Leslie's Latest News

Grrr Jets! Grrr Bret Favre

No, you couldn't just win one stupid game when we needed you to? Apparently not. And Favre, what's going on with the three, count them THREE, blankety-blank interceptions? Nothing like handing the other team the ball, is there? Why don't you just go ahead and retire already, for real this time? 

I really shouldn't care all that much. After all the Pats have lost so many players to injuries this season that it's way past time for them to take a nice long rest. They probably have only half of their original starters still playing - maybe less than half. So I wasn't seeing them as a Super Bowl-winning team. But it sucks to go 11 and 5 and not make the playoffs. And it's a shame that Matt Cassel won't have a chance to play in the post season after doing such a fantastic job in his first real season in the NFL. 

Well, it was an interesting season Pats, and you can now take your well-earned vacation a few weeks earlier. See you next year.

Dept of Obscure Statistics

Alex and Steven and I always get a good laugh when the sports commentators come up with some new totally obscure and random statistic when broadcasting a Patriots game. Today's obscure statistic: up until today, Brett Favre was 5 and 0 against rookie quarterbacks starting their first game. Today he's 5 and 1. Good going, Matt Cassel!

Now if you can just get AP to spell your name right.... Cassell steps in for Brady to lead Pats past Jets.

A very bad break

Tom Brady was injured in today's game, and the rumors are that it's an ACL tear of his knee, which I guess means that he could be out for the rest of the season. If true, it's really too bad. 

The Patriots managed a win against a surprisingly strong Kansas City team, but next week we'll be facing the Jets and Brett Favre, and I would have liked to have seen that matchup. 

Whatever happens to the team going forward, though, nothing can be as disappointing as losing the Super Bowl in the final seconds after an otherwise unbeaten season. 

The Black Dog

I just listened to Brett Favre's retirement press conference. It seems glaringly obvious that this man is suffering from depression. I haven't been able to find a transcript yet, but it seemed he was saying that he was retiring because he no longer enjoyed playing the game. No longer enjoying activities that you used to enjoy is one major sign of depression. At the same time, football has been his whole life, and when asked what he was looking forward to doing now, his answer was "Nothing." Wow. This did not sound good. I sure hope he's getting help.

Macy's sucks

How do you know your local retail stores have been taken over by giant soulless mega-companies? You get an ad for this in your mailbox.

16-0!

And I would have enjoyed that game a lot more if I'd've known for sure how it was going to end. But as it was, it was just too darn tense. I need to unwind a bit now, so I can get some sleep.

I'm so glad that Tom and Randy got their records. And great playing by Welker and Faulk and Hobbs and Bruschi and Seau and Vrabel and Thomas and Gostkowski and all the rest of the team. And kudos to the greatest football coach ever, Bill Belichick.

I hope we all survive the playoffs...

From The Washington Post:

It was hard to overstate just how difficult it was for the Patriots to go unbeaten -- this was their fourth comeback in the final period. Teams aren't supposed to go undefeated anymore. Everything in the structure of the modern NFL conspires against it. The salary cap and free agency are supposed to tear rosters apart and annually redistribute talent. The draft is weighted against it, and the schedule is weighted against it, in order to create parity and suck everyone back to the middle of the pack. Doormats have hope of a one-year turnaround, and dynasties are sure to crumble -- and they mostly do. What teams besides the Patriots have had sustained success in the last 10 years?

The notion that a piece of videotape explains the excellence of the Patriots is unadulterated trough-water hogwash, and now everyone knows it. The early season controversy when the Pats were caught and fined for videotaping the signals of the New York Jets now surely should be filed under the category of Big Events in Small Minds. It takes more than videotape to play the game as well as the Patriots are playing it.

Too many things have to be done right, and well, too many good habits must be cultivated, and bad habits erased. Their record is a matter of organization-wide discipline. Videotape doesn't explain why the Patriots make fewer stupid mistakes than their opponents. It doesn't explain why they almost never get penalized, why they don't jump off-sides or indulge in stupid personal fouls. It doesn't explain why they don't cough up the ball on key possessions, or miss critical field goals wide to the left or right. It doesn't explain Brady's accuracy under pressure. It certainly doesn't explain the selfless team-first ethic in their locker room, a tone set by Brady, who has repeatedly sacrificed his own salary and made himself the most underpaid great quarterback in the league, in order to build a better team. That they played their starters in this game, and played to win, was merely the ultimate expression of their consummate professionalism.

"Everyone's going to enjoy this one," Brady said. "It happens once every 35 years."

