Found 38 posts tagged as "QuickSnap"
Stephen Knight   Feb 3, 2012 17 Comments

Nfl-football-super-bowl-feb-3-2012-preview-patriots-giants

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How do you cut through the clutter of Super Bowl hype to provide readers with a value-added preview of the Big Game?

I’m glad you asked.

It ain’t easy, that’s for sure. If it was, everybody’d be doing it. Wait a minute, everybody IS doing it. I think I even saw a special Super Bowl edition of The Mentalist the other day, and I’m pretty sure Tom Brady is on the cover of this month’s Creative Knitting Magazine.

So the way we can offer a value-added Super Bowl preview is to tell you to throw everything those other Super Bowl previews tell you out the window.

Why?

Because it’s 60 minutes of football and anything can happen. That’s part of the fun, of course, but very little of the avalanche of tweets, blogs, vlogs, columns and general opinionating that comes before Sunday’s kickoff between the AFC champion New England Patriots and the NFC champion New York Giants will be an indicator of what will happen in Super Bowl XLVI – that’s 46, for the Roman numeral-challenged – in Indianapolis.

It’s like the stock market. Past performance is not an indicator of future results.

The experts say it will be a battle of superstar quarterbacks Tom Brady and Eli Manning and thus an offensive fireworks show. That usually means the first touchdown won’t be scored until there’s, like, three minutes left in the third quarter.

The experts say New England’s defence was ranked second last in the league this season. That usually means the Pats’ secondary will pick off three passes and the D-line will sack Manning four times before the half.

The experts say Brady will pick apart the Giants defence, one hapless cornerback at a time. That usually means Giants sophomore All-Pro defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul will be in Brady’s face all game.

Stephen Knight   Jan 30, 2012 5 Comments

NFL football, NFL, peyton manning, football

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With the Super Bowl set for next weekend in Indianapolis, all eyes will be on the Giants and Patriots, especially the two quarterbacks, New York’s Eli Manning and New England’s Tom Brady.

But a few eyes will be on another quarterback, one who put Indianapolis on the map for more than just the annual 500-mile car race in that town.

Yes, what is to become of Eli’s older brother, Peyton?

Peyton is a Super Bowl champion (XLI, in 2007, over the Chicago Bears), holds numerous college and pro records for passing yards and is a shoo-in for the Football Hall of Fame one day. He’s an 11-time Pro Bowler, a four-time Associated Press NFL MVP and the fastest quarterback to reach 50,000 passing yards, among other accolades.

Those are the metrics of legends.

But everyone’s time comes, and that time may be closer than we think for No. 18 in Indianapolis. After all, the first overall pick in the 1998 draft will be 36 at the end of March and, more ominously, he’s had three surgeries on his neck in the last year and a half, the most recent being a spinal fusion in September. We all hope Peyton recovers, but you have to wonder about life and limb for a guy in his mid-30s whose occupational risks include being pummeled regularly by angry 320-pound linemen.

Without Manning in the line-up all season, the 2011 Colts went a miserable 2-14 and have recently been cleaned house on the coaching front. On the upside, the Colts now own the first pick in the NFL draft in April and will be taking a long look at Stanford stud quarterback Andrew Luck.

Here’s where it gets tricky, though. How do you end Peyton’s decorated time in a Colts uniform in a classy way?

Well, apparently you don’t.

Manning has recently voiced his displeasure with the turnover going on with the team, and Colts owner Jim Irsay has called Manning “a politician,” which, in America, is about the worst name you could call someone. We’re surprised Irsay didn’t call Peyton’s mom a hamster and accuse father Archie Manning of smelling of elderberries.

The drama here seems almost designed to allow fans to detach emotionally from Peyton before he is shown the door. According to reports, that is almost certainly going to happen before the draft, especially since Irsay must decide by March 8 whether to give Peyton a $28-million option bonus. Even if Peyton’s best days weren’t behind him and he was in perfect health, writing that kind of cheque would give a sports team owner pause.

