at Medium by following this link which will bypass the paywall at a site which remains a good value.

TOM DEMPSEY: KICKING WITH HALF A FOOT

I've written a long essay on Tom Dempsey, who died of coronoavirus while living in a rest home where he was being treated for dementia. It's a bit of a reminiscence about my young football days too. It went up yesterday at Patreon.com on my subscription football site, FMTE, and is today up at Medium, where this link will let you read it bypassing the paywall, if that's the way you rock.

THANKSGIVING AT IRON MIKE'S FOUNDRY

I wrote this for my weekly Patreon column, Friday Morning Tight End, as a freebie special, so I decided I should offer it here to those of you whom I have disappointed by not posting more in the past few months. The column picks all the games every week, I'm running at about 2/3 correct, and subscriptions are $3 a month. Try it at patreon.com/mikecarlsonfmte 

Thanksgiving is my favourite holiday, just as fall may be my favourite season. In the US it is the biggest travel weekend of the year, and with the traditional turkey, like Christmas without the attendant trauma of gift-giving. In Britain, Christmas is the biggest travel time, even though it seems to torture most people (Scrooge is after all, British) and being British they took the day they dislike and extended it by another day, then closed all public transport and annually locate highway works where no one is working along most of the major roads. But Thanksgiving also beats Christmas because it's the greatest football holiday, and football permeates not only the day but the whole weekend.

Oddly enough, I never played in a Thanksgiving game. Most non-professional colleges don't have them, because their students (including the football team) head home, but nowadays, of course money talks, and this year it's also a late Thanksgiving, which means that although the Egg Bowl, between Mississippi and Mississippi State will be played on Thursday, the rest of the weekend will also feature such match-ups as The Clean Old-Fashioned Hate, between Georgia and Georgia Tech; Vanderbilt vs Tennessee; Clemson vs South Carolina (Palmetto Bowl); Ohio State vs Michigan; the Iron Bowl between Alabama and Auburn and two of the West Coast's biggies: Oregon vs Oregon State (The Civil War) and Washington vs Washington State (The Apple Bowl).

Of course the extending of the college season through conference playoffs has been a factor here too, not least because conferences realigned to add enough teams to justify a playoff. So the Texas-Texas A&M match which was once a staple of the November calendar is now gone because they play in different conferences.

Thanksgiving morning was usually the time for the great high school rivalries. My dad played for West Haven against New Haven's Hillhouse High in a game in 1943 that drew over 20,000 to the Yale Bowl; Hillhouse had the legendary Levi Jackson, one of the best players to by-pass the NFL, on their team. But I played as an academic scholarship boy at a prep school, whose team was mostly local post-grads doing a 'prep' year before college (our most famous was Yale's Albie Booth; now it's Shady McCoy) but whose student body was about half boarders, who like college students went home for the holiday.

West Haven wasn't playing Hillhouse any longer when I was a kid; New Haven's Commercial High had been rebranded Wilbur Cross and they now played Hillhouse, so West Haven had no natural rivalry, and my dad wasn't interested. He also didn't care about the traditional Milford-Stratford game: teams from towns on opposite sides of the Housatonic River. That one disappeared as both towns added a second school; when Milford added a third, Milford High itself disappeared. There is a more famous cross-river rivalry, however, the State Line Game between Easton (Pennsylvania) against Phillipsburg (New Jersey), towns on opposite sides of the Delaware River, and each a power within their own state.

So we would play touch football in the yard, or down by the right of way to the beach, at least until the year we were up at my uncle's in Chelmsford, Mass and our game attracted a group of neighbours. The game sort of broke up after my brother's complaint about my coverage degenerated into a fist-fight: Myles Garrett eat your heart out.

Connecticut, where I grew up, boasts the oldest high school rivalry: New London High against Norwich Free Academy, now called, somewhat tackily,Ye Olde Ball Game. It started in 1875, but hasn't been played continuously. The oldest one that has been played continuously is between Boston Latin and English High (which for some reason isn't called Boston English) which has been played every year since 1887. Most of the rest of the oldest rivalries are between the posh New England prep (ie private) schools, and probably featured people who went on to run America: Andover/Exeter; Milton/Noble & Greenough; Groton/St Mark's. You also get anomalies: in Connecticut Derby/Shelton and Ansonia/Naugatuck are both big games in the Housatonic Valley that draw Thanksgiving crowds, but the Ansonia/Derby game earlier in the season is actually bigger.

People think the Bears-Lions was the start of Thanksgiving pro football, but actually there were four games in 1920, a couple featuring NFL teams against non-league teams, including the Elyria (Ohio) Athletics, who played a scoreless draw with the NFL's Columbus Panhandles. The Bears (then called the Decatur Staleys) played the Chicago Tigers. Fixed rivalries came and went: the Packers and Lions was the big one when I was a kid, at least until Vince Lombardi refused to continue playing on Thanksgiving after a 13-13 draw in Detroit (in which Nick Pietrosante, who played his high school ball at Ansonia High scored the Lions' only TD. “Four days is not enough time to get ready for a game” Lombardi told commissioner Pete Rozelle.Pete didn't dare cross Vince. A few decades later, the NFL forces teams to play on Thursdays every week.

Three games is overkill, but this is America and we give thanks that more is always better and money (especially more money) always talks. But we really should allow some time for people to enjoy their dinner without the TV drawing them away—it used to do that even when there was only one, or two games (the AFL's made it two, then in 1966 the NFL moved against the AFL by adding the second, with the Cowboys as regular hosts) to distract you. The prime time game is fine, I guess. It's a shame the oddities of the NFL schedule make it hard to make Dallas-Houston, for example, or the Giants-Jets a permanent Thanksgiving Day game; you'd think their computers could deal with that. I'd love to see Chicago-Detroit be regular, and maybe Green Bay-Minnesota too (you could play the late one in whichever dome team was at home).

So enjoy your Thanksgiving dinner, even if you're here in Britain and it's not a holiday. I used to enjoy hosting the triple header at the Number One Sports Bar into the wee hours of the morning, just to be left with the real hardcore who were flipping a metaphorical bird, not a turkey, at their jobs. Whether you do celebrate or not, whether you watch the games or not, stop for a moment and just think about what you have to be thankful for. It's worth a special day to remind you.

BIG GAME: LIFESTYLES OF THE RICH AND FOOTBALL FAMOUS

There is an interesting moment in Big Game when author Mark Leibovich mentions he had been reading 'an old book about the NFL, The League, by David Harris. It's a throwaway (the book is not mentioned in the index) because he's identifying where he first heard the story of Mark Davis' bar-mitzvah (Davis, son of Al, is now the Raiders' owner). Big Game is a strange book, because it basically cannot do what it purports to want to do, which is examine the NFL in the 'dangerous times' of Donald Trump, but in essence that is exactly what David Harris' book did, in 1986, which hardly makes it an 'old' book. Harris already saw the NFL in decline, and wrote about the way the business functioned as it became a sort of corporate monopoly. The NFL has prospered exponentially since then but Harris was also prescient in the very sense that Leibovich wants to examine, the sense that the league is a mirror and a signpost for American society. In the end, however, his book turns out to be more a part of that mirror than a signpost toward a better future.

 

The book instead is a sort of corollary to Leibovich's main gig writing from Washington about life styles for the New York Times magazine, a Sunday colour supplement that celebrates celebrity at the same time it bemoans its pernicious influence. Given that the book was written at the time Donald Trump (himself a frustrated NFL owner) was attacking the NFL (which is heavily dependent on its exemption from government monopoly regulation) this created a perfect storm for Leibovich to investigate, if not exploit. Which is odd also in the sense that, to an American audience of football fans, there will be little here that is new, while to a British audience, much that needs to be explained is left unexplained because the American audience already knows the stories. Leibovich admits he doesn't always cover football, which makes him somewhat similar to his New York Times colleague who covers horse racing but is crdentialed next to him in the Super Bowl press box because, well, this is the New York Times.

Leibovich is a Patriots fan too, which puts him in the centre of the Ballghazi (aka Deflategate) scandal, which is not really the best way to approach the structural truths about the NFL. Instead he tries to draw a metaphoric connection between the Patriots, Bob Kraft, Tom Brady, Bill Belichick and Trump (not a difficult connection so far, as the three Pats are Trump 'friends', and Kraft at least was a major donor). It takes him until election night, watching future ambassador to the UK and New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, to make that connection, and he decides he has grown 'weary of the … moral agonizing that surrounded the game'. It was as if he had only just then discovered NFL owners, as he puts it, 'with few exceptions, lean Republican'. The way Gronk laying out for a pass may be said to be 'leaning' just before his body smashes against the turf. He concludes that 'for consumers of football, politics and life in America, this had been a brutal season.'  Before you say 'no shit Sherlock', you need to consider he never really explains whence that brutality comes.