A nailbiter

The Patriots won last night, but it was painful. I think I have trouble watching away games, because the cheering of the crowd is the opposite of what I'm feeling, and I find that it really gets me down emotionally. I'm sure glad the players are able to turn all that off and focus on the game.

During the first half we had a lot of trouble stopping their running game, and it took me a while to notice that they had turned things around in the second half. After the game I looked at the statistics and found that the Colts had a total of 311 yards gained in the first half and 85 in the second half. So there was clearly a lot going on there in terms of the coaches responding to what was happening and making needed adjustments.

Most of the statistics were amazingly even between the two teams. Both teams had 3 drives ending in punts, 2 drives ending in interceptions, and 4 drives ending in scores. The main difference was that we had better red zone defense, so we were able to hold the Colts to 2 TD and 2 FG, while we got 3 TD and 1 FG.

But here are some more comparisons:

First Downs: Pats 21, Colts 23
Third Down Conversions: Pats 7/12, Colts 5/12
Total Net Yards: Pats 342, Colts 329
Total Plays: Pats 62, Colts 61
Average Gain per Offensive Play: Pats 5.5, Colts 5.4
Net Yards Rushing: Pats 105, Colts 119
Average Gain per Rushing Play: Pats 3.8, Colts 3.8
Net Yards Passing: Pats: 237, Colts 210
Times Sacked: Pats 2 for 18, Colts 3 for 15
Pass Completion/Att/Int: Pats 21-31-2, Colts 16-27-1
Average Gain Per Passing Play: Pats 7.0, Colts 7.0
Time of Possession: Pats 29:44, Colts 30:16

Not much to distinguish between them, is there?

On the other hand, there were the penalties. The Pats drew an amazing (for them) 10 penalties for 146 yards. Three of the big pass interference penalties were questionable, even in the eyes of the game announcers. I don't know what was going on there, but I know that they could easily have been called the other way, and really hurt us.

It will be interesting to see what happens when these two teams meet again, most likely in the AFC Championship game in Gillette Stadium. If we're lucky, it'll be snowing.

Double Switch

My father and I watched the third game of the World Series last night. Go Red Sox! This morning I was moved to look up Double Switch in Wikipedia, and found a lovely clear explanation using last night's game as their detailed example. Go Wikipedia!

Escapist weekend

It was a lovely escapist weekend here in Boston. While the Head of the Charles regatta was finishing up on the Charles River, the Patriots were in sunny Miami playing an absolutely lovely game and bringing their streak to 7-0. And as the capper to the weekend, on a balmy October evening, the Red Sox won their 7th straight elimination game and sailed into the World Series.

And this morning I turned on the news and heard about raging wildfires in California, the stock market in free fall, and heard Valerie Plame Wilson talking about her new book, which describes how she and her co-workers were betrayed by what can only be called traitors in the highest levels of government. I begin to understand how people can be sports fanatics. Everything else is so depressing.

The pictures from California are horrifying. A fatal combination of drought and high winds are creating a holocaust, with no end in sight.

Red Sox ahead by 9

I don't particularly enjoy watching baseball (which grieves my father and brother, as they are both big baseball fans). But I'm following the score on the Red Sox web site and am happy to see the Sox in a big lead in the 6th inning. Would another huge comback be too much to hope for? Especially with the Patriots in such a commanding position in the NFL? Maybe so, but I'm hoping for it anyway.

Woo-hoo! Filly wins the Belmont!

I love it! Rags to Riches, a big white-faced filly, just edged out Curlin in the longest and hardest of the Triple Crown races. The first filly to win that race in over 100 years.

Street Sense

Well that was some exciting come-from-behind victory! A whole lotta luck going on there, keeping the inside lane open for this very fast horse to come scampering through. I thought it was cute how his jockey sponged off the mud so he would look prettty in the photographs with the blanket of roses. Way to go, Street Sense!

The horns that did not honk in the night

One of the drawbacks of watching a playoff game slightly delayed via TiVo is that when you're getting near the end, and the score is really close, and you don't hear horns honking and people whooping and hollering outside, you have a bit of a sinking feeling that you know how the game is going to turn out.

And so it was. Very disappointing. A close game that could have gone either way. The Colts were great and we had to be at our best to beat them, and I don't think the Pats were quite at their best. The long flight and the hard fought game in San Diego last week, the fact that several members of the team had been sick, and the fact that the offense couldn't hang onto the ball long enough to give the defense a chance to rest were some of the reasons.

Looking forward to next year.

Some game

I have to admit, I didn't expect the Patriots to win. The Chargers seemed to be the better team on paper, and I thought we wouldn't be able to overcome that. But the old Patriots are back, and somehow they managed to snatch a victory from the jaws of defeat. But it was tense, very tense, for most of the game. And now we need to do it again next week. Whew.