It seems the roles have been set for us. Irsay gets painted as the cold-blooded businessman and Peyton the tragic hero who is exiled. We need good guys and bad guys to parse the daily avalanche of information, and the latest developments make it easier to digest.

Who knows? With Luck sporting the horseshoe come next fall, and most certainly one of the other 31 NFL teams willing to take a chance on a surgically repaired Peyton Manning, this may actually be one of those situations that truly does end up win-win.

: 9:35 AM in Football, QuickSnap
Luke Fox   Oct 14, 2011 1 Comments

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As a Canadian, American Thanksgiving brings nary a deep-fried turkey or spoonful of Aunt Edna’s stuffing. But what it does bring is football on a Thursday afternoon in November—as good excuse as any to play hooky from work or school. But in recent years, the desire to skip life on U.S. Thanksgiving and plop my house pants down on the sofa to watch football has waned.

Why? Because ever since the first owner of the Detroit Lions, G.A. Richards, started the tradition of hosting an NFL Thanksgiving Day game in a gambit to increase attendance, the Lions have laid claim to one of the matchups (Dallas owns the other, and since 2006, a third is played with no fixed opponents). And because ever since 1999, the Lions have not fielded a playoff team.

In 2008, the Lions’ ineptitude had reached a new low. Like, sneaking-raisins-into-the-stuffing low. Prior to that year’s Thanksgiving game, a handful of NFL.com and ESPN analysts—Mike Ditka, Nick Bakay, Mike Greenberg, and others—called for a rearranging of the schedule. Detroit’s stronghold on the high-ratings Thursday game should be loosened, they argued, in favour of teams that actually had a playoff shot. The Lions didn’t help their cause; not only did Detroit lose big on Turkey Day (47-10 to the Tennessee Titans), they lost all 16 games they played in ’08, becoming the first winless NFL team since the expansion Tampa Bay Buccaneers went 0-14 in 1976. Commissioner Roger Goodell even acknowledged that the idea of stripping the Lions of their Thanksgiving bounty has “come up a few times” amongst owners, though the anti-Thanksgiving-Lions sentiment is mostly driven by media.

Such will not be the case on November 24, when Detroit hosts Green Bay: a battle of the only two undefeated NFL teams thus far, and suddenly real NFC North rivals.

Detroit, what?! How did these Lions, so recently a laughingstock team representing a hard-luck city, rise from win-free (word to Oprah) in ’08 to an unthreatening 6-10 last year to 5-0 this fall and their first 5-0 start since 1956?

Well, the turnaround is even more spectacular when you consider that Detroit is actually on a nine-game victory streak, having won its last four games of ’10, and it leads the NFL in point differential (+70).

“We haven’t played our best,” Coach Jim Schwartz told CP on Tuesday morning. “We still have improvements to make.”

Yikes. It’s tough to figure out where the improvements can come. The Lions’ D has surrendered 10 or fewer points in the second halves this season, closing out games with a fierce, enduring front line. Quarterback Matt Stafford, 23, has found his game after just 13 starts prior to this campaign, throwing for 13 TDs, connecting on more than 63% of his passes and posting a 101.4 rating.

While it’s tempting to envision this rags-to-riches story climaxing with Stafford hoisting the Lombardi Trophy in February, let’s not get too carried away just yet. The last time the Lions won NFL Championship, the year was 1957—a full decade before the Super Bowl was invented. And then there’s Calvin “Megatron” Johnson. In light of Randy Moss’s retirement, could this star wideout’s breakout year be better timed? Johnson, 26, set an NFL record when he caught his ninth touchdown in just five games to start the season. Better, his blend of size, hand-eye control, speed and hops make him a thrill to watch.

Whether or not these young, hungry Lions can maintain such a torrid attack on the league and its fans’ imaginations remains unknown. What is known, however is this: On the morning of American Thanksgiving, my boss will receive a bad-news telephone call. On the other end of the line will be a man faking a cough, feigning a sniffle, and microwaving nachos.