So what you get is really Lifestyles Of The Rich And Football Famous, which is somewhat revealing and sometimes entertaining, but never really on message. Unless the message is that the NFL is, for its owners, a different sort of big game, which would contradict the book's subtitles, since the times don't seem that dangerous to them, especially as the money continues to roll in. Like F Scott Fitzgerald, Leibovich has discovered the rich are different from you and me, and he's sharp enough to realise that Commissioner Roger Goodell's selling of the NFL as a liberation for the boring workaday lives of average Joes, is a sham...like a sort of reality TV.

But he admits that he is also a fan, and he seems to be seeking solace of his own when he interviews Tom Brady for a NYTimes Magazine profile, and Brady, while seeming perfectly pleasant in a business-like way, misses the chance to befriend him. All of a sudden he's lost in a sort of limbo where the celebrity life-style of the marketing TB12, the sort of thing he normally celebrates, conflicts with his idea of the game. Who would have thought? That's WHY the Times sent him! 

 

It's also no fun to read about his difficulties with access—it reminded me of Richard Hoffer's book about Mike Tyson, where Don King is boycotting Sports Illustrated because they are part of the Time Warner empire alongside HBO, and Hoffer can't get any access, and all the best lines in his book are quotes from boxing beat writers. Then again, Leibovich can't fit that into the bigger picture: it's not easy, like when he deals with owners. But he does write very well and movingly about his own father, who was dying at the time, beyond trying to link the event to Brady's parents.

He's very funny about the owners as they parade around meetings with their latest trophy wives or girlfriends (and Kraft's deflations at a Florida massage parlor just down the road from Mar A Lago would have been more grist for that mill). They come off, so to speak, like richer proctologists at a proctologists convention, and the very best scene in the book comes when he spends some time interviewing Jerry Jones in his private bus, drinking Johnny Walker Blue from giant Cowboys 24 oz plastic stadium cups. Jones leaves him passed out in the trailer.  It's Jones who has the best line in the book: “Do you think the (TV) networks pay these rights fees to broke dicks? With their asses hanging out?” But sadly, he never talks to a network exec, or a former network exec without a skin in the game.

There is a constant irritation in the book when you realise it's been pieced together from various separate interviews (composted, too, meaning the use of off-cut material from earlier interviews) as characters get reintroduced, one, Indianapolis sportswriter Bob Kravitz, at the heart of Ballghazi (aka Deflategate) (see how irritating that is the second time?) twice within the space of five pages. And there are insights like 'pie is delicious' which seem less than revelatory. But perhaps the real problem is, as Leibovich says, “football is football, angst is for writers”. Perhaps a contrast of the real angst of football with the faux-angst of 'protecting the Shield' and keeping the cash flowing might have been more instructive.

BIG GAME: The NFL In Dangerous Times
by Mark Leibovich
Harper Collins £16.99 ISBN 9780008317614

FOOTBALL IS UPON US: MUCH MORE MIKE

The NFL season is rapidly approaching, and I've done a couple of deep previews of it. The first. which I wrote at the beginning of August, has just been published in The American magazine here in the UK. You can read it in print or online; go to this link for details. It picks all the divisions and also previews the four games in London this fall.

Then this week I did another, more detailed, preview for Betfair: grouping teams by Elite, Contenders, Dark Horses, Pretenders, and Forget It. Where did your team get slotted? Check it out at Betfair here. There will also be a Betfair video podcast up next week just before the season starts.

And of course if you're really hard-core and want complete run-downs you can go to my patreon site right here and read my off-season run downs of each team. They're done division by division, with looks at the full roster. There will be a feature or two next week before I start picking every game of the season with my Friday Morning Tight End column--67% right last year.

NICK BUONICONTI: HIS FOOTBALL LIFE

Nick Buoniconti was unique in being a player from the era before free agency who is remembered a being crucial and beloved by fans of two teams. Nowadays we are used to players who move from team to team, often at their peaks, often collecting rings along the way. Previously, talented players were moved only when their original teams either thought they were on the decline or suffered a personality clash. Norm Van Brocklin from the Rams to the Eagles and a title. Sonny Jurgensen from the Eagles to the Redskins, and beloved by both sets of fans. Some moved toward the ends of their careers (coaches like George Allen specialised in picking them up) but their peak at their new clubs was short (think Sam Huff, NY Football Giants to Washington). Buoniconti went to from the Patriots to the Dolphins when he was still at his peak, and stayed there for another six seasons that brought two Super Bowl titles and of course the only undefeated, untied season in NFL history.

He went to Notre Dame, who recruited him out of Springfield (Mass) Cathedral High, which had produced Angelo Bertelli, the Irish’s first Heisman winner. He played both ways, at guard and linebacker/middle guard, but was overshadowed on the line by big tackle Myron Pottios. He was considered undersized for the NFL. Which wasn’t an exaggeration; he basically played at 5-11 220. He wasn’t much smaller than someone like Lee Roy Jordan, but southern players had the reputation of being faster harder hitters.

He wasn’t picked in the NFL draft, and went to the Boston Patriots in round 13 of the AFL draft (pick 102 overall). The Pats might have taken a flyer on him because as a former all-stat player from Massachusetts, he was relatively local. Mike Holovak was the head coach and Marion Campbell might have been the guy to see the potential for him at linebacker. Remember the original 4-3 defenses often had middle guards simply step back and play off the line; Bill George is sometimes called the first, Huff was another. In an odd front, the nose guard basically played a read and react game; if you watch Buoniconti you’ll see how that transitioned into playing MLB.

Buoniconti;s instincts were perfect, his pursuit relentless, but he also had ball skills; he intercepted 32 passes over his career. Dolphin fans might compare him to someone like Zach Thomas, especially if he hadn’t been pumped up to carry more weight, smoother in his drops and better with his hands. London Fletcher might be another good modern comparison.

In 1963 he played in the AFL All-Star game; the next four seasons he was also first-team all-AFL. In 68 he played only 8 games (second team all-AFL), but someone on the Pats , probably owner Billy Sullivan, felt he was on the decline, and he was traded to the Dolphins in 1969, for LB John Bramlett and Q, B Kim Hammond. Bramlett was a decent player but Hammond, the key to the deal, never made it. Nick, meanwhile, was again first-team all AFL.

The Dolphins were acquiring some of the core of their great teams: they traded for Larry Little in 69, and in 1970 for Paul Warfield and of course head coach Don Shula, each of whom cost them a first-round pick (they were fined for ‘tampering’ with Shula before his Colts’ contract had expired). With Bill Arnsparger as the defensive coordinator, Buoniconti became the perfect middle linebacker in what became the 53 D: with an outside backer used as a rush end. When I consider one of the starting OLBs on that team was Doug Swift, against whom I played when he was dominant at D3 Amherst, but who had previously been cut by the CFL’s Alouettes, it gives me huge respect for the quality of the coaching and the smarts of that D, and Buoniconti was its core. Don Shula once said that after their 1972 season, when he and Arnsbarger reviewed the film of the season, they found only 11 mental errors all season. That was 11 from the whole defense.

It was also finally his chance to play on a winner. His three varsity years at Notre Dame under Joe Kuharich had all been losing seasons—Kuharich never was able to recreate his success at San Francisco, about which I wrote a few months ago, anywhere else. The Pats went to the AFL championship in 1963, where they were smashed by the Chargers, then lapsed into mediocrity.

Buoniconti had gone to law school while he played for the Patriots, and after retiring he was for a time a lawyer. He acted as an agent for baseball players (Boston fans needed to think twice about his representing the Yankees’ Bucky Dent) and he was for a time president of the US Tobacco Company—who secialised in the smokeless tobacco which caused mouth cancers; he was a leading figure in trying to dismiss such studies.

But the fulcrum of his later life came in 1985 when his son Marc, playing linebacker at The Citadel, suffered a spinal cord injury and was left a quadriplegic. He set up a charity, the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, and became a public spokesman. Later in his career he would turn to media and present Inside The NFL, where his analysis of games was just as sharp as it had been as a linebacker.

Buoniconti himself began showing signs of CTE in his later years, and he joined the campaign to limit youngsters to playing flag football. He donated his brain to CTE research at Boston University. HBO made a documentary, The Many Lives Of Nick Buoniconti, which aired this year. His life is a catalogue of the high and lows of the sport,

just as his career was. And he is a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, as well as the team halls of both the Patriots and the Dolphins.