Great article about the game here...

The problem was that the Chargers were only the best team of the regular season -- and this was the playoffs. And the Patriots are surely the greatest team of their era at winning the games that count. Brady and Patriots Coach Bill Belichick, the constants in their remarkable franchise, are 12-1 in the postseason. Beating them in January is like trying to kill Rasputin. You better poison them, shoot them, stab them and then wrap them in chains and throw them in a river. Even then, you better take their pulse and make sure that they're really, really dead.

Comedy of Errors

The Patriots/Bears game must have been a lot of fun to watch if you weren't rooting for either team, with its nine turnovers - fumbles, interceptions, strippings, and other assorted mayhem, most of them taking place in the red zone, just as a team was about to score. My favorite was when one Patriots pass got tipped into the air, got caught by another Patriot (not the intended receiver), who ran a few yards, was tackled, and then promptly fumbled the ball, which was recovered by the Bears.

I actually looked up the record for most fumbles in a game, but this one didn't even come close to the record of 17.

In spite of all this craziness, the Patriots managed to pull out a win, which was quite a relief.

In other news, the last few days have been very pleasant and mild and I've been doing more walking along the upper Charles River. Each day I start a little further upriver and walk a new section. It won't be long before we'll have to be dealing with cold and snow and icy paths, so I'm trying to make the best of the good weather. I meant to take some pictures, but I can't figure out where my camera is. (The trouble with having a nice compact pocket-size camera is that sometimes you leave it in a pocket somewhere...) I hope it turns up soon.

Patriots give up on grass

I guess it was inevitable. The field at Gilette Stadium has been a mudhole this season, even after mid-season resodding. When the stadium was built, they'd installed an elaborate drainage and heating system to try to support a natural grass field, but it just wasn't working. Part of the problem is that the field also gets used for soccer games and concerts, and part of the problem is that the surface doesn't get enough sunlight in late summer and fall because of the shadows cast by the stands. So this week, they gave up on the natural grass and started the process of installing a "FieldTurf" artificial surface.

FieldTurf is apparently a big step up from the old-fashioned Astroturf, with a more natural-looking grass surface and a springier base underneath. I mourn the loss of the grass, but I do belief that the staff really did try hard to maintain the grass field and it just wasn't possible.

More than you ever wanted to know about testosterone

If you're still keeping an open mind about the allegations of doping against Floyd Landis, you might want to check out this site, which gives a lot of scientific information about testosterone testing. Here are two paragraphs I found particularly interesting...

There is a very legitimate question related to the timing of the positive test. Floyd Landis tested positive on day 17 of the Tour de France -- right before he made a miraculous comeback to retake the lead. Some people may speculate that testosterone may have helped him do this. This is unlikely to be the case. Testosterone is used during training periods to gain muscle mass. It is not a stimulant like amphetamines. It is not likely that testosterone would improve performance on such a short time scale, nor has it ever been shown to have that effect.

And in the comments:

John Eustice of ESPN is reporting that Landis's high ratio was caused by a low epitestosterone (the denominator) level, not a high level of testosterone (the numerator). In other words, he doesn't have a high testosterone level, just a high ratio because of a low denominator. How is it possible to get a low epitestosterone level and why? Would that help performance? What is going on?

Oh no, not Adam!

I suppose there are worse things going on in the world, but, oh man, why did the Patriots have to let my favorite player go? Adam Vinatieri - you were my hero. Always calm, unperturbed, unpressured, you just came out and performed minor miracles (and every so often a major miracle like that kick in the snow) game after game. It won't be the same without you.

Oh my god. I'm watching the Olympic pairs competition from last night, and just got to where the Chinese pair (Zhang and Zhang) had the disastrous fall on the attempted quad throw. She's going to try to continue. The Russians were beautiful, but my god, this lady is gutsy.

One thing I really love about the Olympics is that it's just about the only skating event that doesn't have distracting advertising pasted all along the sidewall of the arena. Just about the last event that hasn't sold out.

Wow, she's doing extremely well. Is it possible they will medal? Oh my goodness, they've finished in second place. Fantastic!

Better get back to work now... Ah the temptations you have to deal with when working at home. Good thing I'm working part time and so can get away with some of this stuff.

So sorry to hear that Michelle Kwan had to drop out of the Olympic competition. She has been so wonderful for so long, it's really too bad she won't have another chance at an Olympic gold medal. I saw her a few years ago at the Nationals in Boston, and her performance was heartstoppingly beautiful. I've got to give her a lot of credit, though, for yielding up the slot to someone else when she recognized that she was not in top form.