: 5:51 PM in Football, QuickSnap
Luke Fox   Oct 4, 2011 87 Comments

Immersive

Remember that sinking feeling you got the first time CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada commenced without that familiar pump-you-up opening orchestra theme? Well, last night’s Monday Night Football kicked off minus Hank Williams Jr.’s “Are You Ready for Some Football?”—a song that has been tied to the telecast since 1991. And not hearing the country singer’s trademark anthem was music to the ears.

After Williams went on Fox & Friends, a Fox News program, and compared President Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler, ESPN released a statement explaining how “disappointed” the network was with the singer’s comments, so much so that his tune was pulled from last night’s opener.

On his Fox appearance, Williams brought up Obama’s golf game with Speaker of the House John Boehner during this summer’s debt ceiling talks; he deemed it “one of the biggest political mistakes ever.” And then the bomb: “That would be like Hitler playing golf with [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu.”

I checked an ESPN poll of the situation during halftime of last night’s Bucs-Colts game. Thirty per cent of pollsters believe that Williams’ comments are over the line and that Monday Night Football was right to drop his tune; 42%, of the 30,000-plus responders, however, believed that ESPN had no right to yank Williams’ opening theme, citing free speech.

Yes, free speech is a wonderful thing, and Williams has a right to say whatever he chooses. Just as ESPN has the freedom to disassociate itself from people who say ignorant things. Although it’s unknown whether the network is, er, ready to axe Williams’ tune altogether or if this was a one-time wrist-slap, perhaps it’s time that MNF get a new opening theme. We still watch Hockey Night in Canada, don’t we?

You can watch Hank Jr.’s controversial interview below and judge for yourself. Personally, I find it interesting that immediately following the Hitler-Obama comparison, the country singer says, “In the country this shape is in…” and refers to Obama and Biden as the “Three Stooges.” Brilliant.

Somewhere Jeff Foxworthy is writing another “you might be a redneck if…” joke.

 

 

: 10:05 AM in Football, News, QuickSnap
Luke Fox   Sep 26, 2011 3 Comments

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It’s as if the hand of God—or, perhaps, Goodell?—has grabbed the NFL standings list by the scruff of its neck, turned it upside down and shook it like a snow globe, causing the flakes to fall in a completely random and unpredictable order. For when you glance at the races heading into Week 4, there is not a single division that doesn’t have a surprise team with at least a share of the lead. Of the NFL’s eight divisions, four of them are experiencing a worst-to-first overhaul.

By so many expert accounts, the Philadelphia Eagles were the sexy Super Bowl favourite—shrewd off-season acquisitions and a storybook quarterback (Michael Vick) who had rediscovered his star power could only bolster 2010’s NFC East champs. But those Eagles sit at the basement of their division, and their battered passer (concussion, bruised hand) could now be sidelined. Instead, the Washington Redskins lead the East; the same Redskins who finished last in ’10. And, more bizarrely, Rex Grossman has a full-time NFL job. Flip.

In the NFC North, the Detroit Lions, hot off a come-from-behind overtime victory, are a perfect 3-0 for the first time since 1980 and battling the Super Bowl champion Green Bay Packers for top spot. The Lions have already won half as many games as they did in their entire ’10 campaign.

In the NFC South, the Atlanta Falcons, a powerhouse last year, look inconsistent at 1-2. And the St. Louis Rams, a team though to be on the rise, have yet to win a game, but their NFC West rivals, the San Francisco 49ers (third in 2010), now lead what’s widely considered the league’s weakest division.

In the AFC West, the team that started so viciously last September, the Kansas City Chiefs, is posting an O-fer, while the perennial laughingstock Oakland Raiders look like they might finally be for real. With the league’s best running game, the Black and Silver trounced the Jets yesterday and now lead the West.

