mr. blackandwhite

Turnovers are killing the Patriots' chances at making the playoffs..

I'm sitting here watching The Pats / Steelers game and what is easily the most infuriating Patriots performance I've seen in a long time. This is much more annoying than getting blown out. This is just playing stupid. FOUR turnovers in this game. FOUR. Ok the ball is wet and one turnover was an INT off a tipped ball, but still.. four turnovers.. that is recockulous. How can you expect to win against anybody, never mind Pittsburgh, if you continually give the ball away?? Duh, you can't. I lost track but I am pretty sure all of the Steelers 2nd half points have come off of turnovers..

Eight min left in the game and The Steelers are currently up by 13 and are driving for more.. Should the Pats lose this one, which is pretty f-ing likely, that will put them in a spot where they will have to win out December to have even a shot at the Playoffs. Too bad.

An equally annoyed Gil Santos, on the Patriots Rock Radio Network, just said the exact same thing. On the same wavelength again.. Dammit.

The Steelers just kicked a field goal to go up by 16. Cue up the Jim Mora quotes. Phht.

GO PATS

Update:
Make that FIVE Patriots turnovers and a 33-10 final score. This was a game that was tied 10-10 at half-time.. Yeesh. At least NJ lost too..

Though I stand at the door and knock..

Big opportunity knocking on the door of the Patriots this weekend. I think it is fairly safe to say that this upcoming game against Miami is huge as far as playoff implications go.

With the Bills losing to Cleveland this past Monday and the Jets playing the undefeated Titans on Sunday, a win against Miami would accomplish several goals:

It would allow the Pats to keep their playoff hopes alive (duh.) 11-5 is probably good enough to get into the playoffs this year, anything less than that is going to be dicey. If the Pats were to lose to Miami they'd be 6-5, meaning it would be a really hard road to make the playoffs from there..

A win on Sunday would give them sole possession of second place in the AFC East and could potentially tie them for first with the Jets, should the Jets lose to Tennessee, which, hopefully they will.

Finally, and, this is pretty high up there for me, a Patriots win on the road in Miami, aside from being awesome all by itself, would really annoy the hell out of Joey Porter, which would be extra extra awesome. Because really, fuck Joey Porter. Fuck. Him.

Be awesome this weekend Patriots.

GO PATS

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Ethan continued his relentless search for young Debbie.. what?

(Kudos to anyone who gets that movie reference.)

So, here we are. The Pats lost last night. BUT did anyone notice that the Bruins totally kicked Montreal's collective ass last night to the tune of 6 to 1?? THAT IS AWESOME. I HATE THE HABS. GO BRUINS!!!

I almost hate to say this for fear of the jinx but... /chickens out.

One of the first things I did this morning after turning on the computor was to check out The Patriots' chances of making the playoffs. How you may ask? Not by reading any damn 'expert' sports columnists, I can tell you that. I am sure they are doing their very best to get everyone stirred up and are shouting from the rooftops at the Globe and Herald that The Patriots season is now over.. Wait, I thought that already happened? Isn't that what the 'experts' were saying back in Week 1? Yeah, whatever.

No my friends, there is a better, more excellent way. If you scroll over to my links over there, you will notice there's a really cool site listed called Sports Club Stats. Dudes and ladies this site kicks ass.

Unfortunately however, the numbers don't lie. The Pats playoff chances are trending slightly downward, FOR THE MOMENT..

GO PATS

Dammit.

Well I just finished watching the Pats / Jets game so obviously the main thing going through my mind is, 'FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK'. 

But, other than that... you know, it was an exciting game, I got a lot of exercise jumping around my living room and yelling throughout the game, but it was also a very frustrating game. It was excruciatingly frustrating that after tying the game with 1 second left, The Pats D could not stop The Jests from scoring on their first possession during the overtime period, but really what will stick in my craw for the next week and a half will be the 3rd Quarter, where the Pats came out en-fuego but got nothing nada zip zero to show for it. 

After scoring a TD to end the 1st half, the Pats offense came out in the 3rd Q and was clicking, at the same time, the defense was stifling NJ... but the damn turnovers and dropped passes killed us! Ben Watson's turnover and the bad / mixed up snap to Matt Cassel are what stand out to me. The Pats were in scoring territory, at the worst, looking at field goals, all for nothing. 

Ah, well, fuck. So The Jets get the win. I hate it of course, and I so hate Brett Far-ver-ay and his ridiculous celebrating nonsense, but, there's still games left to play. Like I said before, November will make or break the Patriots playoff hopes. So far they're 1-1. If there are any positives to make a Pats Fan feel a little better, its that Cassel is really looking better and better, with every game. Other than that botched snap, I thought he really had a superb game against the Jets and can only imagine if Ben Watson could have hung on to a few more of those balls that were coming his way.. Another positive to look at is, although the short week was tough for the team, they now have a nice extra long break to get ready for Miami, which is now a critical, critical game. But you don't need me to tell you that. 