COLIN KAEPERNICK & THE NFL: THE BUSINESS AND THE GAME

Last week when Colin Kaepernick's collusion suit against the NFL was settled, I wrote about what the settlement meant, and the issues behind it. If you don't subscribe to my Friday Morning Tight End column at Patreon.com, you can now find the column at Arc Digital, here. A quick summary: the settlement has very little to do with knees, and lots to do with owners; note that I wrote it before Robert Kraft took his chauffeur-driven Bentley down to the Orchids Of Asia....

https://arcdigital.media/colin-kaepernick-the-business-and-the-game-37be3626619?sk=03f72df243354388786af77d496c1587

NFL BLACK MONDAY & THE TERRIBLE 20: MY PATREON ROUND UP

Alongside picking the Wild Card weekend last week on my Patreon site, I also wrote the following essay recapping the seasons of each of the 20 teams that failed to qualify for the playoffs, and getting a headstart on the coaching carousel. Later today I will be posting a very long column at Patreon, analysing the coaching changes so far, addressing the question of racism, predicting who might get the two jobs still open, and of course giving a run down and making my picks of all four Divisional Round games. If you'd like to get current, you can subscribe at patreon.com/mikecarlsonfmte and get more background essays as well as picks of the season's final three games, including the Super Bowl. So here's last Friday's first post:


Black Monday is when the guillotine blade falls for coaches, and one-quarter (ie, eight) of the NFL's jobs seem to change each year. The main point being, not improvement, but blame. If you want improvement, you might make a move like the Browns did in midseason: a risk, but one that worked (and note they identified the offensive coordinator as part of the problem and fired him too) or maybe like the Packers did, which didn't improve anything but signalled something. I don't know what. Aaron Rodgers didn't look any more unhappy. It occurs to me that many of the same things being said about Ben Rothliesberger in Pittsburgh might well be said about AR.

But Black Monday really ought to be rebranded as Blame Monday. When I look at the six head coaches fired Monday, I don't see any whose performance screams 'this is not fair', except perhaps Steve Wilks in Arizona, who probably deserved another year with Byron Leftwich in the hope Steve Keim could put some talent around Josh Rosen. And that is the nub of the problem, because when I look at those six teams I see six who could have and should have fired their GMs before even considering what to do about the coaches. Only one, Miami, actually did, letting Mike Tannenbaum go and promoting Chris Grier, son of ex-New England personnel guy Bobby, but the problem in Miami is that owner Steve Ross is the interfering type, and wants a GM who can be influenced. Which is why Miami is what they are (as with all these points, see below).

If you can give me a reason why Keim, Jason Licht or Mike McCagnan should still be making decisions for a football team, please do. Obviously John Elway is safe in Denver for Elway reasons, and Mike or Paul Brown is safe in Cincinnati for Brown reasons, but unless those three guys were actually ceding personnel decisions to their fired coaches, which we all know they weren't, why are they still getting to choose another coach. Or hire consultants, as Licht did, to choose one.

I would add two more GMs to that list, Bruce Allen in Washington and Dave Caldwell in Jacksonville (or is it Tom Coughlin? Or is that the problem). Allen's locked to the Dan, but Jacksonville's problems are endemic, and 2017's season now looks like an outlier (and after all, was only 10-6 plus a 2 game playoff run). But let's start our rundown of non-playoff teams with the team that reminds me of Graig Nettles famous quote about the Bronx Zoo Yankees: 'when I was a kid I wanted to either play baseball or join the circus. With the Yankees I got to do both'.

Pittsburgh (9-6-1): Professor Tomlin's Fun Bunch strikes again! The Steelers by all rights should be in the playoffs—many people, including myself, had them as pre-season Super Bowl contenders, but the Killer Bs were struck by whatever it is that's decimating the bee population around the world. For all that James Connor gained the yardage LeVeon Bell might have, he wore down as the season progressed (think Jalen Samuels might have got just a few carries earlier in the year, Mike?) and of course Antonio Brown's hissy fit when he couldn't wear JuJu's MVP tutu kept him out of the season's last game. Which turned out to be academic but had the Browns won in Baltimore we would have enjoyed the soap opera around whether AB would play in the Card round. Which I think he would have: he's a prima donna but he's OUR prima donna being the Professor's thinking. Here's the thing though: Tomlin's approach means he has not backed himself into any corners with AB: Pittsburgh can't afford to release or even trade him ($21m plus cap hits for two years) so they need to take a Boston Red Sox/Manny Ramirez approach: “that's just AB being AB” because the bed is made and AB is fully tucked in.

Tennessee (9-7): Crossroads for rookie coach Mike Vrabel, who could go the Jeff Fisher/Mike Mularkey/Ken Whisenhunt perpetual near .500 contender route, or perhaps build on the team's success this year. They were better defensively than I expected: Romeo Crennel did a nice job with a talented bunch, but offensively they will have decisions to make re Marcus Mariota, and it was odd how few big plays they got from Dion Lewis, which shows yet again the way the Pats scheme to get the best out of their parts, and why they are almost always willing to let them go.

Minnesota (8-7-1): Changing offensive coordinators was a short-term fix, but the emphasis on the run didn't help the pass game get better; in fact it seemed as if the ways DiFillippo schemed Thielen and Diggs open disappeared quickly, and the Vikes became easier to defend. Mike Zimmer's D hit a wall late in the season as well: if you can deal with his rush packages, you can beat them too easily. Their loss at home to Chicago was disappointing, more for the way their offense ground to a halt than anything else. Was Kirk Cousins THAT much better than Case Keenum? In some ways, yes, but they are going to need to rethink their offense in the off-season. It's worth noting here that the six highest-paid QBs in the NFL were Aaron Rodgers ($33.5m), Matt Ryan ($30m) Kirk Cousins ($28m) Jimmy G ($27.5m) Matt Stafford ($27m) and Derek Carr ($25). None of them are playing any more this year. This tells you two things. One: a starter playing well during his rookie QB salary capped contract is the most valuable commodity in the NFL and two: Cousins needed to throw for more than 131 yards last week.

Cleveland (7-8-1): FIRED (MID-SEASON) HUE JACKSON If every firing were so straight-forward, every team would do it every year they were losing. It's hard to say whether interim coach and defensive coordinator Gregg Williams was the reason for the turnaround, because the defense played well all season, but the offense, minus Hue and Todd Haley, blossomed under Freddie Kitchens, with Nick Chubb and Baker Mayfield both blossoming. This creates a dilemma for the Browns: Williams' track record as a head coach is disappointing, while Kitchens has never been a head at any level. A lot of people will want to take over here, because the talent level is so good, and I think bringing in any offensive-minded coach (eg: Mike McCarthy) over Kitchens would be a mistake. I doubt Williams would stay on as DC if they hire a more neutral type (Jim Caldwell is being considered) but on paper at least, if Williams stayed, that would be the best idea—though in reality chemistry is a fragile science.

Landover DC Beltway Bandits (7-9): Jay Gruden did a pretty good job considering Josh Johnson is no Colin Kaepernick. The Skins seemed to be the most injured team in the league, yet their offense held together, and their defense played hard despite a questionable secondary, and of course the late-season release of DJ Swearinger—though you don't hear anyone complaining about a culture of indiscipline under Gruden minor. As I said above, it's Bruce Allen who ought to carry the can for the depth-free Skins, although he gets some points for a defensive line built in the past couple of drafts. I tried to understand the Alex Smith signing, but was he really any more effective than Josh Johnson Off The Street, and will they try to keep Johnson away from the San Diego Fleet next month? Or will they let him go and do the Right Thing and sign Colin Kaepernick?

Atlanta (7-9): The blame fell on the assistants, which is the other way out I didn't discuss at the start. I expected Steve Sarkisian to be fired; despite the idea that Calvin Ridley had helped solve their red zone problems early in the year, they were never as consistent as they ought to be, and Tevin Coleman was not able to be the every down back he had to be with Devonta Freeman's injuries. Marquand Manuel getting the chop was more of a surprise, as he goes back to Seattle days with Dan Quinn, and frankly, their D played no better or worse than in past years, which, considering the injuries was a positive. Sometimes it's not the quantity of but the quality: losing Deion Jones and Keanu Neal early was a blow Atlanta never seemed to recover from, though Damonte Kazee, drafted as a slot corner, proved effective as a strong safety.

Miami (7-9): FIRED: ADAM GASE Who do you choose, Tannehill or Tannenbaum? Or neither. You could try to argue that when Tannehill was healthy, Gase's teams were competitive, and with Brock Osweiler they weren't, and you can also argue Tannenbaum had a penchant for  older over-paid stars who couldn't be coached into a couple more years of excellence because Bill Parcells or Rex Ryan wasn't coaching them. Which is why it seems Rex Ryan even though Tannenbaum is gone. And Rex got to the playoffs with Mark Butt Fumble. Remember it was Rex's father who said “"QBs are overpaid, overrated, pompous bastards and must be punished." What did Ryan Tannehill ever do to him?