The Indianapolis Colts, once a sure thing in the AFC South, have yet to win a game without Peyton Manning; conversely, the Tennessee Titans, in such disarray last year—finishing last in the division with busted leadership—have rebounded all the way to the top. And the 2-1 Cleveland Browns are right in the thick of the AFC North race with the Steelers and Ravens.

Granted, we’re only three weeks deep into this sucker. These knots in the plot haven’t escalated to dogs-and-cats-living-together mass hysteria quite yet. But still.

The cherry on top of this any given sundae is lathered in buffalo sauce. While Buffalo’s 4-12 record last year doesn’t illustrate all the close games it lost, it also wasn’t ample warning for the 2011 edition of the Bills. Last year, they finished dead last in the AFC East, 10 games behind the New England Patriots. This morning, they awoke to see themselves a perfect 3-0 and atop a division that is supposed to be a two-horse race between the Pats and New York Jets. With the 37.7 points per game, the Ryan Fitzpatrick-led Bills have the best offense in the NFL.

Yesterday, they intercepted early MVP pick Tom Brady four times (a career worst for the QB), showed heart by overcoming a 21-0 deficit, and shocked the league by beating New England—at the buzzer, no less—for the first time since 2003. When Rian Lindell’s 28-yard game-winning field goal split the uprights, it felt like the greatest thing to happen to the city since duty-free. Officials at Ralph Wilson stadium had to protect the goal posts to make sure wild Bills fans didn’t knock them over in jubilation.

It would have been more fitting, however, if stadium security turned a blind eye and let the fans have a go at the yellow posts. Everything else has been knocked on its ass this season.

 

: 5:23 PM in Football, QuickSnap, Sports
Luke Fox   Sep 7, 2011 3 Comments

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QUICK SNAP PICK ’EM — WEEK 1 — WE'RE BAAAAACK...

Every seven days, our NFL columnist puts his reputation on (the) line and selects the winner of three marquee matchups. 2010 Pick ’Em record: 36-26

Green Bay Packers > New Orleans Saints

Football fans in the United States lost a lot of sleep and nearly lost a bit (more?) of admiration for their leader. When it was announced that President Barack Obama would address the nation on Thursday night and likely hog all of the networks’ airtime, an amber alert sounded in the brains of pigskin fanatics: Uh… you know that’s the same night the football season begins with the Packers-Saints game, don’t you, Mr. President? “I can assure all you football fans that he will completed before kickoff,” a White House spokesman told reporters a couple days ago, squashing the panic. “It means [Obama] will have the opportunity to watch the game, like millions of other Americans.” Whew. What the President doesn’t want you to miss is the past two Super Bowl champs and two of the top four quarterbacks in the league facing off in what promises to be a pass-heavy, last-team-to-get-the-ball wins thriller. The kind of game that’ll make you forget all about that annoying bit of lockout business and remind you why Aaron Rogers earned his title belt.

Houston Texans > Indianapolis Colts

So despite this guy’s belief, the Indianapolis Colts have said that their franchise player, Peyton Manning, will “likely be doubtful” for Sunday’s opener against the division-rival Texans. He is still dealing with a neck injury. Though tempted to attach a caveat to the pick (Colts win if Manning starts), I think Houston will win at home regardless. The trendy selection to grab an AFC wild-card slot the last couple seasons, the Texans have failed to deliver—despite having one the game’s best receivers (Andre Johnson) and one of the best ball-carriers (Arian Foster). Houston will send a message to their fans that yes, finally, this year we’re serious.

New York Jets > Dallas Cowboys

Tough call. This one should live up to its Sunday-night prime-time position. Expect made-for-TV quarterbacks and ladies’ men Tony Romo and Mark Sanchez to get plenty of face time and intermission back-story. The pressure’s on for these guys now; their home cities expect big things, career years out of them. Patience for young-buck mistakes is dwindling. That said, this game will be decided by defense and turnovers. And the Jets will win those battles.

