Miami 38, New England 13

Somebody pinch me.

No, wait, don't!

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

London calling

I'm off to Londinium for the weekend to watch my footy team, Crystal Palace, get thumped by the mighty Plymouth Argyle.

The good news is that the lovely lovely lovely Charissa Thompson from Fox Sports has agreed to keep you company while I'm away.



Keep her sweet, boys and girls!

NFL final word: Week two

I know, I know... it’s already pretty much week three. So instead of recapping last Sunday’s games I’ll have a quick breeze through the five young players I’ve enjoyed watching most through week two, in reverse order. Ready? Let’s do this...

5. Chansi Stuckey (New York Jets): Frankly I couldn’t care less who wins the AFC East given that there’s zero hope of Miami doing so, although if forced I’ll go for the Bills. (The Jets are from New York, enough said, while the New England Patriots are the New England Patriots.) But I will hold my hands up and say fair play to Stuckey, a player who missed the whole of his rookie season in 2007 thanks to a busted foot. He’s quickly turned himself into one of Brett Favre’s favourite targets, is great at finding holes in zone defenses and catches the ball beautifully. A long career (probably, and hopefully, at a better side three or four years down the line) beckons.

4. Matt Forte (Chicago): Can this guy run or can this guy run? The Bears are back, and he’s the catalyst. Chi-towners had better hope he stays in shape for the next 14 weeks – they might get an extended season if he does.

3. Darren Sproles (San Diego): The very first thing I did on Monday morning was log into Yahoo and drop Vincent Jackson from my fantasy team to make room for his pint-sized, dynamite-assed team-mate. Many scoffed at the Chargers’ decision to let Michael Turner, LT’s number 2 since forever, walk away during the offseason, but Sproles has shut the critics up within two games. The quickness with which he reaches full speed will be terrifying defenses (and special teams units) for the rest of this season. He has ridiculous burst at the line of scrimmage and dances around opposition players for fun.

2. Jay Cutler (Denver): Alright, he’s already pretty much there, but the worried faces which met the revelation that he is diabetic only serve to make his sensational start all the more impressive. Last minute fumbles rescued by incompetent officiating aside, he’s making it look like his receivers are wearing metal gloves and he’s throwing a magnetic ball – Eddie Royal, Tony Scheffler and Brandon Marshall are clocking up insane fantasy numbers. As long as he plays like this, the Broncos aren’t just dark horses – they’re genuine Super Bowl contenders.

1. Aaron Rodgers (Green Bay): Brett who?: This guy might be the most fun player to watch in the NFL right now. He’s making a mockery of the fans’ clamour to hang onto Favre, and his forever upbeat body language suggests he’s really enjoying it. And he deserves to. The smiles might become frowns once he hits a bad pitch – it happens to everyone – but for now my eyes are glued on number 12. Hot tip of the week: Packers to beat Dallas Sunday.

Five more on the bubble:
Davone Bess (Miami) – about the only positive I can find in South Florida right now; Eddie Royal (Denver) – see Jay Cutler entry, above; DeSean Jackson (Philadelphia) – Monday night’s clanger was stupid stupid stupid but it was also funny funny funny; JT O’Sullivan (San Francisco) – when did this guy suddenly learn to play?; Chris Horton (Washington) – whoooooo? I thought the same before his out-of-nowhere performance against the Saints on Sunday.

Oh, Miami

When Bill Parcells took over as executive VP of football operations of the long-suffering Miami Dolphins late last season, expectations were, quite rightly, kept as low as possible. Whether or not he retained then coach Cam Cameron on the back of a 1-15 season, it was clear that there could be no quick turnaround for the hapless, hopeless Phins - particularly in a campaign where only Brian Billick's conservative playcalling stopped us becoming the first team ever to go 0-16. And so throughout the last nine months the words 'transitional season', 'nothing to lose' and 'blood the youngsters' have essentially become the team mottos down in South Florida.

One description that wasn't supposed to apply, however, was 'laughing stock'.

But that's where Miami is now, after a capitulation in the Arizona desert on Sunday that was arguably worse than anything Cam's young team served up last season. The 10-31 scoreline seriously flattered us; but it wasn't just the secondary's inability to follow assignments, read plays and, you know, tackle the opposition players than rankled most. Nor was it our frail, inexperienced wide receiving corps' pathetic attempts to get some separation and catch some balls. Nope, the worst failure in the abominable showing was the lack of professional pride on show: too many sloppy penalties, too many casual mistakes, too many moments when the players just didn't seem all that fussed.

Before he set foot in Miami I hated Parcells with relish, partly because of his connections to the Jets, Patriots and Cowboys – three teams I delight in seeing take a walloping – and partly because, quite simply, he always seemed such a sour, nasty football coach. Yet the latter is precisely the reason I begrudgingly welcomed him to Miami last December; because it had become clear that the franchise needed someone to take a deep bite into its soft, all-too-tender underbelly; someone who would make these players passionate, wiling and, yes, nasty.