Carolina (7-9): What looked like a Norvgasmic offense at the start of year floundered on Cam Newton's injured shoulder and the seemingly perennial problem of finding receivers.  Devin Funchess again under-achieved, though DJ Moore is a keeper for next year, though next year Greg Olson is not going to be back. They have decisions to make with injured/aging defensive stars like Thomas Davis, Julius Peppers, Luke Keuchley and Dontari Poe, as well as center Ryan Kalil for years their best and sometimes only decent O lineman. GM Marty Hurney's second draft should be a challenge. Christian McCaffrey had a hell of a year though, considering he was the only weapon teams needed to account for the second half of the year.

Green Bay (6-9-1): FIRED (MID-SEASON) MIKE MC CARTHY: Joe Philbin sure made a big difference. I think they need to let Aaron Rodgers decide whose offense he wants to play in, which would appear to be Josh McDaniels', but I kinda doubt JMcD is going anywhere, unless Bill Belichick tells him he has no plans to retire anytime soon, or Tom Brady says he does. The Packers, small-market as they are, and again being lumbered with the pre-Reggie White tag of not being a place urban free agents want to go, ought still to be a welcoming destination for a coach, especially with Rodgers in place. If Rodgers wants a QB innovator they could look at Kliff Kingsbury (who's barely older than AR), or maybe Baylor's Matt Ruhle, though being a great recruiter for a second-tier program, as Ruhle was at Temple as well, may be too close a match. He also isn't an offensive guru, being a defensive coach and an O line coach for a year under Tom Coughlin. Maybe Rodgers will consider Adam Gase, whose rep as a 'QB Whisperer' is based around a year of 'coaching' a good season out of Peyton Manning. Gase is like the Bill O'Brien of the other 44 states.

Detroit (6-10): I predicted the firing of Jim Bob Cooter a couple of weeks ago, because this year the short-pass game seemed to regress as if Matt Stafford pulled his head back into Cooter's shell. With Carro-On Johnson injured, you'd think they'd try to open things up, but of course trading Golden Tate made the pass game one dimensional, as he was their best short receiver. I suspect Matt Patricia will grab some ex-Pat offensive guy looking to take better advantage of Stafford's arm; I wouldn't be surprised if they draft or sign a slot receiver. The upside, the ceiling of all this, of course, is perpetual Tennessee Titanism. Fun Fact: the Lions went 9-7 under Jim Caldwell in 2017.

Denver (6-10): FIRED: VANCE JOSEPH: John Elway wasn't going to fire himself and no one else was either. He hired Joseph to be what Tom Boswell in a baseball context called a 'Peerless Leader' type: the square-jawed leader of men. Boswell said that archetype often stand firm while chaos swirls around them, doing nothing about it, which kind of describes Joseph's game management, but it's very hard to think that if he had just been a tougher ramrod Denver's season would have been much better. It was Elway who decided Case Keenum was the answer, and though he had an impressive draft (and landed Philip Lindsay undrafted, which I cheered) they seem to build their D as if a Manning were going to be building big leads, or a couple of ace rushers would do the job, when their secondary was a key to Von Miller's success. How Chris Harris comes back from injury is a big question, but the idea they are interviewing defensive guys like Vic Fangio and Chuck Pagano tells you something.

Buffalo (6-10): The Bills were sort of like Carolina lite, except Josh Allen isn't the passer Cam Newton was, and they don't have a Christian McCaffrey, but their receivers are a similar mismash and Brian Daboll may not have jumped onto that bandwagon. Defensively they were tough all year, but the Pats' ability to push them around and run on them was a revelation late. I'm not sure Sean McDermott has a long term plan for getting better, and I'd predict he gets closer to a hot seat next season.

Cincinnati (6-10): FIRED: MARVIN LEWIS The idea that Hue Jackson might be next in line for the job is funny. Lewis went 16 season with the Bengals, ended with a winning record, the most wins in team history, and an 0-7 playoff mark. His teams were stocked with behavioural problems and character issues, but he avoided for the most part the Tomlin-out of control label in large part because everyone knew the Brown family were signing these guys with character issues because they were good value risks. One thing to remember, if you're a GM (or a coach, who should be given a sign-off on such moves) when you draft a guy with issues, you can't be surprised when he has issues, and if you don't know how to control them, you shouldn't be paying him the big bucks. I'm talking about you, Giants, not just the Steelers. Remember when the Pats brought in problem children like Corey Dillon (Bengals) or Rodney Harrison? Or Randy Moss, who had the huge season and then was dropped when the shine wore off? Vance Joseph, the peerless leader of Denver, appeals to the Bengals but I wonder if Eric Bienamy, latest Andy Reid assistant to get in the spotlight, might get a job here: he played in Cincinnati, and he's a strong players-type coach, not an offensive innovator. But the Bengals mediocrity is almost endemic: I trace it back to the Carson Palmer situation, when they were a team trying to compete with the Colts and let their best hope of doing so simply leave.

YOUR (?) Jacksonville Jaguars (5-11): The Jags put the blame on Nathaniel Hackett and fired him during the season. They were 3-8, with seven straight losses, and went 2-3 the rest of the year, with Todd Milanovich calling the plays and Cody Kessler starting at QB. Who thought that was a good idea? In those five games the Jags scored two touchdowns, one a Dede Westbrook punt return and the other a Leonard Fournette one yard run. Putting less than 10 points per game on the board means your defense has to be better than the Bears 85 or Ravens 2000 or Bucs 2002 if you are going to win. Yes Blake Bortles was bad, but who thought Cody Kessler gave them a better chance of winning? Who thought so after one week?

But the moment that may wind up defining the Jags 2018 season was Leonard Fournette, injured, and TJ Yeldon, in uniform, sitting together chatting on the bench for the whole of the their loss to Houston. How much did they have to talk about? Tom Coughlin vented about it afterwards (maybe someone might have broken up the gab fest by, maybe, playing Yeldon?) and in the best traditions of Coughlin and NFL punishment, Yeldon is certainly not coming back. Fournette has had guarantees in his contract voided for 2019, which means he might be on the trading block, as if Carlos Hyde were the Future in Florida. Remember, the Jags led the NFL in rushing in 2017, playing Tom Coughlin run the ball and play D football, so it's a little surprising Tyrone Wheatley, the RB coach and Pat Flaherty the line coach brought in this year to improve pass-blocking in particular, were both fired. Fournette's injury-pagued season certainly had a lot to do with their ills, but an inability to get good QB play had a lot more (and even in that famous Super Bowl win over the Pats in week two Bortles' scrambling and yards after the catch on throws were the key factors).

And the Sacksonville D of 2017 was very good, but its quality was exaggerated in retrospect. Turnover luck was a factor, and big sack totals in a couple of games against teams with bad O lines and/or QBs was another factor. Penalty luck came into it too, as it usually does against teams which play aggressive press-man coverage with corners, and hang-on coverage by linebackers.  Perry Fewell, another ex-Coughlin assistant brought in to work with the DBs, was also fired; as I said above, the Jags' D had nowhere to go but down, and you can look at indiscipline there, as Tony Boselli did every week on Gnat and my's Talksport radio coverage, but really? If discipline is your worry, do you fire the position coaches? The Jags may be the best example in this whole sorry catalgoue of blame dodging: the three men responsible for building the roster, for choosing the players, for setting the tone, for planning the games, the three men at the cutting edge of this 5-11 season have jettisoned almost everyone beneath them. Is this the British army in World War I? Send the soldiers over the top into withering fire, and execute for cowardice the few officers who survive.

New Jersey Giants (5-11): Say, didn't you used to be Odell Beckham? The Giants thought they were a couple of pieces (Saquon Barkley, Nate Solder, Will Hernandez) away from a playoff run. Great as Barkley was, do you wonder if moving on at QB might have been a better move? The G men were competitive in many games, like the meaningless season finale against the Cowboys, though they couldn't close games out. Maybe Beckham makes a difference, and Eli is better with defenses playing the deep threat. Maybe a team with a great running back (with 88 catches, a rookie RB record for whatever that is worth) learns how to protect a lead? Maybe their D springs back to life? Maybe Pat Shurmer puts it all together. The Giants like to believe in maybes.

Tampa Bay (5-11): FIRED DIRK KOETTER: Koetter is another guy whose firing is hard to argue against, as he's had his chances, and he fired his former mentor Mike Smith as DC, not that it made a difference. But GM Jason Licht is the guy who traded up in the 2016 draft to take a kicker (!) Roberto Aguayo (!) who was out of the league quicker than Ryan  Leaf (while Kevin Byard, Yannick Ngakoue, James Bradberry et al were still on the board. Licht announced he was hiring a headhunter company to help in the search for a new head coach; are you kidding me? Koetter ought to be in demand as an OC somewhere, or maybe an HC back in college; I wonder if Todd Monken helped himself with the early season success with Fitzy; after that bubble burst Jameis Winston had arguably his best year.