: 4:06 PM in Football, QuickSnap
Luke Fox   Aug 31, 2011 13 Comments

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Too often play-by-play commentators call upon the term hero and affix it to an athlete’s name to emphasize his on-field successes.

“No!” the hyperbole watchdogs will scream. “The true heroes are in the armed forces, they’re riding around in red trucks equipped with hoses and giant ladders, they’re in the operating room holding a scalpel, and they’re in the classroom. They are not grown men playing a child’s game for millions of dollars.”

Yes, the term hero can be overused. It does not always take supreme courage and a noble spirit to clank a buzzer-beating three-pointer off the glass, off the rim and in. (What else are you going to do? Not shoot with a second left?) But sometimes even the lowly selfish professional athlete will do something truly worthy of the hero tag.

In this NFL preseason (at least) two such instances have occurred—and neither protagonist in these tales has played a snap of pro ball yet.

On Aug. 3, during an upbeat morning practice, Philadelphia Eagles defensive tackle Mike Patterson suddenly collapsed. He began convulsing. Rookie teammate Danny Watkins immediately tried to help during the seven-year vet’s four-minute seizure, eventually assisting his fellow player onto a spine board. Watkins, a Canadian firefighter with emergency training, was simply acting on instinct.

“He wanted to jump right in there and Rick [Burkholder, the Eagles’ trainer] was stabilizing [Patterson]," Reid head coach Andy Reid explained to The Express Times. “I kind of held [Watkins] back a little bit, but his first reaction was to dive in.”

“You never want to see a teammate go down like that,” Watkins told the same Times reporter after the practice. “It’s not an easy thing to see. I’m sure any one of the other guys would have done the same thing [trying to help]. My heart goes out to him. He went down and it’s hard to not jump in there and want to help the guy, especially since he’s your teammate.”

But the person in danger doesn’t necessarily have to wear the same colours in order to spur a good man into action.

On Thursday, it was another rookie, Baltimore Ravens wideout Tandon Doss, who pounced to the rescue. Mere hours before the Ravens were to kick off against the Washington Redskins at M&T Bank Stadium, a fight broke out at 4:30 p.m. at the Inner Harbour’s Five Guys restaurant. According to The Baltimore Sun, two male former employees of the restaurant, one whom the police believe to be furious over getting fired, used a knife to cut the restaurant’s manager before Doss jumped into the fray.

“I saw somebody start fighting, and I broke it up,” Doss, 21, told the paper. “That’s all it was to me…. I mean, it was two dudes on one,” he continued. Shrug. “I was trying to help the situation out. I broke it up.”

The attacked manager only suffered a minor cut on his chin and was released from a local hospital. But who knows how severe the damage could have been had the fourth-round pick not intervened. Still, Doss doesn’t think the word heroic applies.

“I saw the guy on the ground bleeding, and I saw a guy on top hitting him,” he told the Sun. “So I stopped it.”

In a climate where NFL players’ run-ins with the law get so much media run, one hopes that these stories get just as much, if not more, play. Forget learning from others’ mistakes. Try learning from others’ heroics.

 

(P.S. For those who believe in karma, it might be worth noting that both the Eagles and Ravens won their respective games after their rookies acted quickly and selflessly.)

: 2:31 PM in Football, QuickSnap
Luke Fox   Aug 23, 2011 0 Comments

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Will Peyton Manning start?

It’s one of the biggest questions surrounding Sept. 11, the first Sunday of the 2011 National Football League regular season, a season with storylines running past the margins.

Manning’s status is of concern for a few reasons. First, if the Indianapolis Colts are to threepeat as AFC South champs, they’ll need a better arm than incumbent Curtis Painter’s or veteran Dan Orlovsky’s. In 2010, even with Manning starting every game, Indy needed a strong finish (four straight W’s) to trump the Jacksonville Jaguars and the underachieving Houston Texans. While only a fool reads too deep into preseason results, the 0-2 Colts have only thrown one touchdown (Orlovsky) and mounted 13 points total. Their normally pedal-to-the-metal offense ranks 30th.