Ok, one last swig of beer and one last, FUCK!!

On to Miami.

GO PATS

Support quality rock. Pre-Order 'Get It Together'!

I don't know about you, but on the rare occasion that I turn on the radio these days, I'm usually pretty disappointed because most of what gets played on the radio nowadays is pre-paid, programmed in advance corporate suckage. 

Why not take matters into your own hands and support quality rock? Pre-order the Supersuckers new record 'Get It Together' and not only will you get a kick ass record and an entry into a contest that could win you an actual Les Paul Gold Top guitar, but you'll feel good about yourself because supporting quality rock makes you feel awesome. Not only that, the more CD's you buy, the cheaper it gets. I bought four myself, one for each member of my grrage band. Click on the picture and see for yourself!!

Rock.

The dirty little bailout secret

Sorry but I just had to post this. I can't let it go and I will continue to put this stuff up here and try to help make people aware of this f-ing SHAM that has been perpetrated on us.

From The New York Times story So When Will Banks Give Loans:

"...the dirty little secret of the banking industry is that it has no intention of using the money to make new loans. But this executive was the first insider who’s been indiscreet enough to say it within earshot of a journalist.

(He didn’t mean to, of course, but I obtained the call-in number and listened to a recording.)

"Twenty-five billion dollars is obviously going to help the folks who are struggling more than Chase," he began. "What we do think it will help us do is perhaps be a little bit more active on the acquisition side or opportunistic side for some banks who are still struggling. And I would not assume that we are done on the acquisition side just because of the Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns mergers. I think there are going to be some great opportunities for us to grow in this environment, and I think we have an opportunity to use that $25 billion in that way and obviously depending on whether recession turns into depression or what happens in the future, you know, we have that as a backstop."

Please click on the link above to read the whole story if you think you can stomach it.

I would encourage you to look into your representatives' voting record. By the way, my rep, who voted for the bailout twice, even though he was instructed not to by the majority of his constituents, (before they turned off the web server that lets you e-mail your rep that is,) is running un-opposed. That really pisses me off. Unfortunately I learned about this too late this time around. I admit it, I was not paying close enough attention before. But they have my attention now and this situation needs to change in 2010.

Have a great day!

Off the fingertips..

Pats / Colts. I'll remember this game as one of those would have, could have, should have games, a winnable game for The Patriots that bounced away like the sure-fire TD pass from Cassel that bounced off of Jabbar Gaffney's fingers in the 2nd half last night.

You can point to the Pats out-smarting themselves by calling a time out just before they ran for a first down on 4th and 1 inside the Colts 5, or the dumb-ass unnecessary roughness penalty by TE David Thomas that basically killed The Pats chances to at least tie the score at the end of the game, but it was the Gaffney non-catch that was the play that will stand out to me as to why The Patriots lost last night.

I'm not ragging on or pissed at Gaffney, maybe I should be, but I'm not. The cliche is that NFL games always come down to one or two plays and that's the one that cost the Patriots the most in the end.

I thought Cassel really played well last night. To me he made some really big strides in last nights game. He looked good. He was getting the ball out quickly and made some nice plays running the ball when he didn't have somewhere to throw. I'm sure it helped that The Pats' entire offensive line was finally completely intact last night as well.

I thought the defense did great against the run. Rookie linebacker Jerod Mayo is awesome. I am so impressed with him. He is making plays all over the place for the Patriots defense. I hope this is just the beginning of what we will see from this guy. The secondary did a pretty good job holding Manning in check but got burned a few times on some long passes to Clark and Gonzalez.

The bottom line is it went back and forth and The Pats were right there with the Colts the entire game. It's not killing me but it is disappointing because I really did feel the Pats deserved to win this one.

So here we are. We're now half-way through the season. The Patriots have survived a pretty big blow to their team due to injuries and find themselves at 5-3 and tied with the Jets and Bills for 1st place in the AFC East. The Fish are only one game behind at 4-4. It's almost like they just started the beginning of the season. Everybody's even.

If you look around the league it's pretty much the same for everybody, except for The Titans, who I am now officially rooting for as a backup team.

For The Patriots it's now an 8 game race to the playoffs. With three divisional games in a row, November will be the month that either makes or breaks the '08 Patriots. With so many teams having similar records this season, the wild-card race is going to be brutal. Winning the Division is going to be kind of a big deal. Maybe an 8 game race is not an appropriate way to describe the second half of the season. It's going to be an 8 game slug-fest.

GO PATS