Santa Clara 49ers (4-12): Monken was Nick Mullens' coach for a couple of years at Southern Mississippi, which is interesting to me, though irrelevant to the Niners, who could be good with Jimmy G back next year (no knock no Knick Mullens, who will be valuable as a really low-cost backup but might also bring a decent draft pick if they deal him now while his stock is high). The Niners have pieces to build around, the core of a good defensive front, and can improve their roster. Arrow is probably pointing up for them.

Raiders Formerly Known As Oakland (4-12): John Gruden's strategy this season seemed to be to make the team look worse than the one he took over was, in order to make what he hopes will be his improvements look even better. With Reggie McKenzie squeezed out, hiring Mike Mayock as GM isn't as silly a move as it seems: Gruden will be making the decisions and what he needs is a scout, and of the media guys Mayock is one of the best. Of course note I said of the media guys. They have cap room, they have draft picks, they have Jordy Nelson resigned for another year, and they don't have a place to play. Do you really think London would flock to eight games from this outfit? On the plus side, they could use Walter Raleigh as a Raider mascot.

Newark Airport Jets (4-12): FIRED TODD BOWLES Bowles had four years to succeed with the Jest, but how GM Mike McCagnan keeps his job is beyond me. I said before the season that hiring Jeremy Bates as offensive coordinator wasn't the best thing, and despite promising play from Sam Darnold, their offense was never consistent. Not that their defense, Bowles erstwhile speciality was either. But this situation might be a perfect one for Adam Gase to walk into, though I am not convinced he instantly creates a top offense here.  I do like the idea of AFC East coaches rotating around, as they always seem to (even Belichick came to NE from the Jest) to provide familiar fodder for the Pats inevitable stroll to the division title.

Arizona (3-13): FIRED STEVE WILKS: This is harsh after one season, with an injury-ridden club who have allowed themselves to be bled of talent, especially on defense, and who thought that Sam Bradford was the answer. Firing Mike McCoy and letting Byron Leftwich take over as OC was a bold move that had a good immediate effect, and it might have been worth giving Wilks another season to let that play out with Josh Rosen. GM Steve Keim has restocked the defense to a decent level, though not what it might have been, and he ignored a number of needs. Rosen may pan out, Christian Kirk was a good pick, and you might question some of the play-calling. But the lack of talent probably isn't Wilks' fault, and he shouldn't have been the one to pay the price. Rosen may want to apply for hazardous duty pay if he thinks Keim is going to build an offense around him.

THE BEST TIGHT ENDS: JASON WITTEN, ANTONIO GATES & MY GRIDIRON TOP TEN

Last night on Talksport2's Nat Coombs Show starring Gnat Coombs we were talking about Jason Witten's retirement and the Chargers' release of Antonio Gates, and I mentioned the following article which I wrote last August as a Carlson's GOAT (greatest of all time) column for issue 31 of Gridiron (and if you haven't yet subscribed to Gridiron, why not?).

I have left the article as it was written (with one change in the second 11), though of course now Witten is no longer active and he has 11 Pro Bowls to his name, while Gronk is still active (after much soap opera drama by the 'hot takes' bunch) and now has four first-team All Pro selections and five Pro Bowls to his credit, tied with Ditka and more than Mackey or Winslow. Dallas certainly was expecting Witten to return as a full-time player, while although I fully expect a team, probably a very good team, to pick up Gates, he will certainly be much more of a situational player.

Were I writing the piece now, after the 2017 season, I would probably move Witten at least into a tie with Gates at number nine. I realised that the arguments I made in favour of Tony Gonzalez at number one apply similarly to Witten--his longevity at high quality is so unusual for the position it argues in his favour. In fact, although I'm pretty well set on the top five, the next five or six are very much fungible in my mind: the higher peaks for more limited time are balanced off by extended quality. I noted too that when Witten caught his record 110 passes in a season, he was not the consensus All-Pro (that was Gronk), and averaged only 9.4 yards per catch. My feeling is that the top five guys, at their peaks, all had to be accounted for by defenses in ways that separated them from the pack. 


THE TOP TEN TIGHT ENDS

Tight end wasn't even recognised as a position until the Sixties; in 1961 the UPI and NEA all-pro teams chose their first TE (rookie Mike Ditka); the AP followed suit in '62 (Ron Kramer). The growing use of halfbacks as flankers (eg: Lennie Moore, Frank Gifford) meant one end stayed in the line; Vince Lombardi made Kramer, a 250 pound sometimes tackle, that guy on a permanent basis. The position called for a balance of blocking and pass-catching skills; in those early years athletic guys like Ditka, John Mackey, or Jackie Smith gained lots of yards on mis-matches. One beneficiary of the change was Pete Retzlaff, who came into the league as a halfback, became a flanker, then a split end, finally, as he slowed a little, moved in as a tight end. In four seasons, he was all-pro once, could have been twice, and went to the Pro Bowl three times. Rule changes that opened up the passing game in late 70s saw the explosion of Kellen Winslow, Ozzie Newsome and others, until Shannon Sharpe became a prototype for the receiver-first guys we see today.

Ranking tight ends was difficult. Blocking is a skill that is not quantified, where reputation often matters as much as success. Many times the TE with the best stats used to lose out with all-pro voters to someone who was perceived as a better blocker. Some great TE seasons were undervalued by all-pro voters because they came on lousy teams, as if the idea of your TE being your top receiver was a joke (see Bob Tucker 1972). I've tried to balance receiving and blocking, and factor in longevity. One thing that stands out is the demand of the position works against a lot of great seasons, but great tight ends often have long careers filled with seasons less than their peak. There are a number of great TEs whose best seasons always seemed to come when someone else was having a better one (Ozzie Newsome). Finally, I've listed the number of first team all-pro selections and Pro Bowls for each guy. Take them with a grain of salt. There were multiple all-pro teams for most of the history of the NFL; they didn't always agree, and although the AP team is the generally accepted one today, there are a couple of others. The Pro Bowl picks two tight ends from each conference, but is also less reliable every year as the event itself becomes an increasingly irrelevant circus. Note Tony Gonzalez' 14^th Pro Bowl came as an alternate! So here's my pick of the position:

Runners-up: 21. Russ Francis (0/3) or Steve Jordan (0/6) 19 (tie) Jerry Smith (1/2) or Jay Novacek (1/4) 18. Bob Trumpy (1/4) 17. Mark Bavaro (2/2) 16. Ben Coates (2/5) 15. Fred Arbanas (3/5 AFL) 14. Keith Jackson (3/5) 13. Pete Retzlaff (1/3) 12. Todd Christensen (2/5) 11. Ozzie Newsome (1/3)

The countdown (active players in bold):

10. (tie) Charlie Sanders (3/7), Jason Witten (2/10): longevity at this position is unusual; most of the greats tend to have five Pro Bowls in their resumes. I thought Sanders' might have been lucky to be chosen in all three of the all-pro seasons, but there was a reason voters respected him, which was partly his blocking. Whitten became the record holder for most catches in a season for a TE with 103 in 2012.

9. Antonio Gates (3/8): Undrafted out of Kent State where he was a basketball player, Gates is the poster-boy for the match-up style pass game of the modern era. Became a decent blocker, and even now with his speed gone can post-up defenders in the end zone as well as anyone in the league.

8. Jackie Smith (0/5): Smith could easily have been first team all pro three times, especially in '68 and '69 (when he also rushed 12 times for 193 yards and 3 TDs). But he was viewed as more of a pass-catcher, and the Cardinals as pass-happy, in a still run-orented era. Forget his famous drop for Dallas; he never should have been playing for the Cowboys anyway.

7. Shannon Sharpe (4/8): The same skill set as Smith, but played in a system and era that encouraged those skills. A willing if not terribly effective blocker, not as good as Smith, but a huge mis-match problem for defenses.

6. Dave Casper (4/5): From '76 through '79 the best in the business, then joined on the Raiders by Ray Chester and Christensen. Ghost to the Post remains as good as Alley-Oop in the list of plays named for specific players.

5. Rob Gronkowski (3/4): Injury is all that is keeping Gronk from consideration for the top spot; he may be the best combination of blocker and receiver of anyone on the list, capable of handling defensive ends one on one, of beating defensive backs downfield, and with reach and hands up there with Gates or Gonzo.

4. John Mackey (3/5): Mackey was the TE on the NFL all-decade team of the 60s; then Mike Ditka replaced him when the NFL chose the 75^th anniversary squad. At the time I made the case for Mackey, but looking closely at the all pro selections, I realised in 67 his selection could easily have gone to Jackie Smith or Jerry Smith; in 68 it should have gone to Jackie. He was a ferocious blocker with great speed and running ability; injuries curtailed his career.