Second, and more important in terms of personal legacy, is The Streak. Manning is one of two men to have started more than 200 consecutive games under centre, and the only one to do so from the inception of his pro career and with a single organization. The other guy, Brett Favre, began 297 regular-season games in a row from 1992 through 2010. Manning has 208 under his belt, and with the Colts locking up their franchise face for another five years this offseason, Favre’s remarkable benchmark is not necessarily out of reach.

Especially when you consider Manning’s will to compete. When the star quarterback gets pulled in meaningless games, you can almost taste him seething on the sideline, all pouty with his arms folded and his helmet still on. Stuck on stage one: denial. (I mean, even his younger, less talented brother is in the same class as Tom Brady. *Coughs loudly while typing that sentence.)

If you think a lingering neck injury will keep him out of the lineup come September, you are mistaken or live in Houston. As his former coach, Tony Dungy, phrased it on Sunday Night Football, “unless he’s dead,” Manning will get the ball.

If Dungy, who guided the future first-ballot Hall of Famer for seven years, says Manning will play, I can’t see a valid reason to dispute. That said, Manning’s bulging disc is nothing to take lightly. The man has undergone two surgeries since February 2010; the first procedure was to repair a pinched nerve.

Like the rest of us, Manning, 35, is only getting older. The original estimate for his return from May’s operation was preseason. Didn’t happen. I think the team and Manning are just maxing out star’s rest time. Because if the Colts are going to make a playoff run, it will be on his neck. Last year, Manning threw more balls (679) for more completions (450) and more yards (4,700) than in any other of his 13 seasons. They need him to be the guy just as much as he needs to be the guy.

Come Sept. 11, expect to see No. 18, as always, sprint out onto Houston’s Reliant Stadium’s turf with a helmet strapped on his head—and possibly a little extra neck support around his collar. Whatever it takes. Tick off start No. 209.

: 11:11 AM in Football, QuickSnap
Luke Fox   Aug 17, 2011 0 Comments

Quicksnap_chicago_bears_kicker_aug17

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In a Season 4 episode of Family Guy, back when the animated comedy series had hit its stride, the Griffins’ high-school-aged daughter Meg developed a crush on the cool rebel bad boy of James Woods Regional H.S., Craig Hoffman. “I play by my own rulesnobody else’s, not even my own,” Craig boasts of his approach to life.

Well, on Saturday, in their 10-3 preseason victory over the Buffalo Bills, the Chicago Bears pulled a Craig Hoffman. Although the National Football League instituted a new rule in the offseason that saw the kickoff spot moved from the kicking team’s 30-yard line up to the 35, the Bears lined up at the 30. In Hoffmanesque fashion, kicker Robbie Gould twice booted from the familiar spot in the first half—ignoring everybody else’s rules, even his own. Informed of the infraction, the league’s vice president of officiating, Car Johnson, commanded the refs to “put a stop to it,” according to Fox Sports.

Da Bears, presumed (pretty safely, I’d say at this point) to be one of six franchises not in favour of the 30-to-35 shift, purposely ignored the ’11 rulebook in order to practise their kickoff defence schemes.

“We can put it on the 35 and he can kick it out each time,” Bears coach Lovie Smith explained to the Chicago Sun-Times of Gould. “We’re not really getting a good evaluation of what we can do coverage-wise on some of our players. That’s what we were trying to do with it.”

Hmmm... Granted, the main goal of preseason is not winning games; getting your team in shape, perfecting the playbook, and picking a starting lineup are of utmost importance. But if kickoffs are to be placed at the shortened-field 30, would it not make sense to practice from there? To give Gould practise at taking five yards off his foot cannon?

