Football Weekend

I’m still recovering from the football weekend. All of my teams were underdogs, and not only did all of them win, they all entertained greatly in the process. LSU not only beat the Aggies from Texas, they pretty much humiliated that smarmy little egotistic twerp that plays quarterback for them. Zack Mettenberger even mocked “Johnny Football” by using his “look at me” hand gestures after throwing an LSU touchdown pass. Excellent.

The SDSU Aztecs won in overtime, and I had to stay up until after 11:00 at night to see that. It was worth it. The Aztecs have now won 7 of their last 8 games and are 6-1 in their conference. What they lack in talent, which is quite a bit, they make up in grit.

What can I say about the Chargers? We lose to Miami and then we beat the Chiefs in Arrowhead. It was a matter of whoever had the ball last was going to win, because there were no defenses on the field. We won after the eighth lead change with the clock expiring.

Kansas City had the #1 defense in the NFL in terms of allowing points, but they must have been playing against tomato cans, because they stunk Sunday. Philip Rivers threw for 378 yards but 228 of that, or 60% of it, was yards after the catch. That’s not good offense, that’s bad defense; a secondary which simply doesn’t know where the receivers are. Still, even when playing a bad defense, the team needs to be able to exploit it, and the Chargers did.

And I had the amusing bonus during the LSU game of hearing Verne Lundquist talking about the imposition of thirty yards of penalty, and then him being surprised that only fifteen yards was walked off. After all of his years in football he is apparently unaware that never are two penalties imposed on a single play.

In the Aztecs game the announcers were a couple of clowns I’d never heard of. Every ten minutes one of them would learn a new word and then would use it to death until someone taught him a new one. For some time the offense was “gashing” the other team on every play, even when they didn’t gain any yards. A blocker would “gash” a defender. Then someone suggested the word “power” and we had “power pass” and “power run” and “power sack” etc. At one point I heard him declaim that "the defensive secondaries are performing well on both sides of the line of scrimmage."

Not surprisingly, I was unable to find a defensive secondary on the offensive side of the line of scrimmage. Back in my drinking days, that would have made a neat game. Drink every time the announcer says something stupid. You’d have to read the next day’s paper to find out who won.