3. Mike Ditka (4/5): If you want to call him and Mackey a tie I'd be happy. Ditka's rookie season, 1961, saw him catch an unheard of 56 passes for 1076 yards and 12 touchdowns. He lost the AP all-pro to Kramer in 62 but got UPI's and was clearly better. He wore down as well, but hung on as a blocker with Dallas. Like Mackey, absolutely ferocious after the catch, and teams didn't have what we now call strong safeties in those first years.

2. Kellen Winslow (3/5): Gronk before there was Gronk, though he wasn't the in-line blocker Gronk is. 1980 was his second season, but first as starter and like Ditka in '61 his line 89/1,290/9 revolutionized the game, recognizing the changes in coverage rules made him a match-up nightmare. He had another 1,000 yard season in '82 as did Newsome (1,002) and Joe Senser (1,004), while Dan Ross racked up 910. Winslow simply wore down after nine seasons, but his epic performance against Miami in the 1981 playoffs, catching 13/166 and blocking a field goal to prevent the Dolphins winning, is one of the greatest individual games ever.

THE TOP TIGHT END: TONY GONZALEZ

When you compare players, you have to judge peak performance and career performance. You might make an argument for Winslow, or maybe Ditka, or even Casper at their peaks, but nobody did it so well for so many seasons as Gonzo. You can judge tight ends by the receiving skills, their running skill, their blocking. You'll see Gonzalez referred to as another basketball player converted to tight end, but that's wrong. He was a football player too. As a high schooler he shared the Orange County athlete of the year award with some golfer named Tiger Woods, and for three years at Cal-Berkeley he played football first and then switched to basketball. He was an All-American tight end as a junior, when he came out for the NFL draft; 6-6 power forwards averaging 7 points per game weren't high on the NBA's want list anyway. It took the Chiefs three seasons before they focused on Gonzalez' skills: in his fourth season he registered the first of his four 1,000 yard seasons; Christensen, Winslow and Sharpe had three each.

But what stands out about Gonzalez' career is that longevity. 17 seasons. No major injuries at a position where the wear and tear of blocking, combined with the catching over the middle, invites pain. The consistency of 14 Pro Bowls. The success of moving to Atlanta, where he was unlucky enough to enjoy only one complete season of Julio Jones distracting defenses away from him. Detractors will point to his only adequate blocking, to a perceived lack of breakaway speed; he's more like Gates than Gronk in that sense. They'll point to a lack of a Super Bowl ring, but frankly, that's not a reflection of his play. It's almost impossible to conceive of another career like Gonzalez's. You may prefer a different guy if you're choosing for just one game, but over a career, there's no doubt who ranks number one.

SUPER BOWL LII: ARE BETTORS MISUNDERESTIMATING THE EAGLES?

I wrote this piece last Friday (26/1) for Betfair: you can find it on their website here, where it looks much nicer. I thought I'd put it up here before I write my 'official' Super Bowl previews for them and for nfluk.com.  I asked, in  George Bush fashion, 'are bettors misunderestimating the Eagles?' and a few days later someone dropped a million some odd bucks on Philadelphia +5.5 at one casino in Vegas; the line has dropped to 4.5 in the meantime. I doubt he read this column...

ARE BETTORS MISUNDERESTIMATING THE EAGLES?

We did alright here in the Conference Championships last week, didn't we? Pats-Jags under, Eagles-Vikes over (the Eagles got within half a point all by themselves) and the Eagles on the moneyline. Which sets up the Eagles and the Pats in the big one.

It isn't the dream match America supposedly wanted: the home-town Vikings team becoming the first to play the Super Bowl in their own stadium against the team that unites America in hatred, the Patriots. The Eagles are in one sense plucky underdogs against the perennially successful Pats, but in another, they rank among America's least-likeable fan bases. They are the ones who attacked Santa Claus with snowballs. Whose stadium was the first with its own on-site night court to deal with drunken assaults and the like. I once described Philadelphia fans (in the context of baseball, but still relevant) by pointing out that in other places, New York for example, fans threw batteries at the opposition's outfielders. But only in Philly did they boo the thrower if he missed.

Joking aside, Philadelphia has a point about not getting enough respect, not least from the bookies. They were the top seeds in the NFC, but underdogs at home against both Atlanta and Minnesota. They could easily have lost to the Falcons, whom they outplayed but allowed four chances at a winning touchdown from inside the ten yard line. They emerged with a 15-10 win: and both Atlanta scores came off punt turnovers that handed them great field position. Minnesota was a different story. What seemed to be a balanced matchup of great defenses and effective offenses, both operating with backup quarterbacks, turned into a rout. The easiest explanation is that the Vikings' D was built not to give up the big play, especially on third down, and once the Eagles hit on a couple of those, their offense wasn't geared to come back from way down. Any time your offense becomes one-dimensional, your defense can get better, and that's what happened.

In the other Conference Final, the Jags seemed to have the Pats on the roaps. Their defense, up there in the same discussion as Philly's and Minny's, stifled them throughout the first half, until at the two minute warning, they retreated slightly, and Tom Brady carved them up for a TD in just over a minute. Then came an inexplicable bit of coaching, as the Jags, their lead reduced to 14-10, and with 55 seconds and two time outs, elected not to pursue further points. To me this seemed like running up a flag of truce in the middle of the battle. The Eagles, up 21-7 with even less time in their first half, would march downfield quickly and get a field goal to extend their halftime lead. That the Jags wouldn't try the same spoke of caution, if not fear.

And so it played out. Protecting the lead, as they had in the last two minutes of the first half, created vulnerabilities in the Jags' defense. The Pats, as they usually do, adjusted at halftime; their defense played better even as the Jags' offense became predictable. And Brady, throwing with remarkable accuracy, brought them home with the win. Special kudos to Danny Amendola, who caught the final two touchdown passes, the second with a balletic toe-touch in the end zone, returned a punt 20 yards to set up a score, threw a 20 yard completion to Dion Lewis (which Lewis 'fumbled' in the game's most controversial play) and threw a key block on the James White's TD run in the first half. My one-time BBC Super Bowl partner had a pretty good game.

The opening line on the Super Bowl settled quickly at the Patriots minus 5.5, which seemed to still be undervaluing the Eagles. Most of this is down to quarterback bias; Nick Foles is a quality back-up (who had a great year in his first year as a starter under Chip Kelly in Philly his first time around there) but he is a backup, and he has limitations. The Eagles have a five point win and the Pats a four point win among their four playoff victories, and given the similiarities between the Eagles and Jags, 5.5 seemed worth taking with the Eagles. It is likely to go down as money flows in on Philly (in fact there was a huge bet at one casino in Las Vegas which drove their line down a full point) but we'll look at the game again next Friday, and some of the ancillary bets on offer too....

THREE THOUGHTS ON THE NEW SEASON: MY LOST NFL PROGRAMME PIECE

As many of you know, I work on the NFLlive every Sunday night and the NFL show Tuesday nights, both for Talksport radio. The host is Nat Coombs, who has also been my partner on Channel 5, Channel 4, the BBC and of course in the Americarnage podcast. Last week, before the kneeling story broke, the NFL office in London asked us to offer some thoughts on the 2017 season, to appear in the programme for this Sunday's Wembley game between the Dolphins and the the Saints.

I wrote my three and passed them over to Gnat, who added his and sent them along. A few days later, the editorial director informed him that the essay wouldn't appear in the programme after all; there would be just a short piece about our shows on Talksport.

My part of the piece was concerned mostly with the macro-level of the game; I was looking for what I thought might be longer term trends recognizable this season. So I thought I'd post my part of the story here, while it still has some relevance. You can check for yourself to see whether the points make sense, and more importantly whether they actually do establish themselves as trends.

IRON MIKE'S THREE THOUGHTS ON THE 2017 SEASON (after two weeks!)

1. THE QUARTERBACK SHORTAGE

It's actually a more complicated issue, because it's really more of an offensive shortage. A lack of quality QBs is exacerbated by a lack of road-ready offensive linemen, running backs who can't pass block, and receivers who burst on the scene because they can win one-on-one match-ups, but can't necessarily read defenses or run the complete route-tree, though as the NFL does move toward a more basketball-like one on one downfield game, more rookie receivers can make an impact. And linemen playing in some pass-happy systems have trouble adjusting to the complexities of NFL line play; often they've played almost no time in a three point stance.

This is down to the growing gap between concepts in college football and the NFL. Although the pros have adapted some of college's recent offensive innovations, spreading the field to find one-on-one matchups, the NFL is too balanced, and teams too talented, to go lock stock and barrel to the various spread systems eliminating from college, just as the NFL never went wishbone when that was all the rage in college 40 years ago. But what is happening is college offenses are featuring offenses whose quarterbacks don't learn the complex reads and don't need arms as powerful and more importantly accurate as the NFL demands. There is a need for quality quarterbacks; there are not 32 quality starters, and there are precious few quality back ups. Yet Colin Kaepernick remains unemployed.

