From the Press Box - Odd Injuries, Antiquated MVPs and the Jets make Baby Jesus Cry

Garda gives you his thoughts on the continuing stupidity of the Jets, how the MVP race needs a change and his thoughts on weird injuries.

It's a little later than normal, but today has been one of those days.

You know the type of day I'm talking about, where everything takes 100% longer than it should and tends to go off the rails at least twice.

On top of it, we had a family birthday and that's always going to slow the work downas well.

But I'm here now and that has to count for something!

It's been a pretty quiet week this week, overall.

That's not to say there's nothing to talk about, in fact, there are a few things worth paying attention to.

Jets-Wash

I swear to God this isn't intentional, the fact that the Jets keep ending up a topic here.

It's just that this team is an absolute train wreck.

This week, we had, in no particular order:

- Anonymous ripping of Tebow
- Non-anonymous ripping of Tebow (by guard Matt Slausen)
- The owner saying he isn't just about PSL sales
- numerous Jets people saying three wins is not enough (ya think?)
- Rex Ryan takin one more step towards unemployment

I'm no big Tim Tebow fan but how do you not stick him in and see what happens? Are you realy any worse off? No, you are not.

If he implodes, stick in Greg McElroy.

Find out what you have on the roster because the season is over. Play to win, but also play to find out if anyone under center is capable of throwing pass to the correct team.

Personally, I thought the Jets might have taken McElroy in the draft just in case Sanchez imploded, as he is now. The former Alabama quarterback is smart, accurate and while he lacks a strong arm, he makes good passes.

The only possible downside-and it's what will keep this from happening-is that Rex Ryan and GM Mike Tannenbaum have tied their fortunes to Sanchez.

As he goes, they go an more importantly, when he goes, they go if you catch my drift.

So it's going to get worse before it gets better.

Nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Also Tony Sparano is awful. I said the hire was awful when it happened, it remains awful now.

MVP Race

I caused a bit of a ruckus at Bleacher Report today as I had the audacity to say Adrian Peterson is your NFL MVP, not Peyton Manning.

Actually the back and forth in the comments is sane(ish) but people have a hard time letting go of Manning as the choice.

I didn't even get into the other choices like Aaron Rodgers, Arian Foster, JJ Watt an Charles Tillman to name just few.

There are plenty of potential arguments for pretty much any of those guys and more not listed.

That said, I'd like to add something on topic, but less centered on players.

The idea of a single MVP is stupid because the MVP ignored 90% of the positions on the field.

I cannot argue with a commentor who says 'yeah Peterson is great but he's not a QB and the MVP is a QB award' because he's dead right. At least Peterson is in the conversation though. I mentioned JJ Watt above but he won't get a vote.

Defensive players rarely get MVP love. Did I say rarely, I mean never.

Well, that's not true. The award has gone to a defensive player twice (the Vikings DT Alan Page in 1971 and LB Lawrence Taylor in 18986) and a placekicker of all things in 1982 (Mark Mosely).

Since 1986 it's been all offensive players and all running backs or quarterbacks. No wide receivers, no defensive backs. Ever.

It's a joke and actually, the more I write about this the bigger a joke it becomes. I mean, how can you take this award seriously? Apparently defense doesn't count and wide receivers can dominate and win games but not this award.

What do we give out to award great players? Well the answer is already here with Offensive and Defensive Player of the Year awards. The offensive award suffers from the same issues the MVP does in that it is obsessed with quarterbacks and running backs, but at least with the defensive award you're honoring a very important aspect of the game.

It's fair, it's much more logical and it will never happen because it makes too much damned sense.

Strange Injuries

I'll tell you what, it was weird enough when Danny Amendola dislocated his clavicle and it turned out that he nearly died because of the way it popped apart. Now, to hear that Ben Roethlisberger cracked a rib and it could slice open his aorta well that just takes us to ridiculous.

We often forget that the damage done to a player is about more than his concussions. That the game they play is not only dangerous to their long term health but their health right now.

It's a violent collision filled sport, but we get so caught up in concussions to Jay Cutler, Mike Vick and Alex Smith that we forget there are a ton more ways to seriously hurt yourself.

I feel like these oddball injuries are popping up more and more and frankly there is precious little you can do to stop them. As much as concussions are, really, not ever going away because of the type of impact and abuse the human body takes when running into another object, these other types of injuries are here to stay as well.

There isn't any way to prevent them either. Which doesn't mean they aren't as dangerous and perhaps even more.

Odds and Ends

Just a couple of housekeeping notes. First, I will not be doing the Hard Count Tuesday night, as I have a memorial service to go to on Long Island and that's a heckuva drive which will take a long time to do.

I can't trust I will be back in time to do anything, much less have energy to do it.

The second thing? Enjoy Thanksgiving!

See you back after the tryptophan wears off!

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Comments (4)

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Chad Lundberg's picture

November 17, 2012 at 04:17 am

Ugh.... look, I get that players have to sacrifice a lot. They have amazing work ethics, and their body's take a beating.

But I'm tired of hearing so much about the "poor little millionaire's" if you will.

For the sake of the argument, let's just say that NFL players never spend any time with family, or any time doing anything fun or exciting with their lives during their playing years.

That only last until they're out of the league which happens mostly around the age of 35. That means from 35 year til your death, you'll be set to do whatever you please.

I've been working a minimum wage job for 4 years now, and when I broke my wrist it gave me 9 weeks off. I went to SeaWorld, to Monterey Bay aquarium, Aquarium of the Pacific, Hume Lake and Lake Powell.

Imagine what I could have done had I simply been given a standard NFL rookie contract?

It seems like NFL players get more concern and get more attention than anyone else, and I think that's just wrong because it's not like they're starving.

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Bearmeat's picture

November 17, 2012 at 12:05 pm

The Jets owner should be fired. As a matter of fact, 2 out of the 3 owners in the AFCE should be fired. And about 25 of the 31 owners in general.

It's posts like this that make me glad I am a die hard fan of the best management set up in sports. The GBP = By the people. For the people.

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Turophile's picture

November 18, 2012 at 03:10 am

The "nuke from orbit" reminds me of the fans whose teams are so awful, they wear a paper bag over their head. I know you are a Jets fan Andrew, but this years Jets are a two-bagger. Why two bags ? Just in case one bag slips off....

The MVP award should disappear in favour of an award for the best individual in each position group, the 'MVP team'. You would still get arguments like how you rate players on a 3-4 D line compared to a 4-3, but it would be better than what you have now.

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Andrew Garda's picture

November 18, 2012 at 06:33 pm

" but this years Jets are a two-bagger. Why two bags ? Just in case one bag slips off…."

Love it!

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