Week 3, In Which Your Hosts Celebrate Personal Milestones At The Expense Of Their Craft

Note: Here at the Weekly NFL Update, we have established a pattern of posting our diatribes late in the evening on Tuesday. The careful observer will note that this diatribe is being posted much, much later than Tuesday night… We apologize for the delay. This week, the staff of the Weekly NFL Update celebrated a personal anniversary, which interrupted our otherwise smoothly flowing verbosity.

Once again, we are infuriated at the double standard that exists in sports reporting these days. There were two major NFL stories this week dealing with significant player health issues. First, Chris Simms’ spleen ruptures during the game on Sunday, and he spends a few days in intensive care recovering from the surgery. Second, Terrell Owens takes too many pain pills or has an allergic reaction to his pain pills, depending on whom you speak with, and misses a day of practice. And which story gets the bigger headlines? Do we have to ask?

For ourselves, we don’t know if Mr Owens was trying clumsily to kill himself or not. We do tend to think that he is unbalanced, which is certainly among the prerequisites for a suicide attempt, but we also tend to think that he adores himself too much to actually cause himself harm. We strongly suspect that this whole flapdoodle is nothing more than an interesting way for the man to stay in the national news when the Cowboys had a bye week.

But at least we are thankful that Mr Owens’ difficulties, whether actual or fictional, gave us the opportunity to work in our gratuitous Seinfeld reference of the week:

The thing I don’t understand about the suicide person is the people who try and commit suicide for some reason they don’t die and that’s it. They stop trying. Why? Why don’t they just keep trying? What has changed? Is their life any better now? No. In fact it’s worse because now they’ve found out one more thing you stink at. Okay, that’s why these people don’t succeed in life to begin with. Because they give up too easy. I say, pills don’t work, try a rope. Car won’t start in the garage, get a tune up. You know what I mean? There’s nothing more rewarding than reaching a goal you have set for yourself.

And now, on to the games…

Chicago @ Minnesota: We planned to do a “get all your points from your kicker” joke, but then Chicago got a touchdown late in the game. Dammit!

Cincinnati @ Pittsburgh: Two games in with Big Ben at the helm for the Steelers, and we have to ask the question: Is the appendix the source of a quarterback’s accuracy? Maybe we just thought it was “a remnant of an earlier function, with no current purpose”…

Carolina @ Tampa Bay: If Jon Gruden were to ask us, we would happily share the secret of success that would cure his ailing Buccaneers offense: Schedule a game against the Texans, Jon! Stat! And while we regularly mock Chris Simms in this space,* we admit to being impressed with Mr Simms dedication to duty. Staying in the game when one’s organs are ruptured is an amazing demonstration of toughness.

And stupidity. Don’t forget that one.

* Luckily, since the overwhelming majority of our Chris Simms mockery is, in fact, Phil Simms mockery, we don’t anticipate too much change in our Simms mocking future.

Jacksonville @ Indianapolis: It’s a good thing that the Jaguars had that breakout game last week; otherwise, we never would have known who these people playing the Colts were. And we thought we were among the cognoscenti…

Tennessee @ Miami: So let us see if we understand. The Titans were driving to win or tie when Kerry Collins threw an interception… We’d like to say we were surprised, stunned, shocked… But we hate to lie. (Unless in so doing we can stick it to Coughlin, in which case we will lie like rugs, baby!)

Washington @ Houston: Congratulations to Mark Brunell, who set an NFL record for consecutive completions in one game. However, though we admire Mr Brunell and honor his achievement, we cannot help but wonder if this record will be marked with an asterisk, seeing as how it was set against a non-NFL team.

New York Jets @ Buffalo: Watching the Jets play the Bills when Buffalo wears their throwback jerseys always makes us uncomfortable, as if we have overslept way more than usual. Perhaps it’s due to all those years of teaching “Rip Van Winkle”…

Green Bay @ Detroit: When we saw Brett Favre drop the ball and have it bounce right back into his arms without his having to even break stride, we determined then and there to award Favre the Robert Johnson Award for the second week in a row. Unfortunately, Johnson never wrote a song with lines that say, “Damn, but I’m a lucky son of a b*tch!” (We think maybe that isn’t “bluesy” enough.)

Commercial Break: Promos for 60 Minutes told us that we could see the many sides of Condoleezza Rice on that evening’s episode. Personally, we thought that the good folks at 60 Minutes should have held onto that story for a month or so—the many sides of Condi Rice has Halloween written all over it.

New York Giants @ Seattle: And thus is the faith of simple men rewarded. Not only were the Giants creamed by the Seahawks, but after the game, Jeremy Shockey even questioned Coughlin’s coaching ability. Don’t tell us that prayers aren’t answered!