2. A NEW SORT OF PARITY

Given item one above, the concept of parity seems to be changing. Teams who can build long-term, develop players while they are on the roster and fill their rosters with role-players who fit their system have a huge advantage. What do the Steelers, Ravens, Seahawks, Packers and Patriots, to name the most obvious year-in and year-out contenders have in common? Relative stability in the front office and coaching front. You need to understand your system, coach your system, and play the salary cap game well, but it gives you a huge advantage. You also need to have the security to make some mistakes.

The other huge advantage, of which Seattle and Dallas currently can take advantage, is being able to get a rookie quarterback who can deliver play worth $20 million per year on a rookie salary cap budget. Paradoxically, this works against the idea of parity, because it makes the concept of bringing a QB along within the system more wasteful of financial resources with each year your rookie QB doesn't start. So the impetus is to throw your rookie, who may give you a better chance of winning anyway when your starter is a journeyman, into the breach before he's been coached into readiness, and risk, on a bad team, his developing David Carr syndrome, bad habits if not gun shyness after taking beating after beating.

3. VIDEO GAME FOOTBALL

Between Madden, Fantasy Football, and Red Zone, the NFL in the digital age offers a much wider set of entertainment options than just the game at the stadium or on television. But it has, to some extent, changed the sense of what the audience expects from its football. Watching the amazing 49ers-Rams shootout on week three's Thursday Night, a combination of the usual Thursday short-week sloppiness and tiredness, combined with some remarkable throwing from the two unheralded passers, and bullish running from both teams, I thought immediately how this was the best advertisement, in a way, for the 2017 season, and an answer to the many critics who were already trying to write the year off after the first two weeks. Yes, in their colour rush jerseys, the Rams looked like animated bananas, and at times the game looked like Arena ball, so in one sense it was like a Madden game played out in full. But it offered sceptics everything the NFL promises in a game, not just on Red Zone, on any given Sunday. Or Monday. Or Thursday.

BOSTON'S OTHER BABE: BABE PARILLI, THE QUARTERBACK'S LIFE

Looking at the life of Babe Parilli, who died recently, was more compelling than I'd thought it would be, for not only was Parilli probably the first star the Boston Patriots ever had, and one of the biggest names in the early years of the AFL. Parilli was known as a leader, an erratic but strong-armed quarterback not afraid to take chances, and was a decent runner, especially in his early years. He was also good looking and known to enjoy a good time. Babe was in many ways a poster boy for the life of NFL quarterbacks in the 1950s, and of those retreads and journeymen who populated the position in the early years of the AFL as well.

The Babe was, until Tom Brady's 2007 season, still the Pats' record holder for TD passes in a season; Brady had broken his yardage mark in 2002. Parilli's 1964 season was one of the biggest of any AFL season, 3.465 yards and 31 touchdowns. The shortlist of great Patriots' quarterbacks is very short indeed. Steve Grogan is the gridiron embodiment of the franchise for its first four decades, gritty, tough, trying hard but not talented enough. Tony Eason, Drew Bledsoe and Parilli each led the Pats to one championship game, and each lost that one. Bledsoe's probably the number two, and I'd be tempted to list the Babe at number three; they were in some ways pretty similar: pocket passers with big arms who trusted their arms maybe more than they should. Pats fans tend to put Grogan up there, and ignore Eason who was basically a two-year wonder, with a bad year in between. Which, as it happens, was very much the Parilli pattern.

Vito Parilli was born May 7, 1930, in Rochester Pennsylvania; the fertile area which produced so many great quarterbacks: Johnny Lujack, John Unitas, Dan Marino, Jim Kelly, etc. He was recruited by Bear Bryant to play at Kentucky, where he followed George Blanda. Parilli ran Bear Bryant's T-formation perfectly, where ball-handling was his first responsibility; he got the nickname 'Houdini Hands'. His second  responsibility may have been running, but he was a good passer and probably the best QB in the SEC following the time Billy Wade played tailback at Vanderbilt. He told the story of playing with an injured arm against LSU; Bryant put him what amounted to a shotgun formation, he was never touched, and the Wildcats won the game. He took Kentucky to wins in the '51 Sugar Bowl over undefeated Oklahoma and in the '52 Cotton Bowl over TCU. Those wins probably put Bryant on the watchlist for SWC teams; after the '53 season he would be hired by Texas A&M.

The Packers drafted Parilli with their first pick in the 1952 draft, which was odd since they had drafted Tobin Rote of Rice with their second pick in 1950. Rote was a good but erratic passer, and a tremendous runner. Parilli and Rote shared the job in '52 and combined for 26 TD passes (Babe 13/17 Rote 13/8) which should have augered well for the future. Don't forget, in these days defenders could contact a receiver from the line of scrimmage until the pass was actually in the air; completions were a lot harder to come by. But in '53 Babe slid to 4 TDs and 19 picks; Rote played along with 5/15, meaning they combined for 34 picks with only 9 scores.

The New York Times said Rote played in Canada in 54-55, but he was actually in the Air Force, and when he left the Packers traded him to Cleveland in a package for QB Bobby Garrett of Stanford, whom the Browns has drafted first overall in the '54 draft. Garrett, it turned out, stuttered. Scouting wasn't what it is today, and Paul Brown found this too much. Garrett never started a game, played in a few for the Packers, and was out of the league. Paul Brown got Parilli because he was looking ahead to when Otto Graham retired, although Graham's backup, George Ratterman played well the next two years (in '55 Brown had to lure Graham back with a huge $25,000 deal). With Graham gone in '56, Ratterman took over, and in the fourth game suffered a knee injury that ended his career. Parilli took over, got four starts, and then was injured himself. Tommy O'Connell played the rest of the year as the Browns finished the year 5-7, their first-ever losing season.

This was life in the NFL in the Fifties. Although Parilli had loved Bear Bryant he didn't really get along with the cutting and sarcastic Paul Brown, so in 1957 Brown traded him. Back to Green Bay. It was 10 player deal that some say included the rights to Bobby Garrett. This kind of stuff happened all the time. George Blanda hated Bears' owner/coach George Halas with a passion, and Halas, whose evaluation and use of quarterbacks was always suspect (he ruined Johnny Lujack, dumped Bobby Layne, and dumped on Blanda, all of whom he had at the same time in the Forties behind Sid Luckman). Anyway, Blanda once traded Blanda to the Colts, to Blanda's delight, then bought him back a week later.

The Packers had picked up Parilli intending to trade him on, so instead they traded Tobin Rote to the Lions. Bobby Layne got hurt that year, and Rote stepped in to lead Detroit to an NFL title. Coach George Wilson decided he didn't like Layne, and the next year he traded him to Pittsburgh, where the Steelers turned into winners while Rote turned into a pumpkin, turning in 5TD 19 int passer rating 29.8 season. In 1960 Rote was playing in Toronto, where he threw 38 TD passes and led the Argos to a divisional title (actually, the championship of the Inter-Provincial Rugby Football Union).

Parilli mentored and relieved Bart Starr, a 16^th round draft pick, and actually won the first game at Lambeau Field, then called City Stadium. But when Vince Lombardi arrived, Parilli was gone. Babe said it was because he'd beaten Lombardi at golf, and Vince didn't want to pay him the one dollar bet. He claimed Lombardi told him “that will be the last dollar you ever get from me.” He landed with Ottawa in the CFL, but played behind the great Canadian QB Russ Jackson and the veteran Frank Tripucka. Tripucka's another one of those crazy Fifties stories. He was drafted in the first round by the Eagles in 1949: then traded to Detroit in mid-season without having played a down. You wonder if they scouted him or just figured that a star QB at Notre Dame was worth a first-round pick. The Lions sent him to the hapless Chicago Cardinals, who traded him to the even more hapless Dallas Texans. Tripucka saw the light and bolted for Saskatchewan, where he played for Frank Filchock and, apparently, was making a lot more money than he ever got in the NFL.

But in 1960 the American Football League was launched, and they needed quarterbacks. Tripucka had retired and was assistant coach to Filchock in Denver. After a couple of practices, they realised he was much better than the guys they had, so he became the starter. Parilli signed with Oakland, where he shared the job with the starter Tom Flores, a local product of College of the Pacific who'd been cut by the CFL the year before. George Blanda was signed by Houston and led them to the championship, beating Jack Kemp and the Los Angeles Chargers in the final. Tommy O'Connell resurfaced as the starter in Buffalo, and got injured in the first quarter of the first game against the New York Titans, whose starter Dick Jamieson was benched in the first quarter for Al Dorow.

