The Chicago Bears traded RB, Thomas Jones, to the NY Jets for a second round pick. Why did the Bears think that was a good idea? I like Cedric Benson as a running back; I have since his days at Texas. But Benson has had an injury history and Jones is both a good counterpoint to Benson and a good guy in the clubhouse. Jones and Benson shared the RB spot last year and Jones still managed to gain over 1200 yards. More impressively, Jones averaged 4.1 yards per carry; he is a productive running back. So, the Bears let him go for a second round pick? All I can say is that pick better get the Bears a player who has a significant impact on the field pretty quickly or this will be one of those “palm-of-the-hand-to-the-front-of-the-forehead decisions”.
Now, Lance Briggs is unhappy with the Bears and he wants to be traded or moved out of town. He says he will never play for the Bears again unless he gets a long-term deal or they remove the franchise tag from him to allow him to negotiate his deal with a broader spectrum of teams. I think it is fair to say that the dawning of the “Age of Aquarius” may not yet have hit the Bears’ organization; cue The Fifth Dimension:
“Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions…”
When Dan “Big Daddy” Wilkinson came out of college, he was supposed to be such a monster that he was going to redefine the way the position of defensive tackle should be played. That’s an awfully lofty status to expect from a kid out of college so I’m not surprised that he didn’t exactly do that. With that kind of billing though, one might expect that he would be a fixture on the All-Pro team and that didn’t happen either. Wilkinson has been in the NFL 13 seasons and his career has been good-but-not-great. The Denver Broncos just acquired him from the Miami Dolphins for a sixth-round pick. Wilkinson has mentioned the concept of retirement but for the moment let’s pretend that he will actually play for the Broncos next year. As an overall #1 pick in the NFL draft, he will become only the third player of that status ever to suit up for the Broncos – and all of them arrived via trade. Theoretically, Courtney Brown could join Wilkinson on the defensive line for the Broncos next season; that would be two of the three. The other one was some guy named Elway…
Fortunately, we have not heard of any further antisocial behaviors out of Pacman Jones for the last week or so. His lawyer was really reaching when he used the fact that Jones has never been convicted in any of his run-ins with the law and then painted Jones as a victim no less in all of these problems saying:
“No matter how the media may want to pain it, nobody gets that lucky [exonerated all the time]. He’s just made some poor decisions with the people he’s associated with and they’re trying to drag him down.”
I know that “making poor decisions” has become a standard phrase in the argot of lawyers, PR trolls, sociologists and football coaches. Usually when you hear that someone made a bad decision, the speaker is referring to someone who has been accused of a felony or who had an on-screen role in a child-porn flick or who threw five interceptions in a championship game. “Making a poor decision” is code for “really stupid stuff or really bad stuff – - or both…” So, if Pacman Jones “just made some poor decisions”, maybe those of us who use English as our primary language instead of argot might want to ask:
Is Pacman Jones a bad guy or a stupid guy – - or both?
Given all of Jones’ arrests in the past few years, I think that police around the country should adopt a unique sobriety test for him should he ever be pulled over for a traffic violation. Instead of the “finger-to-the-nose” or the “walk-a-straight-line” test, they should simply ask Jones to recite the Miranda Warning. He’s got to know it by now at the reflexive level…
Suppose for a moment that you were an assistant coach on offense and the quarterbacks coach for a Division 1 college team that just finished an 0-12 season. You had been there for two seasons and the team hadn’t won three games in those two seasons. You’d have to think that your résumé would be a bit light should you hit the job market. Not so for Bill O’Brien, who was that collegiate assistant coach at Duke for the past two seasons; the New England Patriots hired him as an offensive assistant coach. Duke was also a stopping-off point for Steve Spurrier in his coaching career and he has had some success with offenses and quarterbacks over the years.
However, since I mentioned Duke’s 0-12 football record last season, I guess I should tell you about the joke that is not all that popular among the football coaching staff in Durham these days:
Knock. Knock.
Who’s there?
Owen.
Owen, who?
Owen Twelve…
The Jacksonville Jaguars will no longer play in Alltel Stadium. No, they didn’t tear the stadium down; but the naming rights agreement between the company and the city of Jax has lapsed. Alltel has managed to dodge the bankruptcy bullet that has plagued many companies who have chosen to slap their names on stadia around the country – think Enron, PsiNet for example. They’ve just decided to take their sponsorship dollars elsewhere – think NASCAR and the Bassmaster Fishing Tour. Maybe the fact that the Jags had to cover up about 10,000 seats in the upper deck to create the illusion of a full house convinced them that this wasn’t an edifice to have their name on.
Finally, Scott Ostler had these two observations regarding Pacman Jones in the San Francisco Chronicle:
“If Pacman Jones is dispensing hundreds of dollar bills, shouldn’t we start calling him ATM Jones?”
“From now on, in homage to ATM Jones, whenever he enters a strip club with a bag full of money, will the strippers all put on football helmets? If so, will it still be considered a topless joint?”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…