Out of appreciation to the Seahawks for rewarding our restored faith, we award this week’s Robert Johnson Award to the Seattle Seahawks.

As Robert Johnson sings in “Traveling Riverside Blues,”

You can squeeze my lemon till the juice run down my…
Till the juice runs down my leg, baby, you know what I’m talkin’ about
You can squeeze my lemon till the juice run down my leg
That’s what I’m talkin’ ‘bout now

We had planned to save that lyric until much later in the season, when something really, really exciting happened, and we reserve the right to throw it out later in such an event, but Seattle’s performance on Sunday was so welcome, we just couldn’t resist.

Baltimore @ Cleveland: We were struck by Romeo Crennel in this game. In particular, we were impressed with Romeo’s reaction to Matt Stover’s game-winning field goal. The camera was focused on his face, and his lips were easy to read. The ball went through the uprights, and Romeo paused slightly (for comic effect, we like to think), and muttered, “F*ck.”

We couldn’t have done it better ourselves.

St. Louis @ Arizona: As penance for last week’s feeble coverage of the NFC West, we vowed to watch as much of this game as we could. Our vows were put to the test the moment we discovered that Bill Maas was the color analyst for the game. (Listening to Big Bill trying valiantly to say “temporary paralysis” left us light-headed.) Luckily, we stuck around long enough to see Larry Fitzgerald score a touchdown. We were mightily impressed with Mr Fitzgerald’s demeanor—after scoring, he simply trotted off the field. We were reminded of Barry Sanders, and we may even have wiped a wistful tear from the corner of our eye.

So sue us. We were moved.

Philadelphia @ San Francisco: As with the Rams/Cardinals game, we watched quite a bit of this contest. And we were planning to write a glowing account of Frank Gore’s prowess. We were even thinking that perhaps we should stop being so harsh to the 49ers, such was the effort they were putting forth.

And then Mr Gore fumbled, and he and his ten teammates watched a fat man run 100 yards.

We now believe that perhaps we’ve been too kind to the 49ers of late.

Commercial Break: While we enjoy the premise behind the Coors Light “coach’s press conference” commercials—it’s an old joke but a good one—we can’t help but be a bit surprised at the choices that the Coors Light folks have made. They have chosen to feature press conferences with Bill Walsh and Dick Vermeil, two men who are no doubt excellent coaches and wonderful human beings, but who are also have all the charm and vivacity of a… dull… something.* We would prefer to see clippings from former head coaches with a bit of pizzazz, such as Sam Wyche, or Barry Switzer, or hell, even Jerry Glanville. They’re all idiots, but at least they’re entertaining.

* We were going to try for an estate planner joke there, but then realized that we didn’t know enough about estate planning to make it work. We could have researched estate planning, but that would have been uncomfortably close to work. We are dedicated here at the Weekly NFL Update, but our motto is “If we can’t pull it out of our ass, it isn’t worth pulling.” We think this may be an all-too-easily apparent sentiment.

Denver @ New England: At last, Friar Bill returns! Where does he get those shirts?

This game brought to mind one of our more gruesome NFL memories. We remember it as if it were yesterday, watching the Dallas Cowboys playing in a game, rooting against them as was our wont, when Tony Dorsett ran off the field. The camera focused closely on Tony as he jogged, and then stopped. He had a thoughtful look on his face, as if he just then remembered where his car keys were, and then, with absolutely no warning, he vomited. Into our living rooms. We were horrified. And thanks to Patrick Up-Chukwurah, we were able to relive that moment.

But then our warped minds kicked into gear… It would be a hell of a defense, wouldn’t it? Most teams bring in pass rush specialists already, so they could just find some with delicate systems… Talk about shutting down one side of the field…

Atlanta @ New Orleans: We had to feel sorry for Atlanta. (We mean that literally. We didn’t want to feel sorry for them—we were forced.) They were playing a game that they couldn’t win. We thought it was somewhat unfortunate that the NFL scheduled a division game for the Superdome opener. (That strikes us, frankly, as an unfair advantage. We cut slack only because the Saints were screwed so badly last year.) But it was a fun game to watch, with the Saints just beating the snot out of a team that we aren’t too fond of.

As we watched the game, however, we were struck with one thought: Just how old is Suzy Kolber? We always thought the lines around her eyes were laugh lines, but then we saw her neck Monday night—even though she tried really hard to hide it behind that scarf—and we were curious. So we did some research.* According to her Wikipedia entry, Suzy was born in May 1964, so she’s only 42. (Spring chicken.) We’ll be watching her neck in the future, though, and as always, we’ll update you on developments.

* We know what you’re thinking: “You won’t do even a little, token research on estate planning, but you’ll spend fifteen minutes looking for/at Suzy Kolber pictures?” And the answer is, “Of course.”