I think the decision was the Bears’ way protesting the rule. And they’re not the only ones unhappy with spot change. The Baltimore Sun ran an article discussing Ravens coach Jim Harbaugh’s objection to the 35-yard kick, which has predictably increased the frequency of touchbacks league-wide. The aim of the new rule is to increase player safety, but at what cost? In the 2010 season, approximately 16% of kickoffs ended up in touchbacks; in 2011’s young preseason that figure has doubled to 33%--a number that might be even higher were it not for the Hoffmans of the league.

In Baltimore’s game versus Philadelphia, six of the seven kickoffs resulted in touchbacks, repeatedly depriving returnmen—and fans—of the potential for one of football’s most exciting plays: the big, tackle-breaking runback.

“If you look at the Eagles-Ravens preseason game, it was just a yawner,” Harbaugh told the hometown paper. “I wasn’t very impressed with it the first week.

“When you’re coming from the 35-yard line, you are on top of that returner. It is scary how fast you can be on top of that returner. So, I think teams are going to try to drive pop it up inside the 10 and see if they can go smash the returner inside the 15. That will definitely be a strategy.”

While coaches have been diplomatic in their comments, players are being more forthright in their disapproval of the rule. Ironic, considering the rule was put in place for their safety.

“I see an immediate amendment on the kickoff rule either [before] the end of the year or beginning of next year [because] without that part of the return game, it might as well be a scrimmage,” tweeted the Cleveland Browns’ speedy returner Josh Cribbs after observing Thursday night's opening preseason matches.

“The five-yard start is awful,” Lion linebacker Isaiah Ekejiuba told the Detroit Free Press. “Awful.”

“I don’t like it,” echoed Lions receiver Rashied Davis in the same piece. “I’m just going to tell you the truth. I hate it.”

If we see a significant drop in kickoff returns for touchdown this year, and no significant decrease in the frequency of concussions, don’t be surprised to see the ball teed up back at the 35 come 2012.

: 10:27 AM in Football, QuickSnap
Luke Fox   Aug 8, 2011 3 Comments

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On Saturday evening in Canton, Ohio, seven men were inducted into the National Football League’s Hall of Fame: DE Richard Dent, RB Marshall Faulk, LB Chris Hanburger, LB Les Richter, CB Deion Sanders, TE Shannon Sharpe, and NFL Films’ Ed Sabol. There should’ve been eight. To twist a cliché like a beaten cornerback, Cris Carter was the elephant not in the room.

Cristopher D. Carter, 45, is not only in serious need of an H. Give the guy an O and an F while you’re at it. Though eligible for Canton, the Ohio-born and Ohio State­-bred Carter was not elected to the Hall of Fame yet again. Outrageous. As ESPN commentator Chris Berman would say about the eight-time Pro Bowl wide receiver almost every Sunday evening for a decade or more: “All he does is catch touchdowns.”

In total, Carter caught 130 of the suckers over the course of his epic 16-year arc in the NFL. That number alone should have enshrined Carter on the first ballot back in 2008; when the wideout quietly retired in 2002, only some guy named Jerry Rice had more career TDs and receptions (Carter had 1,101) playing the position. (Rice, it should be noted, was inducted last August, his first year eligible.) Carter’s No. 80 Vikings jersey hangs in the Minnesota rafters, a visual reminder of his 13,899 receiving yards; his singular achievement of back-to-back 120-plus-receptions seasons (1994-95); his most one-yard TD catches in NFL history (9); and his Wide Receiver of the Year award (2000).

Voters should have sprinted hard, cut right and jumped at the chance to drape one of those golden HOF blazers on his back. Y’know, the kind that makes every man look like Howard Cosell circa 1974 and feel like Muhammad Ali circa 1964.

Mine is hardly a lone voice of support. An NFL.com poll of 28,498 fans on the weekend had 62% of them naming Carter as the man most deserving of a blazer. One of the site’s analyst Steve Wyche attributes the oversight to the flood of talented players at his position: “As a wide receiver, he’s been put on hold. There are so many good wide receivers up for induction every few years, a great player at that position gets snubbed.”