In 1961 Oakland traded Parilli to the Boston Patriots, whose QB in 1960 had been Butch Songin. Songin, a hockey and football star at Boston College, had last played football in 1954, for Hamilton in the CFL. That's the kind of league it was. They split time in '61, but in '62 Parilli took over and had what may have been the most efficient season of his career. Completing 55.3% of his passes, 18 touchdowns and only 8 picks, and a passer rating of 91.5, which is probably the equivalent of something at least ten points higher today. The next year Babe regressed to 13 scores and 24 picks, but the Patriots went all the way to the AFL championship game, where the Chargers destroyed them 51-10, with Keith Lincoln having a game for the ages. The Chargers, whose coach Sid Gillman supposedly spied on the Pats to get their game plan, were quarterbacked by, wait for it, Tobin Rote, whom Gillman had signed because he'd lost Kemp and thought John Hadl wasn't yet ready. Rote had suffered his usual reversion to below the norm in Toronto, and been released after the '62 season.

Parilli had that big year in '65, then two more typical Parilli years. In 1968 the Pats traded him to the Jets for Mike Taliaferro, who had lost his job to Joe Namath. Namath was from Beaver Falls, Pa, about five miles away from Rochester, and the first quarterback he idolized growing up was Babe Parilli. Parilli was a perfect backup for the Jets; under Weeb Ewbank he was consistent when he had to play. He did the holding so Namath didn't have to risk injury, and the New York press made as much of his ball handling as Jim Turner's holder as the football writers had made of his ball-handling at Kentucky. When the Jets won Super Bowl III, Parilli got his championship ring at last, and as an AFL original, and as a typical gypsy QB of the NFL's Fifties, he deserved it.

After the 1969 season, Babe retired. He was a quarterbacks coach for the hometown Steelers, mentoring Terry Bradshaw (whose first few seasons' stats could be mistake for a Parilli years). He then  coached in the World Football League, and later for many teams in the Arena League, which was the kind of game made for the Babe Parillis and Tobin Rotes of the 50s NFL. He retired to Colorado, where he died July 15^th. RIP. 

NFL LIMBO: MY LOST WEEK 21 FRIDAY MORNING TIGHT END COLUMN

Last Friday morning I wrote my weekly column for nfluk.com; its lede was eerily prophetic, as it indeed disappeared into limbo! It hasn't yet appeared, perhaps because there are no games whose results I can predict (except for the Pro Bowl: I got it wrong, and my score prediction turned out to be a little off too) and it is not, strictly speaking, billed as FMTE any longer. I don't know what happened, but in answer to the queries I received, here it is now, as written, complete with all-pro and all-rookie teams...

FRIDAY MORNING TIGHT END, WEEK 21

Week 21 is NFL Limbo. The slow build-up of Super Bowl hype mixes with the final arguments about year-end awards, the Senior Bowl gets the three-month draftathon underway, and the Pro Bowl this year reverts back to a 'meaningful' NFC vs AFC format. As much as the idea of watching the NFL's best players go against each other appeals, I've written many times before how the game itself has outlived its usefulness, just as the College All-Star game did before it. I suspect it will require a serious injury to a real star to drive the point home, and I do not wish for that. PRO BOWL: PICK NFC 101 AFC 98

Instead let's take a serious look at the All-Pro team. One of the odd things about the Pro Bowl is that each team gets three quarterbacks, although only one can play, but also, for example, three guards, although two play. They get only one special teamer, though of course ten more of those guys surround the kickers. The current voting for all-pros gets weird as well, with two running backs even though no teams use two at once except as a gimmick, and various distinctions between interior linemen, edge rushers, and linebackers which saw Khalil Mack get picked as both a rusher and a linebacker. Sometimes they distinguish between left and right tackles, strong and free safeties, sometimes they don't. And they've added a 'flex' position (David Johnson, who I thought had a very strong case for the MVP) was AP's first team flex and second team running back, go figure. , which might be fine if this were fantasy football. As I pointed out one week in answer to the otherwise excellent Red Zone: the opposite of fantasy football is not 'reality football', it's 'football'!

The quarterback/MVP debate has been a fascinating one. Ryan has had a totally remarkable statistical season; Brady went 11-1 with a team whose offensive weapons don't fall into the all-pro voting; Rodgers engineered a brilliant run without a running back. You could take any of the three and think yourself correct. But boy would you hear arguments.

IRON MIKE'S ALL PROS:

QB: Matt Ryan, Atlanta

RB: LeVeon Bell, Pitts

FB: Kyle Juszczyk, Balt

WR: Julio Jones, Atlanta; Antonio Brown, Pitts; Odell Beckham, NYG

TE: Travis Kelce, KC

T: Joe Thomas, Clev; Andrew Whitworth, Cinn

G: Zach Martin, Dallas; Marshal Yanda, Balt

C: Travis Frederick, Dallas

DE: Khalil Mack, Oakland; Jadeveon Clowney, Houston

DT: Aaron Donald, LA; Fletcher Cox, Phil/Damon Harrison, NYG (tie)

OLB: Vic Beasley, Atlanta; Von Miller, Denver/Sean Lee, Dall (tie)

ILB: Bobby Wagner, Seattle; Luke Kuechley, Carolina

CB: Marcus Peters, KC; Patrick Peterson, Ariz; Richard Sherman, Seattle;

SS: Eric Berry, KC

FS: Devin McCourty, NE

PK: Justin Tucker, Balt (Tucker had a 1.77 score on my 'Cockup' kicker rating; the highest in about 8 years); Adam Vinatieri at 1.45 was next).

P: Jonny Hekker, LA

KR: Tyreek Hill, KC

ST: Matthew Slater, NE/Nate Ebner, NE (tie)

Coach of the Year: Bill Belichick

Coordinator of the Year: Kyle Shanahan

MVP: Ryan

It's also time to tip the helmet to the way Dallas' dynamic duo of rookies, QB Dak Prescott and RB Ezekiel Elliott, led them to the very brink of the NFC championship game. If you go back to April, it was obvious Zeke was a rare talent who was likely to thrive behind Dallas' fine run-blocking line. It was less obvious that Dak was going to QB them to a 13-3 season. I was one of the few commentators high on Dak; I had him pegged top of the second round, ahead of Paxton Lynch, but even I didn't think that translated into playing right away. I did say then that he reminded me of Russell Wilson, and so it turned out.

Dak made one rookie mistake against the Packers, spiking the ball on first down as Dallas was on their game-tying drive. The loss of a down was far more important than the clock; in fact in an ideal world they wouldn't have left any time for Green Bay after scoring. Note Aaron Rodgers' clock management as he took the Packers 42 yards in 35 seconds, even after taking a 10 yard sack. There was a stranger mistake, at the end of the first half, when Cole Beasley fair-caught a punt and the Cowboys didn't take the free-kick which was available. I would have loved to see Dan Bailey with a run-up going for the posts!

It's a shame Zeke's season overshadowed Jordan Howard's which might have been good for rookie of the year in many years; running on a team with a limited passing attack Howard was a bright light for the Bears. So I've picked two running backs and only two wideouts, because no third wideout stood out from a group of about five.

IRON MIKE'S ALL-ROOKIE TEAM (draft round taken in parenthesis):

QB: Dak Prescott, Dallas (4)

RB: Ezekiel Elliott, Dallas (1); Jordan Howard, Chicago (5)

FB: Andy Janovich, Denver (6)

TE: Hunter Henry, San Diego (2)

WR: Michael Thomas, NO (2); Sterling Sheppard, NYG (2)

T: Jack Conklin, Tenn (1); Taylor Decker, Det (1); Ronnie Stanley, Balt (1)

G: Laremy Tunsil, Miami (1) Joe Thuney, NE (3)

C: Cody Whitehair, Chi (2)

DE: Joey Bosa, San Diego (1); DeForest Buckner, SF (1) Kenny Clark, GB (1)

DT: Chris Jones, KC (2); Javon Hargrave, Pitt (3); Michael Pierce, Balt (U)

ILB: Deion Jones, Atlanta (2); Jatavis Brown, San Diego (5)

OLB: Leonard Floyd, Chi (1) Emmanuel Ogbah, Clev (2)

CB: Jalen Ramsey, Jax (1); Eli Apple, NYG (1); Darryl Worley, Caro (3)

S: Keanu Neal, Atlanta (1); Karl Joseph (Oak) (1)

PK: Will Lutz, NO (U) P: Riley Dixon, Den (7) KR: Tyreek Hill, KC (5)

See you next week with the Super Bowl. I'll be down in Houston with El Chappo, Osi, and JBell on BBC1 Sunday, don't miss it!

LAST WEEK: 1-1 PLAYOFFS: 9-1