By Dan O’Shea

One of the biggest stories of the young season has been the return of Philip Rivers to fantasy football relevancy.
In first two weeks, Rivers has delivered 614 passing yards and seven TDs against one INT.
He’s among the stat leaders at QB, which ain’t bad for a guy I didn’t even rank in my top 20 at the position (essentially tagging him as a third-string fantasy QB barely fit for bye-week duty).
Rivers will no doubt be getting the starting nod in Week 3 by fantasy owners, many of whom probably didn’t draft him.

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Posted on September 18, 2013

By Steve Rhodes

The announcers on Sunday were a little bemused and baffled by Bears defensive tackle Stephen Paea’s warm-up act, but those of us who have seen the rugby movie Forever Strong, starring Gary Cole and Sean Astin, know he was performing a haka, an ancestral war cry originated with the Maori of New Zealand.
“It is a posture dance performed by a group, with vigorous movements and stamping of the feet with rhythmically shouted accompaniment,” Wikipedia notes. “The New Zealand rugby team’s practice of performing a haka before their matches has made the dance more widely known around the world.”
And guess what? Paea was born in Auckland, New Zealand, where he played rugby as a boy.
First, Paea’s haka.

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Posted on September 17, 2013

By Jim Coffman

Football thrills.
The Bears won Sunday’s contest and have started the season with a pair of victories. There is plenty to say about an exciting team with a compelling cast of characters.
But yesterday the game was the thing.
A fan couldn’t help but feel drained. His Bears had scored four times and rode waves of momentum to and fro as they fell behind immediately, rallied to take the lead, faltered again on a huge defensive touchdown then re-took the lead the same way. Finally the Vikings zipped down the field and scored a late touchdown to tie it again, only to have the Bears drive once more and finish with three failed passes into the end zone before kicking a field goal for the lead.
Exhaustion was setting in. And it was halftime.

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Posted on September 16, 2013

By Roger Wallenstein

Hardly anyone noticed last week as Paul Konerko caught and then passed Babe Ruth.
For starters, people stopped watching the White Sox long ago. Loyalty has its limits. So when Detroit reliever Jose Veras struck out Konerko in the bottom of the eighth inning last Wednesday in the Tigers’ 1-0 victory at the Cell, the game wasn’t stopped to commemorate Konerko’s 1,330th career strikeout, the same number as George Herman Ruth.
Paulie broke the tie with the Babe on Saturday, taking a called third strike from Cleveland’s Ubaldo Jimenez to lead off the ninth inning in yet another 8-1 embarrassment for our staggering bunch of so-called professionals.

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Posted on September 16, 2013

By Steve Rhodes

“Theo is full of crap,” Cub Factor founder Marty Gangler writes in this week. “Every small-market team in the history of baseball has thrown out the ‘rebuilding the core’ motto to get better through young players. You can find guys that will help you win right now. I still believe the tanking of the last two years was all for the stadium deal. So maybe that was his plan all along – and it worked, so he’s doing what he has to do.”
Agreed. But wait, there’s more:

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Posted on September 15, 2013

By Mike Luce

For several seasons running, Week Three has featured a clash between two Top 10 teams.
This Saturday is no different – defending national champion Alabama (#1) faces Texas A&M (#6) in a critical, yet not historically unusual, early-season confrontation.
As if we needed any more reason to tune in, the revenge factor has heightened anticipation – Johnny “Football” Manziel’s Aggies dealt Alabama their only defeat (29-24) in 2013.
The excitement surrounding the game has driven ticket prices from resellers to near-record highs.
We can’t understand paying $800 for a regular-season game, but then we wouldn’t consider making a piñata of Johnny Football either.

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Posted on September 13, 2013

By Carl Mohrbacher

How do you make a 280-pound man disappear?
Apparently by matching him up against a backup left tackle.
It’s early in the season so instead of rushing to judgement, let’s draw the only reasonable conclusion as to why the Bears all-world defensive end was completely invisible against the Bengals.
Like Bran Stark*, Julius Peppers is a Warg, and last Sunday Marc Trestman tasked him with the theft of the Minnesota Vikings playbook. Using his mind projection powers, Peppers traversed the wilds of Wisconsin as a crafty, elusive badger and briefly inhabited the body of FSN sideline reporter Ann Carroll in order to gain access to the Twin City facilities.

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Posted on September 12, 2013

By Dan O’Shea

Here’s brief list of massively hyped players who utterly sucked in Week 1 of fantasy football:
C.J. Spiller, RB, BUF: He went as high as No. 2 overall in one league I’m in, and was supposed to be the center of the Bills offense, the second coming of Gale Sayers and the guy who would put veteran RB Fred Jackson out to pasture. He was out-gained by Jackson Week 1, and lost a fumble on his way to 31 yards rushing and just 14 yards receiving.
Calvin Johnson, WR, DET: Some folks expect him to challenge his own record for receiving yards. Only 37 yards receiving, though he would have had a TD if he had maintained control of the ball in the end zone.

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Posted on September 11, 2013

By Steve Rhodes

Only Bears chuckleheads will anoint Marc Trestman as coach of the year after one victory, but no matter what happens on the field, I can’t help but be impressed with his general demeanor, which would hardly merit notice if not for the childish oafs and dummkopfs who so often troll NFL sidelines.
Lovie Smith, for example, was an insufferable bore who acted like fans and reporters were enemy spies hardly worthy of his attention. Trestman, on the other hand, actually takes no offense at being asked questions and doesn’t hesitate to answer. He’s certainly not a media hog, and he’s a bit heavy on self-help corpo-speak (“I just asked the guys to be good teammates today”), but he is undoubtedly an adult. And that’s refreshing.
(Similarly, Phil Emery is an upgrade in maturity level over Jerry Angelo.)
Trestman’s also a pretty damn smart guy. Doesn’t mean he’ll be a success in the NFL, but he’s earned more respect than perhaps the Ditka Caucus has given him – though he savvily addressed that by inviting Da Coach to training camp. Like we said, pretty damn smart.

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Posted on September 10, 2013

By Jim Coffman

Others will gush about the fourth-and-a-foot call. Clearly the Matt Forte sweep behind rookie offensive linemen Jordan Mills and Kyle Long that gained eight yards, a key first down and immediately preceded the eventual game-winning, 19-yard touchdown pass to Brandon Marshall was not only the right move tactically, it was also the perfect play. But there was an even better call early in the drive that was most responsible for a Bear 24-21 victory over a very good, if mistake-prone at critical times, Cincinnati team on Sunday.
It was third-and-two at their own 26 and some sort of wide receiver slant or hitch or a toss to Forte in the flat were high-percentage options to at least gain a few yards and extend the drive. Instead, Cutler went over the top to Marshall with a beautiful pass down the right sideline for a 38-yard gain that put the Bears at the Cincy 36.
It was a gutsier call than the fourth-down call four plays later – and it was one of Cutler’s most beautiful balls of the day.

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Posted on September 9, 2013