We haven't seen any of that yet. 53 real dolphins would have been of more use on Sunday as Kurt Warner, allowed out of the retirement home for three hours, completed 55 of 55 passes for something like 17,000 yards and Anquan Boldin made it look as if he were playing in the park with a bunch of schoolkids. Actually, scrap that - even schoolkids occasionally get near the opposition when on defense.

Instead of being able to admire our determination where ability might be lacking, we're watching a team that appears desperately short of both – and is perhaps even worse than it was last season, what with Jason Taylor and Zach Thomas gone. And while its still way too early to pass judgment on the Parcells/Ireland/Sparano era, it's clear that expectations need to be taken down yet another notch, if that's even possible. This isn't going to be a transitional season; more like a transitional half-decade. And while that might be a tough thing to accept from fans wanting a quicker turnaround, it has to be that way; five coaches in five years and some terrible drafting from Randy Mueller tells its own story.

I'm still on board with the Trifecta. I'm just not sure I can watch them go about business for another 14 games. In fact, right now, I'll take 1-15 all over again...

DuhSean, welcome to the NFL

Given that I’ve never actually played american football in any form whatsoever, and that my hand-eye co-ordination is roughly equal to that of a three-legged, blind goat, it’d be rich of me to offer current college prospects who are hoping to make a career in the NFL any advice whatsoever.

But I’m about to do it anyway.

Kids, on the off chance that you get drafted to the NFL with the 18th pick of the second round, and you immediately make an impact on the depth chart, and your second game is against the bitter divisional rivals of the franchise who drafted you, and at a key moment in the first half when trailing by a single point your quarterback slings you an inch-perfect long pass which you catch without breaking stride... don’t start celebrating your first touchdown until you’re, you know, in the endzone.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Philadelphia Eagles rookie, DeSean Jackson.

My new Monday motto

DON'T. MENTION. THE. PHINS.



:(

Anti-PC words

I am – and I hope you'll forgive me for using the technical term here – a massive, massive donut.

The start of a new NFL season has seen me rediscover a game called Front Office Football, which is basically the gridiron equivalent of the surely-needs-no-introduction Football Manager series. When I first got the game a couple of years back I began a Miami Dolphins dynasty which, over time, I've had some success with – a couple of divisional championships and even a Super Bowl appearance, albeit a losing one. I managed to turn Matt Roth and Derek Hagan into Pro Bowlers, and make superstars of fictional rookies like safety Frank Basnight (an undreafted free agent in 2009, no less) and defensive tackle Richard McGarigle (my 2012 first rounder) – legends nowhere but my own mind. So when I booted up the game last Wednesday at the outset of the 2016 season, it was with a view to spending this entire weekend trying to guide the Fins towards that elusive virtual Vince Lombardi trophy.

Such was my excitement that during Friday lunchtime I logged onto the FOF forums and downloaded a graphics pack which promised to give the game's somewhat spartan visuals a sprucing up. Arriving home that evening I set about trying to apply this patch to the game, but lovely Windows Vista wouldn't have it. I fiddled with the permissions in every possible way, but no dice.

So I tried another tactic: I downloaded the latest patch for the game itself, thinking perhaps that only this version would be able to utilise the updated graphics pack. I installed it, but that didn't work either.

Finally, after three hours of exhaustively scouring the internet, I found the root of the problem: I had to run the graphics auto-patcher as an administrator (rather than the current user) by going into its Properties menu and fiddling with the Compatibility settings. Having spat a colourful array of curses at Vista, all sorted, and about bloody time.

Except it wasn't.

I loaded up the game and whaddya know? No save file. Turns out that when I installed the latest patch for FOF it had automatically created a new saved games folder, overwriting the old one. Typically – I am a massive donut, as I said at the outset - I hadn't thought to back-up the data. And so the 2016 Miami Dolphins were gone, just like that. All those many, many, many hours and late nights gone to waste, with not even a single 'career stats' screen to show for it.

I was, to put it mildly, gutted.

I've started a new game as the Chicago Bears but even with Kyle Orton showing some early promise and a monster D, it just isn't the same yet. I'll stick with it for now and hope that next year I can find a new McGarigle or Basnight to draw me back in once again, but playing now only reminds me what could have been. Brady Quinn was doing brilliantly as my veteran leader. Danny Carmack was just establishing himself as a top-notch running back. Vinny Cinkovsky had spent two years just trying to stay on the 53-man roster. Now, after a great pre-season, the young wide receiver was finally going to get a shot at starting. It was going to be amazing. Until Vista, and my idiocy, came a-calling.

And the worst bit? The graphics pack turned out to be so naff that I removed it within half an hour of starting my new Bears 'chise.

Typical.